georgia travel guide

The Georgia Guidestones are a huge granite artifact located on a hilltop in Elbert County, Georgia, USA. It is sometimes referred to as the "American Stonehenge", a title which has been applied at times to a number of other structures. A message comprising ten guides is inscribed on the structure in eight modern languages, and a shorter message is inscribed at the top of the structure in four ancient scripts: Babylonian, Classical Greek, Sanskrit, and Egyptian Hieroglyphs.

The artifact is almost twenty feet (6m) tall, and made from six granite slabs weighing more than 100 tons in all. One slab stands in the center, with four arranged around it. A capstone lies on top of the five slabs, which are astronomically aligned. An additional stone tablet, which is set in the ground a short distance to the west of the structure, provides some clarifying notes on the history and purpose of the Guidestones.

History

In June 1979, an unknown party under the pseudonym R.C. Christian hired Elberton Granite Finishing Company to build the structure.

The Message of the Georgia Guidestones

A message consisting of a set of ten guidelines or principles is engraved on the Georgia Guidestones in eight different languages, one language on each face of the four large upright stones. Moving clockwise around the structure from due north, these languages are: English, Spanish, Swahili, Hindi, Hebrew, Arabic, Ancient Chinese, and Russian. The message in English reads:

Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature
Guide reproduction wisely - improving fitness and diversity.
Unite humanity with a living new language.
Rule passion - faith - tradition - and all things with tempered reason.
Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.
Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a one world court
Avoid petty laws and useless officials.
Balance personal rights with social duties.
Prize truth - beauty - love - seeking harmony with the infinite.
Be not a cancer on the earth - Leave room for nature - Leave room for nature.

A shorter message appears on the four vertical surfaces of the capstone, again in a different language and script on each face. The explanatory tablet near the Guidestones identifies these languages/scripts as Babylonian Cuneiform (north), Classical Greek (east), Sanskrit (south), and Egyptian Hieroglyphs (west), and provides what is presumably an English translation: "Let these be guidestones to an age of reason." This last may be a reference to the book, The Age of Reason , by Thomas Paine and is no doubt a nod to Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus.

The content of the message bears a remarkable resemblance to the so called Earth Charter, a statement of vision of the Earth Charter Initiative of Mikhail Gorbachev (Green Cross International) and Maurice Strong (Earth Summit).

The Message in Russian

The message in Russian is facing North-East. The message is a loose translation of the message in English, sometimes to the point of being completely incorrect or meaningless. The text contains a total 11 punctuational, grammatical and spelling errors. It is also shorter than the English equivalent - the last words "Leave room for nature" are stated only once, because the makers ran out of space on the stone.

The full text of message is as follows (literally), with reverse Russian-to-English translation in parentheses:

Explanatory Tablet

A few feet to the west of the artifact, an additional granite ledger has been set level with the ground. This tablet identifies the structure and the languages used on it, lists various facts about the size, weight, and astronomical features of the stones, the date it was installed, and the sponsors of the project. It also speaks of a time capsule buried under the tablet, but the positions on the stone reserved for filling in the dates on which the capsule was buried and is to be opened are missing, so it is not clear whether the time capsule was ever put in place. The tablet is with one edge to each of the cardinal directions, and is inscribed such that the northern edge is the "top" of the inscription.

The complete text of the explanatory tablet is detailed below. The accompanying image shows the overall layout. The tablet is somewhat inconsistent with respect to punctuation, and also misspells "pseudonym". The original spelling, punctuation, and line breaks in the text have been preserved in the transcription which follows.

The text of the tablet is as follows:

-At the center of each tablet edge is a letter representing the appropriate compass direction (N, S, E, W), contained within a small circle.

-At the top center of the tablet is written:

-Immediately below this is the outline of a square, inside which is written:

Around the edges of the square are written the names of four ancient scripts/languages, one per edge. Starting from the top and proceeding clockwise, they are:

"Egyptian Hieroglyphics" is not properly the name of a script; a better name would be "Demotic."

-On the left side of the tablet is the following column of text:

-The word "pseudonym" is misspelled on the stone.

-The words appear as shown under the time capsule heading; no dates are engraved.

-On the right side of the tablet is the following column of text:

-Below the two columns of text is written the caption:

Below this is a schematic diagram of the upright stones of the structure, consisting of a small rectangle surrounded by four longer rectangles projecting to the northwest, northeast, southwest and southeast. The names of eight modern languages are inscribed along the long edges of the projecting rectangles, one per edge. Starting from due north and moving clockwise around the diagram (so that the upper edge of the northeast rectangle is listed first), they are:

-At the bottom center of the tablet is the following text:

Location

The Georgia Guidestones are located in Elbert County, Georgia, approximately 90 miles (145 kilometers) east of Atlanta, 45 miles from Athens (precise distance is 44.3322 miles), GA and 9 miles (15 kilometers) north of the center of Elberton. The stones are standing on a rise a short distance to the east of Georgia Highway 77 (Hartwell Highway), and are visible from that road. Small signs beside the highway indicate the turnoff for the Guidestones, which is identified by a street sign as "Guidestones Rd."