Rota Latte Stone Quarry, also known as the As Nieves quarry, is located near the Chamorro village of Sinapalo, on the island of Rota in the Marianas Archipelago. The prehistoric megaliths found there are believed to have been used as foundation pillars for houses, with some of them weighing up to 35 tons. Their exact age, origin, methods of quarrying and means of transportation have not been determined.

Latte stones

latte stone A latte stone, or simply latte (also latde, latti, or latdi), is a Column, pillar () capped by a Sphere, hemispherical stone capital (architecture), capital () with the flat side facing up. Used as building supports by the ancient Chamorro peopl ...

pillar (also called a taga stone) is a two-piece structure consisting of a base (haligi) and hemispherical cap (tasa), with the flat side turned upwards. It is believed that the prehistoric latte stone pillars were used as housing foundations for the indigenous culture of the Marianas. The homes sat on top of two parallel rows of the pillars, and the Chamorro, or their ancestors, buried their dead between the rows. The stones pre-date any retained oral history of the Chamorro, who cite the original source of the stones as the "taotaomona" (before time people). The exact age of the stones has not been determined, but some are believed to date back to at least 845 AD. Carbon dating places the indigenous population as far back as 3,000 BC.

The quarry

The Rota quarry is the site of the largest unearthed latte stones in the Marianas. Nine haligi and seven tasa have been found there. Some of the abandoned

megalith A megalith is a large stone that has been used to construct a prehistoric structure or monument, either alone or together with other stones. More than 35,000 megalithic structures have been identified across Europe, ranging geographically f ...

s would stand approximately high if the haligi had been topped with tasa and erected upright. The tasa at the quarry measure approximately across and high. The stones are unfinished, and there is no record or indication of why the site was suddenly abandoned.

Theories

Theories have been put forward regarding the methods of quarrying, transporting and erecting the latte stones, but nothing has been scientifically proven. When upright, the megaliths from Rota Latte Stone Quarry would be per 0.5 m taller than the tallest existing latte stones at the House of Taga in

Tinian Tinian () is one of the three principal islands of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI). Together with uninhabited neighboring Aguiguan, it forms Tinian Municipality, one of the four constituent municipalities of the Northern ...

Island. This might be indicative of competition between different groups, striving to build the most impressive sets of latte stones. Legend credits the origin of the quarry to a

mythological Myth is a genre of folklore consisting primarily of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society. For scholars, this is very different from the vernacular usage of the term "myth" that refers to a belief that is not true. Instead, the ...

chief named Taga, who quarried the stones at Rota before abandoning the site and later erecting the House of Taga on

. A different legend tells of ghosts carrying the stones.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rota Latte Stone Quarry Quarries in the United States Culture of the Mariana Islands Megalithic monuments Rota, Northern Mariana Islands National Register of Historic Places in the Northern Mariana Islands Archaeological sites in the Northern Mariana Islands National Historic Landmarks in the Northern Mariana Islands