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For more than four decades, the Georgia Guidestones near Elberton Ga., have been an enigma. On Wednesday, the authorities said, “unknown individuals” destroyed a large part of the structure.
An explosive device that “unknown individuals” detonated early Wednesday destroyed a granite monument in Georgia that was built under mysterious circumstances more than four decades ago and promoted by state officials as “America’s Stonehenge,” the authorities said.
The monument, known as the Georgia Guidestones, which was built about nine miles north of Elberton, Ga., had four granite slabs connected to a center pillar, with a capstone on top.
But at around 4 a.m. on Wednesday, an explosive device was set off, destroying “a large portion of the structure,” the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said in a statement. It is investigating the explosion together with the Elbert County Sheriff’s Office.
On Wednesday evening, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation released surveillance video that captured the explosion, which flung chunks of the monument outward and dispersed dust into the air. Shortly afterward, a car can be seen in the footage leaving the scene, according to the agency.
It said that “for safety reasons,” the remaining pillars had been “completely demolished.”
For more than four decades, the Guidestones have towered over a field, fascinating and confounding many visitors. It is unclear why the 19-foot granite slabs were there, or what they meant, and only one man claimed to know the identity of the benefactor who paid for them.
The man, Wyatt Martin, claimed that another man who went by the name R. C. Christian had paid for the granite slabs in 1979, after visiting the East Georgia city.
“I made an oath to that man, and I can’t break that,” Mr. Martin, who helped broker the arrangement for the monument, told The New York Times in 2013. He added, “No one will ever know.”
Elberton, a city of about 4,000 people more than 100 miles northeast of Atlanta, is the self-professed Granite Capital of the World. According to the Georgia Department of Economic Development, the Georgia Guidestones are “Elberton’s most unusual set of granite monoliths.”
The granite slabs, the department says on its website, display “a 10-part message espousing the conservation of mankind and future generations in 12 languages.” It also serves as an astronomical calendar: Every day at noon the sun shines through a narrow hole in the structure, illuminating the day’s date.
Despite the Guidestones’ mysterious aura, some local residents have said that they have little interest in them. Some conspiracy theorists have claimed that the stones’ edicts — which include a call to “unite humanity with a living new language” and a recommendation to keep the planet’s population below 500 million — stand for an elite plot to depopulate the globe.
“They built this monument calling for forced depopulation of the planet,” Alex Jones, the far-right broadcaster and conspiracy theorist, said in a video in 2020.
In a post to Twitter, Kandiss Taylor, a Republican candidate for governor of Georgia, appeared to welcome the partial destruction of the monument, which she described as the “Satanic Guidestones.”
Mart Clamp, a local businessman who helped his father engrave the Guidestones when they were first erected, said that he was “heartbroken” about the damage caused by the explosion.
“People were always coming up with some kind of crazy whackadoodle story about them,” he said of those who pushed conspiracy theories about the slabs.
“It’s unfortunate that we live in a society that thinks that tearing down things that you disagree with is acceptable,” Mr. Clamp added. “I’m at a loss for words right now.”
He said that many local business in the area, including his own, which engraves stone, had offered their time and resources to restore the structure.
“If we’re allowed to,” Mr. Clamp added, “we’re going to rebuild them.”
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The Georgia Landmark Known as ‘America’s Stonehenge’ Is Destroyed in an Explosive Attack
For safety reasons the remaining pillars had been completely demolished.
The mysterious granite monoliths have been the source of conspiracy theories for almost half a century
Since the 1980s, the Georgia Guidestones have puzzled tourists and locals alike. Erected by an anonymous individual about 100 miles east of Atlanta, the monument, dubbed “America’s Stonehenge,” consisted of four large stones around a center stone topped with a capstone. Mysterious inscriptions on the monument seemed to speak to the conservation of humanity, but their exact intent was unclear.
It’s unlikely the mysteries of the Guidestones will ever be revealed now, as the monument was destroyed by an explosive device Wednesday morning, the New York Times’ Livia Albeck-Ripka reports. Footage released by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) shows a detonation reducing one of the side stones and part of the capstone to rubble around 4 a.m., and a car leaving the area shortly after.
Though part of the monument was still standing after the explosion, the entirety had to be demolished by officials in the aftermath out of safety concerns. Investigators currently haven’t released any kind of suspect description or possible motive, according to the AP, and are asking the public for assistance in figuring out who was behind the attack. Prior vandalism to the monument led to the county installing cameras at the site that were able to capture footage of a silver sedan fleeing the scene.
The Guidestones have been the subject of controversy since their erection in 1979 by an anonymous individual known only as R.C. Christian, the New York Times reports. Wyatt Martin, who assisted Christian with installing the monument, claims to be the only individual to know Christian’s true identity and says he’ll never divulge the benefactor’s secret.
Standing 19 feet high outside of the small city of Elberton, the stones both serve as an astrological calendar (a hole in the center stone allows the midday sun to shine through on the day’s respective date) and as a mysterious message to humanity. Written in eight modern and four dead languages, the granite stones espouse the following ten instructions:
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 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.
The first two rules have led some to imply that the stones endorse eugenics or genocide, per the Independent’s Graig Graziosi. Backlash of that kind and that the stones were “built for cult and devil worship” began upon the monuments' unveiling, and only increased in the advent of the internet era. Prominent conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has linked them to the Illuminati.
