- Mysterious metal monolith has appeared in northern Romania after another vanished from the desert in Utah
- The shiny triangular pillar was found on Batcas Doamnei Hill in the city of Piatra Neamt last Thursday
- One side of the structure, which is 13 feet tall, faces Mount Ceahlau, known locally as the Holy Mountain
A mysterious metal monolith has appeared in Romania this week after another similar structure found in the remote
Utah desert was removed by an 'unknown party'.
The shiny triangular pillar was found on Batca Doamnei Hill in the city of Piatra Neamt in northern Romania last Thursday.
It was spotted a few metres away from the well-known archaeological landmark the Petrodava Dacian Fortress, an fort built by the ancient Dacian people between 82 BC and AD 106.
The peculiar find comes after a similar monolith was found in the Utah desert with no explanation, sparking wry speculation that it could have been the work of aliens, but is more likely the work of a prankster inspired by science fiction novel 2001: A Space Odyssey.
In the book by Arthur C Clarke, later made into a film by Stanley Kubrick, a monolith first appears on Earth in Africa three million years ago and appears to confer intelligence upon a starving tribe of great apes to develop tools.
The monolith is used as a tool by an alien race to investigate worlds across the galaxy and to encourage the development of intelligent life.
In the book, the great apes use their tools to kill animals to eat meat to end their starvation, and to kill a predatory leopard. The next day, the main character uses a club to kill the leader of a rival tribe of apes, leading to an awakening of intelligence and the development of humans.
In Utah, the pillar, which protruded approximately 12 feet from the red rocks in southern Utah, was spotted last Wednesday by baffled local BLM officials who were counting bighorn sheep from a helicopter.
However the three-sided structure was removed by an 'unknown party' on Friday evening, the Bureau of Land Management Utah said in a statement.
News of the discovery in Utah quickly went viral online, with many noting the object's similarity to the strange alien monoliths that trigger huge leaps in human progress in Kubrick's classic sci-fi film '2001: A Space Odyssey.'
In Romania, the triangular structure has a height of about 13 feet and one side faces Mount Ceahlau, known locally as the Holy Mountain.
It is one of the most famous mountains in Romania, and is listed as one of the seven natural wonders of the country.
Romanian officials still do not know who is responsible for erecting the mysterious monolith.
Neamt Culture and Heritage official Rocsana Josanu said: 'We have started looking into the strange appearance of the monolith.
'It is on private property, but we still don't know who the monolith's owner is yet. It is in a protected area on an archaeological site.'
She added: 'Before installing something there, they needed permission from our institution, one that must then be approved by the Ministry of Culture.'
The Utah monolith provoked arguments about tourists who drove huge distances to see the monolith and were accused of trashing the location, which authorities had tried to keep secret to avoid people getting lost.
But many tracked down the co-ordinates and published them - leading people to drive many hours through the night to reach the 12ft aluminium structure.
And it was revealed that a similar version appeared nearly 20 years ago on New Years Day in Seattle.
However access to the site involved a 45-minute off-road drive on a dirt track many miles from any major town at 10mph - and then a 15-minute hike up a dry stream bed.
Across the globe UFO spotters and conspiracy theorists became obsessed with the shiny, triangular pillar.
Though the structure was only discovered by authorities this month, Google Earth images show it had been standing since at least 2015 or 2016.
Lieutenant Nick Street, a spokesman for the Department of Public Safety, said it's possible the structure had been there for '40, 50 years, maybe more.'
'It's the type of material that doesn't degrade with the elements. It may only be a few years old, who knows. There's no real way based on the material it's made out of how long it's actually been there,' he said on Tuesday.
Others pointed out the object's resemblance to the avant-garde work of John McCracken, an American artist who lived for a time in nearby New Mexico, and died in 2011.
McCracken was known for his freestanding sculptures in the shape of pyramids, cubes, or sleek slabs.
The monolith most closely resembles McCracken's plank-like sculptures featured at his exhibit at the David Zwirner art gallery in New York.
On Tuesday a spokeswoman for David Zwirner said it was not one of McCracken's works, but possibly by a fellow artist paying homage.
However later in the day Zwirner gave another statement which suggested the piece was indeed by McCracken, meaning it had lain undiscovered in the desert for nearly a decade.
'The gallery is divided on this,' Zwirner said. 'I believe this is definitely by John.'
Utah has a history of
'land art,' unusual installations that cropped up far from population centers in the 1960s and '70s.
The most famous, Spiral Jetty, a 1,500-foot-long coil by artist Robert Smithson in 1970 that's composed entirely of mud, salt crystals and basalt.
Located on the northeastern edge of the Great Salt Lake near Rozel Point, the jetty appears and disappears depending on water levels.
So far, no one has stepped forward to claim responsibility for the monolith, though.
