Monolith Identical To One Found in Utah Appears on Hillside in Romania

A metal monolith nearly identical to one that was discovered in the U.S. state of Utah has appeared on a hillside in Romania, not far from a historic fortress.

The mysterious three-sided structure’s appearance in the Balkan country comes around the same time that the monolith in Utah was removed from its remote desert location by an “unknown party,” local authorities said over the weekend.

The shiny pillar was found just last Thursday on Batca Doamnei Hill in the city of Piatra Neamt in the country’s northeastern Neamt County, reports the Daily Mail.

The monolith was located several yards from the Dacian fortress Petrodava, an important archaeological landmark and fort that was built by the ancient Dacian people between 82 B.C. and 106 A.D.

The Dacian fortress was written about by Roman polymath and philosopher Claudius Ptolemy and is the the oldest historical monument in the region. It is believed that the fortress was burned down in the 2nd Century A.D. around the time when the Romans conquered the region, although the ruins of the fortress are still intact and comprise parts of the city wall.

The monolith lies close by, with one side facing Mount Ceahlău, a famous Carpathian mountain listed as one of the country’s Seven Natural Wonders and known to locals as the Holy Mountain.

“We have started looking into the strange appearance of the monolith,” said Neamt Culture and Heritage official Rocsana Josanu. “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.”

“Before installing something there, they needed permission from our institution, one that must then be approved by the Ministry of Culture.”

The strange object bears a striking resemblance to the one recently found, and subsequently disappeared, in the southeastern Utah desert.

The origins of that 12-foot (four-meter) high metal block remain unclear.

The discovery of the monolith by Utah public safety workers in the southwestern U.S. state generated significant viral buzz, with many comparing the monolith to those that trigger massive leaps in human progress in the classic Stanley Kubrick sci-fi film, “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

Others bemoaned the discovery of the object in the turbulent year 2020, with some social media users complaining that the discovery of the monolith had triggered their anxiety over worsening fortunes in the year, including a possible extraterrestrial invasion.

“This is the ‘reset’ button for 2020. Can someone please press it quickly?” one social media user quipped.

However, the structure was removed on Friday night “by an unknown party” from the public land it was found on, the Bureau of Land Management’s Utah office said in a statement.

“We have received credible reports that the illegally installed structure, referred to as the ‘monolith’, has been removed from Bureau of Land Management (BLM) public lands by an unknown party,” the bureau said in a statement.

A Utah Department of Public Safety helicopter crew had found the object last Monday while surveying for bighorn sheep.

“IT’S GONE!” the agency said in an Instagram post. “Almost as quickly as it appeared it has now disappeared,” the department continued, adding, “I can only speculate” about the cause of its disappearance, adding the emoji symbol for extraterrestrials.

“Maybe it will stop by and visit us in Canada!!” one person commented.

For the time being, however, the monolith may have decided to park itself in the Carpathian mountain range of Romania.