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The Peralta Stones are a set of engraved stones. Some people believe they indicate the location of the famed Lost Dutchman's Gold Mine,in Arizona, United States. The Dutchman was a German immigrant named Jacob Waltz. The stones are named for the Peralta family, said to be an old and powerful Mexican family. Peralta is a common Hispanic surname. Some people named Peralta owned a cattle ranch that included what is now Oakland, California at the time of the Mexican–American War. Pedro de Peralta was the governor of the Spanish territory in New Mexico, and picked the site for Santa Fe. James Reavis popularized the idea of a rich Peralta family in Arizona in 1882, when he tried to assert the phony Peralta Spanish land grant, which included a huge swath of Arizona and New Mexico, including the Superstition Mountains; Reavis' forged Peralta genealogy was exposed, and he served a prison sentence for fraud. According to current legend, but not supported by the historical record, some Peraltas mined in the Superstition Mountains. The first written reference to a “Peralta mine” in the Superstitions was in 1895, by writer Pierpont C. Bicknell.〔 ==Description== The stones consist of "two red sandstone tablets and a heart-shaped rock made of red quartzite. Each block is approximately 8.25” (~ 21 cm) by 14” (~35.6 cm) and 2” thick, weighing about 25 lbs. Each red stone block is carved with lines and one long line. When the two blocks are placed side by side and the stone heart is inserted the long line has 18 dots pecked into it. This style of map is known as a Post Road Map and it is a style used in Mexico and Spain during the Mexican–American War. Inscribed on the stones is the date 1847, and one stone contains a relief of a heart, which the heart-shaped stone fits perfectly. The heart shape fits neatly in the second stone. The back of the stone that the heart-shaped stone fits into has the outline of a cross carved on the back. The back of the other stone has the word DON carved into it. There is confusion about the discovery of the Peralta Stones. Some say they were found by a man named "Jack" in 1956 (one source says 1952, another 1949〔) near the main highway that goes from Apache Junction, Arizona,. in the vicinity of Black Point (33°16'19.86"N by 111°19'38.36"W). Another item found at this site is known as the Latin Heart. The two red sandstone map pieces are displayed with a third white sandstone of similar size and weight as the red ones. The history of the white stone was cited by an author using the moniker ‘Azmula’. Azmula cites the history in the Superstition Mountain Journal, issue 27 of 2009. He attributes the original citation to M. Kraig Roberts. Mr. Roberts’s article is titled “History of the Chain Of Possession Of The Stone Maps”. The Journal article is a history of the white stone. The white sandstone has a side showing a Priest who is assembling the Peralta Stones to form the map. The reverse side is known as the Horse Map. The Priests Stone contains Spanish text that states that to find the gold you must find the heart. The lower half of the number 8 in the red sandstone map has a small heart carved in the circle. The story of the Peralta Stones' discovery and the stones themselves are not very convincing to most researchers. The engravings appear to have been created using modern power tools, with modern symbols, and modern Spanish. Father Charles Polzer, an ethnohistorian associated with the Arizona State Museum, is convinced the stones are fakes. Among other reasons, he says that the modern valentine-shaped symbol used to denote a heart was a symbol unknown to 19th-century Spaniards. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Peralta Stones」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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