Shiprock

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Shiprock
Shiprock rises 483 m above the plain

Shiprock rises 483 m above the plain

height 2188  m
location New Mexico , United States
Mountains Colorado Plateau
Coordinates 36 ° 41 '16 "  N , 108 ° 50' 12"  W Coordinates: 36 ° 41 '16 "  N , 108 ° 50' 12"  W.
Topo map USGS Ship Rock Quadrangle
Shiprock (New Mexico)
Shiprock
Age of the rock 25-27 million years
First ascent 1939 by David R. Brower, Raffi Bedayn, Bestor Robinson and John Dyer
Template: Infobox Berg / Maintenance / TOPO-MAP

Shiprock ( Diné Tsé Bit 'A'í , winged rock ) is a rock formation in the northwest of the US state New Mexico . It is part of the Navajo Volcanic Field , a volcanic area that extends over the states of Arizona , Utah , Colorado and New Mexico in the Four Corners region .

The English term "Shiprock" means "ship rock" or "rock in the shape of a ship". The shape is reminiscent of a clipper from the 19th century. The US Geological Survey listed the rock under this name in the 1870s. Previously, Captain JF McComb called him The Needle . The Diné name Tsé Bit 'A'í means something like "rock in the shape of wings".

location

The Shiprock rises 483 meters above a plain in the northeast of the area of ​​the Navajo Nation , as well as in the northwest of San Juan County . The next larger town is Farmington , about 60 kilometers further east. The environment is a desert and steppe landscape. The rock is namesake for the Shiprock community .

geology

NASA: Satellite image in false colors

Shiprock is made up of volcanic breccias and igneous dykes . It is the remains of an eroded volcanic vent . Open- minded dykes emanate from him in mainly three directions, which extend like walls into the surrounding landscape. The rock may have formed 750 to 1000 meters below the earth's surface. A radiometric dating showed that the volcanic rocks solidified before about 27 million years ago. The Colorado Plateau was raised relative to its surroundings in the Miocene about 16 million years ago and has since been increasingly exposed to erosion. The surrounding rock was removed, the Shiprock remained as a hardship . El Capitan rock, which belongs to the same volcanic field, was formed in a similar way in neighboring Arizona.

The rocks of the rock are lamprophyres , mainly minette . Monchiquite , olivinic leucite and vosite are also present, but much less often. The magma of the Navajo volcanic field had a particularly large gas content, which led to a large eruption energy. As a result, the chimney's rocks are often broken into breccias , and granite , gneiss and slate are often embedded in the rock as xenolites . Kimberlite occurs in other parts of the volcanic field, but not on Shiprock. The Dykes were formed in a second phase, when relatively low-gas magma penetrated crevices and tunnels. The differences can still be seen today. On the northeast side of the summit of the main rock you can see subsidence that was probably caused by rock falling back into the crater.

From the height of the rock, a minimum height of the earth's surface existing at the time of the eruption and thus of the erosion that has occurred since then can be derived. Since a volcanic eruption of the local type has very likely formed a crater, the level at the time must have been significantly more than 500 meters above today's level, due to the stratigraphy in the wider region, a maximum of 2500 meters were removed, a plausible estimate is a total of 1000 meters or less accepted.

Immediately northeast of the rock is the Rattlesnake Oil Field, a petroleum deposit . When it was discovered in 1924, it was the largest oil deposit in the world, it was bought by a subsidiary of the Standard Oil Company , the original discoverer and to a lesser extent the Navajo benefited from the find. Today it is almost dry.

Religious and cultural importance

The striking rock formation is of great religious and cultural importance for the Navajo people . In their creation story Diné bahane , the Shiprock was the eyrie of the monster Tsé nináhálééh and his wife. The two winged beings belonged to the mythological natural hazards that had to be slain by Naayéé 'neizghání , the monster slayer , before the Navajo , who call themselves Diné (humans), could safely inhabit the earth. The monster slayer spared the boys of the two monsters, they became an eagle and an owl.

According to another story, the Diné lived on the monolith and only left it to get water and to farm. One day lightning is said to have struck, which destroyed all access and left behind only craggy, steep rock faces and needles. The residents who were on the summit at the time were cut off from the food supply and starved to death. Diné do not climb the rock, otherwise they would awaken the spirits of the dead. According to another story, Shiprock depicts the medicine bag or the bow of a figure, depending on the version , whose lower extremities are formed by the Carrizo Mountains and the rest of the body, including the head, by the Chuska Mountains . There are other stories about Shiprock.

literature

Specialist literature

  • Paul T. Delaney: Ship Rock, New Mexico - The vent of a violent volcanic eruption . In: Geological Society of America: Centennial Field Guide - Rocky Mountain Section. Boulder, CO, 1978, pp. 411-415.

Fiction

Web links

Commons : Shiprock  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Unless otherwise stated, this chapter is based on: Paul T. Delaney: Ship Rock, New Mexico - The vent of a violent volcanic eruption . In: Geological Society of America: Centennial Field Guide - Rocky Mountain Section , Boulder, CO, 1978, pp. 411-415.
  2. ^ David Holtby: Oil and the Federal Presence in New Mexico , University of New Mexico, Center for Regional Studies, 2007.
  3. ↑ Paul G. Zolbrod: Diné bahane '- The Navajo Creation Story . University of New Mexico Press, 1984, ISBN 0-8263-0735-3 , pp. 95, 230-236.