Cool Natural Structures That Look Manmade

When we are out in nature, sometimes we will come across things that are natural but look manmade. These natural formations show just how varied and amazing nature can be, and it sparks our interest about whether or not perhaps some amazing people made the structure. In most cases, it is a natural formation but that does not make it any less astounding in our eyes. Here are some of the most amazing natural structures in the world, which look like humans made them.

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The Ute Mountains in Colorado are collectively known as The Sleeping Ute. These peaks, which run for roughly 12 miles, are isolated away from other mountains, and are much lower than the highest peaks in Colorado. However, what brings people out to them is not only the beauty of the area, but the fact that the Ute Mountains resemble a sleeping Ute Chief laying on his back with arms folded over his chest.

Due to this appearance, the mountains are sacred to the Weeminuche Ute Band and their descendants. Ceremonies are still held on the mountains, in the areas that resemble the kens and ribcage of the Sleeping Ute. In Ute Band legends, the Sleeping Ute is the sleeping form of a Great Warrior Guard who fell asleep to recover from wounds he received in a battle with the Evil Ones.

Looking at the Ute Mountains from the side, the head is Marble Mountain, while the crossed arms are Ute Peak. The ribcage is Horse Mountain, along with Black Mountain and Ute Mountain. Hermano Mountain makes up the knees, while the toes are a series of small peaks at the end of the range.

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Located in New Zealand along the Kohekohe Beach, these boulders are scattered along a stretch of the beach, where they are now protected as a scientific reserve by the New Zealand government. According to Maori legend, the boulders are the remains of eel baskets, calabashes and kumara that have washed ashore from an Arai-te-uru, which was a large sailing canoe. In this legend, the rocky shoals along Shag Point are the wreck of the hull that has been petrified, and a nearby rock formation is the body of the captain of the ship.

In reality, the Moeraki Boulders were created by the cementation of Paleocene mudstone from the Moeraki Formation, which were exhumed over centuries and centuries of coastal erosion. The spherical shape of the boulders comes from mass diffusion of calcium, and studies have found that the boulders began to form as marine mud on the surface of the Paleocene seafloor. The larger of the boulders, which measure six-feet in diameter, took roughly 5.5 million years to grow, while 150 feet of marine mud accumulated on top of them.

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Located in Ireland, the Giant’s Causeway is 40,000 interlocking basalt columns created by an ancient volcanic eruption. Located on the northeast coast of Northern Ireland, they are a National Nature Reserve and a World Heritage Site, certified by UNESCO. Not only are they the most popular tourist attraction in Northern Ireland, but also they were named as the fourth greatest natural wonder in the United Kingdom.

Most of the columns are hexagonal, with the tallest being 36 feet in height, and over 60 feet in thickness in some places.
According to Irish legend, the Irish warrior Fionn mac Cumhaill, built the causeway to walk to Scotland to fight Benandonner. There are two variations of this story, in the first Fionn falls asleep before getting to Scotland and Benandonner crosses the bridge looking for him. Fionn’s wife puts a blanket over him so that Benandonner thinks that Fionn is in fact, Fionn’s infant son. Upon seeing the size of the apparent infant, Benandonner flees home, tearing up the Causeway as he runs. In the other variation, Fionn’s wife Oonagh paints a rock shaped like a steak and gives it to Benandonner and gives Fionn a normal steak. When Benandonner sees how easily Fionn (who he thinks is a baby) eats the steak, he runs away, tearing up the Causeway.

In reality, the causeway was created 50 to 60 million years ago in the Paleocene period during intense volcanic activity when fluid molten basalt intruded on chalk beds to form a large lava plateau. When the lava cooled, contraction occurred, creating the Giant’s Causeway as we know it.

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Also known as Great Stone Face, this was a series of five granite cliff edges in New Hampshire that when viewed from the north looked like the profile of a human face. The formation was 1,200 feet above Profile Lake, and measured 40 feet tall and 25 feet wide. The feature was first mentioned in print in 1805 but sadly it collapsed on May 3, 2003. During its life, President Ulysses S. Grant and President Dwight D. Eisenhower visited the formation and it became a very popular tourist attraction over the course of its life. It even became a criminal offense to vandalize the natural formation in 1986.

Around 8,000 to 19,000 years ago, ice sheets receded from North America, reshaping many mountains, changing routs of rivers and that included in New Hampshire. Glaciers carved the formation that would be Old Man of the Mountain as they receded from the area during the most recent ice age, the Wisconsin Glaciation, which happened 10,000 years ago.

In 1850, the formation was the inspiration for a story by Nathaniel Hawthorne, which was called The Great Stone Face, which he described the formation as a work of nature in her mood of majestic playfulness. The Old Man of the Mountain was a big part of New Hampshire, even gracing a stamp in 1955. It has also been the state emblem since 1945, it was once on the state’s license plates, highway-route signs and on the back of the Statehood Quarter for the state.

As time went on for the formation, constant freezing and thawing, plus vibration from nearby traffic, caused fissures to open up on the forehead of the formation. In the 1920s, the crack was mended with chains, and in 1957, $25,000 was spent to create weatherproofing for the formation, which including putting in 20 tons of fast-drying cement, plastic coverings, turnbuckles, steel rods and a concrete gutter to divert runoff.

Nature was not going to be stopped though and between midnight and 2 a.m. on May 3, 2003, the formation collapsed. Grief was widespread in the state and flowers were even left at the base of the cliff. A replacement replica of the formation was briefly considered but that was rejected and instead viewfinders at the site show what the formation once looked like.

Author: Craig Baird — Copyrighted © roadtickle.com