806 A2. Evidence for Advanced Culture in Distant Ages
The Illinois State Geological Survey has said the coal in which the gold chain
was found is 260320 million years old. This raises the possibility that culturally
advanced human beings were present in North America during that time.
A2.10 CARVED STONE FROM LEHIGH COAL MINE
NEAR WEBSTER, IOWA (CARBONIFEROUS)
The April 2, 1897 edition of the Daily News of Omaha, Nebraska, carried an
article titled "Carved Stone Buried in a Mine," which described an object from
a mine near Webster City, Iowa. The article stated: "While mining coal today in
the Lehigh coal mine, at a depth of 130 feet, one of the miners came upon a piece
of rock which puzzles him and he was unable to account for its presence at the
bottom of the coal mine. The stone is of a dark grey color and about two feet long,
one foot wide and four inches in thickness. Over the surface of the stone, which
is very hard, lines are drawn at angles forming perfect diamonds. The center of
each diamond is a fairly good face of an old man having a peculiar indentation
in the forehead that appears in each of the pictures, all of them being remarkably
alike. Of the faces, all but two are looking to the right. How the stone reached its
position under the strataof sandstone at adepth of 130 feet is aquestion the miners
are not attempting to answer. Where the stone was found the miners are sure the
earth had never before been disturbed." Inquiries to the Iowa State Historical
Preservation and Office of State Archaeology at the University of Iowa revealed
nothing new. The Lehigh coal is probably from the Carboniferous. E
A2.11 IRON CUP FROM OKLAHOMA COAL MINE
(CARBONIFEROUS)
On January 10, 1949, Robert Nordling sent a photograph of an iron cup to Frank L. Marsh of Andrews University, in Berrien Springs, Michigan. Nordling wrote: "I visited a friend's museum in southern Missouri. Among his curios, he had the iron cup pictured on the enclosed snapshot" (Rusch 1971, p. 201).
At the private museum, the iron cup had been displayed along with the following affidavit, made by Frank J. Kenwood in Sulphur Springs, Arkansas, on November 27, 1948: "While I was working in the Municipal Electric Plant in Thomas, Okla. in 1912, I came upon a solid chunk of coal which was too large to use. I broke it with a sledge hammer. This iron pot fell from the center, leaving the impression or mould of the pot in the piece of coal. Jim Stall (an employee of the company) witnessed the breaking of the coal, and saw the pot fall out. I traced the source of the coal, and found that it came from the Wilburton, Oklahoma, Mines" (Rusch 1971, p. 201). According to Robert O. Fay of the Oklahoma Geological Survey, the Wilburton mine coal is about 312 million
A2 .12 A Shoe Sole from Nevada (Triassic)
807
years old. In 1966, Marsh sent the photo of the cup and the correspondence relating to it to Wilbert H. Rusch, a professor of biology at Concordia College, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Marsh stated: "Enclosed is the letter and snap sent me by Robert Nordling some 17 years ago. When I got interested enough in this pot' (the size of which can be gotten at somewhat by comparing it with the seat of the straight chair it is resting on) a year or two later I learned that this friend' of Nordling's had died and his little museum was scattered. Nordling knew nothing of the whereabouts of the iron cup. It would challenge the most alert sleuth to see if he could run it down .... If this cup is what it is sworn to be, it is truly a most significant artifact" (Rusch 1971, p. 201). It is an unfortunate fact that evidence such as this iron cup tends to get lost as it passes from hand to hand among people not fully aware of its significance.
A2.12 A SHOE SOLE FROM NEVADA (TRIASSIC)
On October 8, 1922, the American Weekly section of the New York Sunday American ran a prominent feature titled "Mystery of the Petrified `Shoe Sole' 5,000,000 Years Old," by Dr. W. H. Ballou. Ballou (1922, p. 2) wrote: "Some time ago, while he was prospecting for fossils in Nevada, John T. Reid, a distinguished mining engineer and geologist, stopped suddenly and looked down in utter bewilderment and amazement at a rock near his feet. For there, a part of the rock itself, was what seemed to be a human footprint! [Figure A2.6] Closer inspection showed that it was not a mark of a naked foot, but was, apparently, a shoe sole which had been turned
into stone. The forepart was missing. But there was the outline of at least twothirds of it, and around this outline ran a welldefined sewn thread which had, it appeared, attached the welt to the sole. Further on was another line of sewing, and in the center, where the foot would have rested had the object been really a shoe sole, there was an indentation, exactly such as would have been made by the bone of the heel rubbing upon and wear
ing down the material of which the sole had been made. Thus was found a fossil which is the
Figure A2.6. Partial shoe sole in Triassic rock from Nevada (Ballou 1922). The Triassic is dated at 213248 million years ago.