The Ten Commandments In The New Mexico Desert

By | April 23, 2019

test article image
The strange and mysterious Los Lunas Decalogue Stone, found in New Mexico, shows the Ten Commandments in paleo-Hebrew writing. Source: (tuscoro.com)

Deep in the desert of New Mexico, near the town of Los Lunas, about 35 miles south of Albuquerque, is a strange, carved stone that some people claim is evidence that the Lost Tribe of Israel somehow made their way to the New World and journeyed into the American Southwest. As improbable as this sounds, the tangible proof is there for all to see…carved onto a large boulder that has come to be known as the Los Lunas Decalogue Stone. Is this stone genuine proof of a Jewish presence in pre-Colombian America? Or, as critics claim, a modern-day hoax? Let’s look at both sides of the story. 

test article image
Archaeologist Frank Hibben working in the New Mexico desert. Source: (airfreshener.club)

The Stone’s Discovery

Oral stories claim that the people knew about the Los Lunas Decalogue Stone as far back as the 1850s, but at least one person, Franz Huning, claimed in 1871 that local Native Americans informed him that the stone was already there when their ancestors arrived in the region. Official credit to discovering the stone goes to Frank Hibben, a professor at the University of New Mexico. Hibben was shown the rock by a local resident of the area who says he had learned about the carved stone when he was a child, back in the 1880s. Hibben claims that when he found the rock, it was covered in lichen and near indistinguishable from other rocks in the area.