 The Dytan Rock, a 40-ton boulder in Massachusetts, USA, is a mysterious relic indeed. Not only does it not fit in with the surrounding environment, but the incredibly ancient inscriptions found upon it could unlock highly controversial truths regarding the reach of ancient civilization that would fly in the face of current academic theory. What is interesting regarding this enormous rock is that it was not only placed where it now lay by natural geologic activities many millennia ago, dropped where it lay on the shores of the Taunton River by the melting of an ancient glacier during the end of the last Ice Age, measuring 5 feet high, 9.5 feet wide, and 11 feet long, made of gray-brown crystalline sandstone, but no one has been able to say with certainty who first wrote upon the rock, what they wanted to communicate, or why they created these mysterious markings, with it now known to have been the inspiration for over 1,000 books and articles and the basis for over 35 hypotheses. The mystery and indeed debate regarding the writings on the Dytan Rock continue to this day, and a possible motivation for the mystery to remain unsolved is to protect the currently attested academic theories regarding the past of man, thus they could quite possibly be markings left by a past now lost civilization, or one that has long been claimed to have been unable to have had such far-reaching settlements. The antiquity of the writings is undoubtable, as many scientific investigations have proved that they are indeed very old. But what is hotly debated is the origins, and indeed the civilization responsible for creating them. Although, predictably, since 1680, when Reverend John Danforth visited the rock, a mainstream academically-approved theory regarding the stone has been put forward and popularized by said institutions. However, the fact that the glyphs, or possible language etched upon the rock, has never been deciphered remains. After seeing it, he decided that the carvings on it were made by Native Americans, specifically the Wampanoag Indians, after being told the tale of a ship arriving, and a battle between the locals and mysterious newcomers were told to him from long ago in the distant past. Danforth drew the symbols visible on the top half of the petroglyph, and then wrote, quote, It is reported from the tradition of the old Indians that there came a wooden house with men of another country in it, swimming up the river Asanet that fought the Indians and slew their sachin. Such interpreted the figures to be hieroglyphical, the first figure representing a ship without mast and mere rack cast upon the shoals, the second representing a head of land, possibly a cape with a peninsula, end quote. Danforth's drawings were requested by the Royal Society of London in 1732, and are now preserved in the British Museum. This not only proof of their acceptance by mainstream academia, possibly due to its lack of any controversial claims, just a simple mention of newcomers, and no further mention of their possible identity. Yet the fact that these inscriptions remain undecipherable makes the possibility of the newcomers being from a locality nearby illogical, and suggests that they were instead, created by a group who came from a now lost, or possibly concealed, advanced civilization. Another hypothesis put forward by Isra's styles in 1767, while he was the president of Yale College, claimed that the famous seafarers, the Phoenicians, had made their way all the way to North America on at least one voyage. Styles believed that the writings were left by them to simply show that they were once there. Styles' idea was a popular one in Europe for some time, and were embraced by Antoine Court de Gebelin, a French scholar as a possible answer to the identity of their creators. He said that the carvings on the rock should be split into three sections, the past, present, and future. Some of the images he identified were an oracle and butterfly, representing the future, a horse and a beaver meeting, symbolical representations of the two contents interacting in the present, and the divine figures or symbols of Minerva, Telesphore, and Priapus, representative of the past. Yet the mystery of who created the carvings remains to this day. Additionally, the original location of the carvings also remains a mystery. The fact that the boulder has landed where it now lay due to geological activities means it could have originated in a location far away from where it now lay. Was it made by a now-lost civilization? Or possibly one that academia continues to claim was not able to travel such vast distances? The mystery surrounding the Dytan Rock continues, and it is undoubtedly one that is highly compelling.