FORT MOJAVE TWINS GEOGLYPH ALIGNMENT:

Mojave Twins Geoglyph, Arizona. Internet photograph public domain.

Back in August 2022 I received an interesting letter. Lee Knutson wrote of a discovery he had made on Google Earth. Lee discovered alignments related to the Fort Mojave Twins Geoglyphs which are fenced off on the Fort Mojave Tribal reservation.

Figure 1, Google Earth at an elevation of ~22 miles, this line is indicated in gold; the general location of the geoglyphs. Knutson 2022.

A number of internet souces purport to enlighten us about the pair of geoglyphs known as the Mojave Twins, but since they are mostly identical and represent copies of a single source we must take anything they say with a large dose of salt. "The Mojave Twins - - are two of about 120 intaglios along the Colorado River from northern Mexico to Fort Mojave. The Mojave Twins have been said to represent a spiritual form of good and evil. One twin has a large round head and attached limbs, the second has a shortened head and detached arms, the second twin likely representing evil. The more complete twin appears to represent Mustamho, the name given to the creator God by the Mojaves according to the reference book 'Earth Figures of the Lower Colorado' by Boma Johnson. The sacred Avikwaame Mountain and the original river homeland of the Mojave are visible from the Twin's location, on a high terrace located on the Fort Mojave Indian land (seen best from an airplane)." (fathersmanifesto.net) The above paragraph seems to be one of the sources of the copies of information found on the internet about the Fort Mojave Twins geoglyphs.

Figure 2, Mojave Twins Geoglyph, Arizona. Knutson 2022.

Knutson included a number of illustrations including screen shots from his computer and explained his findings as follows: "Using Google Earth, a line on heading of ~279 degrees can be drawn between the Boundary Cone Butte (Mojave: Avi-Veskwi), a prominent outlier of the Black Mountains of Arizona on the eastern side of the Mojave Valley, and Mt. Manchester (Mojave: Avi-Mota), the high point of the Dead Mountains on the western side of the colorado River. In Figure 1, an annotated screenshot from Google Earth at an elevation of ~22 miles, this line is indicated in gold; the general location of the geoglyphs is indicated by a blue star." (Knutson 2022)

"Close up in Figure 2, from an elevation of 286 feet, a section of that line in black (A) is tangential to the top of the more northerly figure, and bisects the 'cleared area' on the western margin." (Knutson 2022)

"A green line (B), bisecting the torso of the (headless) northerly figure, and projected to the point of the right elbow of the larger figure, has a heading of ~200 degrees south. Finally, a red line (C) bisects the larger southerly figure, from a point between the feet of the northerly figure to the crown, and has a heading of ~212 degrees south." (Knutson 2022)

"The geoglyph site straddles the line between the two peaks: this placement is not accidental, and the crossing of the 'cleared area' shows that. In fact, all the elements and aspects of the site ought to be considered purposefully placed and interrelated. While the location of the geoglyphs takes advantage of the unique location between the peaks, the orientations of the figures could have been in any direction that would fit the site. As it is, the headings of figures are downriver, to the south and west, and separated by ~12 degrees. From the ground level, these point toward the Sacramento Mountains, west of Needles, California. Recalling, howeever, that the geoglyphs are scaled for viewing from above, it seems reasonable to look for some association." (Knutson 2022)

Figure 3, Alignments to Milky Way shown with Stellarium. Knutson 2022.

"Using Stellarium (Zotti 2021), the Milky Way appears on the horizon at civil twilight on the Fall Equinox at a heading of ~200 degrees and approximately one month later it can be seen again at civil twilight on the horizon at a heading of ~212 degrees." (Knutson 2022)

"Figure 3 is a combination of images from Stellarium and Google Earth, reoriented to a south-southwest horizon: the appearance of the Milky Way is mapped to the two headings of the figures. Note that this appearance, immediately after sunset, only occurs at this time of the year." (Knutson 2022)

Do I know what these alignments might imply, what meaning (if any) was intended? No, I do not. Lee does not try to interpret them either. "My intention is to simply report these findings, and not to speculate on meanings or ultimate  purposes."(Knutson 2022) I appreciate the fact that he does not go out on some fringe limb about archaeoastronomy, but lets the facts speak for themselves. Thank you for sharing Lee, and keep up the good work.

NOTE: Stellarium is a free, open-source astronomy planetarium software available at stellarium.org. Google Earth is a free program that provides views of the surface of the earth, available at https://earth.google.com. Images in this column were provided by Lee Knutson, and are used with his permission.

The quotation of Boma Johnson from fathersmanifesto.net could not be confirmed with Johnson. Boma Johnson passed away in 2019: see obit @ https://dixierockart.com/boma-johnson.

PRIMARY REFERENCES:

Knutson, Lee, 2022, personal communication.

https://fathersmanifesto.net/intaglio.htm

SECONDARY REFERENCES:

Johnson, Boma, 1986, Earth Figures of the Lower Colorado and Gila River Deserts: A Functional Analysis, 1 January 1986, Arizona Archaeological Society, Phoenix.

Zotti, George, and Alexander Wolf (editors), 2021, Stellarium 0.21.0 User Guide, https://github.com/Stellarium/stellarium/releases/download/v.0.21.0/stellarium_user_guide-0.21.0.pdf