It was like 2020 all over again: On Monday, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department announced the discovery of a mysterious metal monolith over the weekend just north of Las Vegas.
The sighting recalled an internet frenzy from the depths of the coronavirus pandemic. In 2020, a mysterious metal monolith was discovered in Utah. It was about 10 feet tall, shiny, reflective, straight out of “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Nobody knew where it came from. Then it just…disappeared.
Internet sleuths, cooped up during Covid shutdowns and experiencing the fallout from the US presidential election, were looking for an answer. Work of an artist? Aliens? Random YouTube pranksters? As people yearned for an origin story, copycat monoliths began to appear around the world. Few responses followed.
“We see a lot of weird things when people go hiking, like not being prepared for the weather, not bringing enough water…but look at this!” Las Vegas police wrote in a social media thread Monday that included a pair of photos of the monolith. Police said the metal structure was spotted on a hiking trail near Gass Peak on the north side of Las Vegas.
The monolith seen in photographs of the police department is glassy, as if it had been torn from a fifth-dimensional bookshelf in “Interstellar.”
The LVMPD said it was answering many questions about the monolith Tuesday morning, but did not answer questions about its origins or whether police planned to monitor the structure.
But police advised hikers to observe the safety of the trail next to the monolith, especially now that “the Internet gets to work on this mystery.”
What was the Utah monolith?
The original monolith was discovered by officials in November 2020, shortly before Thanksgiving. Utah land and safety officials were in a remote area of the Utah desert when they discovered the object, which had apparently been hidden there for years. (Reddit sleuths discovered through Google Earth that the monolith was likely installed in 2016.)
“We were joking that if one of us suddenly disappears, then the rest run away,” pilot Bret Hutchings told Salt Lake City news station KSL-TV at the time.
So yeah, a little weird, right? That didn’t stop people from flocking to the remote Utah desert to take photos and see the structure. Many theorized that it was the work of aliens. (Mostly in jest. Mostly…) TikTok videos suggested the structure signaled the arrival of aliens or some other cryptid.
The world soon entered what could only be described as monolithic mania. UFO YouTubers investigated the site. Brands like Southwest Airlines and moon cake He made jokes. Stephen Colbert even delivered a 12-minute “monolithic monologue” about the structure.
Then the Utah monolith…disappeared. And there was never a clear answer as to where he went or how he got there. Amid a debate over land preservation, one group suggested the Utah structure be dismantled and returned to federal land managers, but questions remain over the monolith’s whereabouts.
The Utah Bureau of Land Management told the Washington Post on Tuesday that it was “verifying” the status of the original monolith, but did not immediately offer further details.
Were there other monoliths? And did aliens make them?
The Utah monolith was just the beginning. A similar structure arose in Romania, although it looked a little different, and many considered it an imitation. Another appeared in California, but seemed too light compared to the Utah structure. (The destruction of that California monolith was also well documented.) One showed up in New Mexico, but, as social media videos showed, it was taken down fairly quickly.
Several versions of the monoliths were then seen around the world in late 2020, although many were considered direct sequels to the video original, including one that was installed at the Fremont Street Experience in Las Vegas in December 2020.
Many monoliths. A lot of attention. And that only fueled more conspiracy theories and questions about where they all came from.
The leading theory was that the original was simply an artistic accessory, with some suggesting it was installed to say… something… about the environment.
Some in the art world speculated that John McCracken, a minimalist sculptor and science fiction fan, put together the object before he died in 2011, the New York Times reported at the time. His son, Patrick McCracken, and his gallerist, David Zwirner, supported this theory, but Zwirner later retracted it. There were also theories that performance artist Zardulu was responsible, but she did not take credit. And a prank art collective called Most Famous Artist claimed responsibility for the monoliths (it later sold a version of them for around $45,000 in December 2020), but its authorship was questioned.
So here we are, in 2024, and the quest to understand Utah’s original monolith remains a confusing little moment in history.
The specific details of the monoliths’ origins and departures may not matter. The original piece, the sequels, and the global conversation were together an artistic event. It was an opportunity for the entire world to comment, in real time, on the appearance and meaning of an object.
It also showed us that society has no problem indulging in a good conspiracy theory, especially one that’s a little more fun and offbeat.
And if nothing else, it was a good test case of what happens when aliens arrive, right?
Keynote USA
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