Either the aliens are stepping up their invasion or someone is looking for attention in Romania, where a monolith similar to the one that vanished in Utah has been spotted.
A new three-sided metal monolith mysteriously appeared on a hill near the community of Piatra Neamt in northeastern Romania last week, according to local media. The object appeared to be about 2.8 metres tall, and was roughly the same shape as the one that captured viral fame in the Utah desert in November.
The new monolith was first spotted on Nov. 26 on Batcas Doamnei Hill near Petrodava, a ruined Dacian fortress on a plateau outside the city, according to the Ziar Piatra Neamt newspaper.
It disappeared on Tuesday.
The object immediately prompted speculation about its potential link to the one in Utah, which vanished late Friday.
However, the objects were not identical, and reports show that the Romanian object was put up before the Utah one was taken down.
Images and video posted by Romanian news outlets show their monolith was covered in squiggles and loops, unlike the unadorned surface of the monolith in Utah. The Romanian monolith also appeared to have been welded together and embedded in the dirt.
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The Utah monolith was held together by rivets and embedded in a slot in the stone.
The Utah monolith generated intense speculation about its origins, especially after internet sleuths revealed that it had been standing silently in the desert for years. The mystery only deepened over the weekend after the object was removed by an unknown party.
It’s still unclear who built the Utah monolith, although the prevailing theory remains that it was an art project. It’s also unclear who might have taken it.
Both objects have been compared to the towering monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey, which appears in both the Stanley Kubrick film and the book by Arthur C. Clarke.
The fictional monolith was meant to provoke a leap in human science and evolution.
That begs a tongue-in-cheek question: are the aliens trying to give us a hand with the coronavirus vaccine in 2020?
Robert Iosub, a journalist for Ziar Piatra Neamt, says the Romanian monolith appeared to be a shoddy knock-off of the Utah one.
“An unidentified person, apparently a bad local welder, made it,” he told Reuters.
Iosub says the Romanian monolith “disappeared overnight as quietly as it was erected last week.
“Now all that remains is just a small hole covered by rocky soil,” he said.
Video and photos show the object did have a bubbled crease in the metal.
Local police say they are looking into the structure, which was built illegally and placed on a protected archeological area.
No one has confessed to the copycat monolith (or the bad welding job) as of this writing.
—With files from Reuters
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