Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Chinese Anchor in Ottowa?

[Not rock pile related] Reader Bruce writes:
This is a shot taken a few seasons ago at the waterfront of the Ottawa River. In the west end of Ottawa near Brittannia.
The stone with the hole resembles the Chinese anchor stones found on the west coast - some ancient and some not.

What would be your assessment of this stone, which I spotted after the Spring swell had subsided?

3 comments :

pwax said...

An image search on Google shows several ancient stone anchors that could be a fit. It would be good to get more detail of the lower end.

pwax said...

Let me also give a standard "party line" answer that puts me comfortably in the fringe:

It is well known that ancient mariners had sailed everywhere on the globe and that they had done it over and over again, long before history started. Everyone who could get to America DID get to America - and there was plenty of traffic in the other direction.

So an ancient Chinese anchor in Ottowa is certainly surprising but it could have gotten there via the Atlantic or the Arctic.

Anonymous said...

Hello,
As you probably noticed while searching the web. such a shape for a stone anchor is quite common, after all it's simply a rectangular slab with a hole at one of the ends. Designating it as Chinese seems as true as Byzantine or something else...The type of stone could maybe point out to a certain place where it may have originated from. Or maybe more than one place :) Wish you good luck in your searches!
Bogdan.