Moqui Marbles

My mom works at the Provo School district and a lot of discounted books are sent directly to the district by publishers with the hopes that Provo will buy their books for school libraries. Most of these books are rejected and then sold to Provo School District employees for 1 to 10 dollars.

The other day, my Mom brought home a book called "Fossil Legends of the First Americans" by Adrienne Mayor. Mayor is a folklorist who deals mainly with Native American stories and how they deal with fossils. Kind of a limited niche. You may recognize Mayor's name-she was quoted in the December issue of National Geographic.

I was reading her book two nights ago and found the following passage. Those of you who did your field school in Escalante will appreciate this, especially those who were there for Carl Shurtz and his paint bucket full of Moqui Marbles.

"...moqui marbles are unique rock spheres found at the base of Navajo Sandstone Formations in Arizona and Utah, encasing pink sand from the Creataceous inland sea. These were long thought by scientists to be mere iron concretions, but recent studeies have revealed their true origin: mollusks trapped in a great flood of sand about 130 million years agao. As the mollusks decomposed, their internal juices were drawn out, leaving hollow centers, and as water filtered through the outer shell over the ages, fine sand filled the centers and iron deposits formed around the outer shell, along with phosphorus and lime from the mollusks' shells.

The Hopi word moqui means "dearly departed ones," and according to legend, Hopi ancesotors descend from heaven in the evening, brining the marbles to play games. At dawn, the ancestors retrn to heaven, leaving the marbles behind to reassure their relatives that they are happy. Hopi people gather the moqui marbles and keep them in their homes to welcome the spirits of the departed relatives" (Mayor 2005:156-157).

Interesting eh? Mayor does not cite any paleontologists (or any other source for that matter) so the veracity of her explantation of moqui "mollusks" is debatable. Regardless, the explanation of the Hopi curation of moqui marbles is intriguing.