A to Z Editor’s note: The symmetry of 52 weeks in a year and 26 letters in our alphabet inspired us here at The Eatonton Messenger to embark on an alphabetical journey of Putnam County every other week this year, looking at something – or someone – unique, significant, unusual, or just plain interesting.
Putnam County’s ancient Rock Eagle and Rock Hawk stone effigies literally hearken back to a time before time was even recorded; at least not in the way we currently understand.
Estimated to be up to 3,000 years old, archeologists believe both were created by ancient native dwellers, possibly for spiritual or ceremonial reasons.
Though north-Putnam’s Rock Eagle has been largely rebuilt to its present eight-foot height at its center, with clearly defined edges that depict a spread-wing bird 102 feet long from head to tail and with a 120-foot wingspan, the 54-by-75 feet Rock Hawk on the county’s east side remains in a much more natural state.
Regardless, the obvious endurance of both effigies is largely owed to their construction material, quartzite rocks.
Designated by one online source as “a true masterpiece crafted by Mother Nature herself,” quartzite is created over a period of millions of years, beginning its geologic life as grains of sand made up almost exclusively of the mineral quartz.
Gradually, eventually, the quartz sand grains become compressed into sandstone, which in turn may be buried under many more layers of sand or rocks and as this happens it compresses further and heat is generated.
Again, over millions of years of enduring heated pressure, the sand grains actually change shape and fuse together to form quartzite, an extremely hard, non-porous rock, ranked higher than glass, marble and granite on the Mohs hardness scale. This literal transformation makes quartzite a “metamorphic” rock.
Quartzite is mined extensively worldwide, as its inherent durability makes it ideal not only for building famous effigies – the only two known to exist in the United States east of the Mississippi are the pair in Putnam County – but also for kitchen countertops, outdoor walkways, or even as road-building aggregate.