A monolith appeared and disappeared in the Romanian countryside over the last week. The seeming copycat project, playing into the buzz generated around a similar monolith found in the remote Utah desert, was gone almost as quickly as it appeared.
According to Reuters, the Romanian monolith was removed on Dec. 1. That brought its time standing guard over Neamt county to just four days. While the Utah monolith remains mysterious in origin, reporters quickly uncovered the provenance of its European counterpart.
“The 2.8 metre (9ft) tall structure disappeared overnight as quietly as it was erected last week,” Romanian journalist Robert Iosub told Reuters. “An unidentified person, apparently a bad local welder, made it ... now all that remains is just a small hole covered by rocky soil."
The original monolith was uncovered by government officials counting bighorn sheep in the Utah wilderness. The tall, metal structure was spotted by helicopter, standing out against the orange of the surrounding desert. Overviews of Google Earth revealed the monolith had stood on the spot for years without being discovered.
That monolith was eventually removed by a crew of men who came and toppled it at night. The only reason its fate is known is the reporting of a photographer who was there when they knocked the installation down and carried it out in wheelbarrows.
Because the Utah monolith is technically trash, the local sheriff's department isn't straining itself to find who installed or removed it. It posted a jokey "wanted" poster on Facebook that included a lineup of fictional aliens.
