Asia China The oldest known boundary stone in China is from Jiangsu Province. Dating from 12 A.D., it bears the inscription "the sea area from Jiaozhou Bay to the east of Guixan county belongs to Langya Shire and the waters from the south of Guixan county to the east of the estuary of Guanhe River belongs to Donghai Shire". More recently, the border between Russia and China was formally demarcated with boundary stones as the result of the Treaty of Kiakhta in 1727. In the nineteenth century, stones were used to outline the limits of the International Settlement in Shanghai.
Thailand In ancient Thailand, sacred boundary stones called
Sema Hin delimited Buddhist temple precincts. In some cases they feature inscriptions recounting the history of the temple; others were carved with wheels of the law, while some specimens consist of unfinished stone. In addition to temples,
sema could enclose statues of Buddha or sacred mounds. The Hebrew Bible contains a strict prohibition against the unauthorized displacement or removal of boundary markers.
Egypt An example of boundary markers in ancient Egypt were the boundary stelae of Akhenaten. They defined the limits of the sacred city of Akhet-Aten, built by Akhenaten as the center of the Aten religious cult which he founded. Egyptologists categorize the stelae based on whether they are inscribed with the "Earlier Proclamation", a general explanation of why the location was selected and how the city would be designed, or the "Later Proclamation", which provides additional details about the perimeters of the city.
Europe , 1941
Finland Glacial erratics and similar natural stones were often used as boundary markers between properties. Knowledge of their locations was typically maintained by oral tradition, wherein men of each house would walk the length of the border. These stones then became boundary markers for
municipalities, and eventually provinces and countries. For example, Kuhankuono is a stone that marks the
multipoint border between seven municipalities in
Kurjenrahka National Park near
Turku. Today, however, steel rods topped with a cube painted orange are usually used. Municipalities often post a traffic sign featuring their coat of arms on the border on major roads. On the
Finnish-Russian border, many historical border stones, marked with Swedish and Imperial Russian symbols, are still in use. The actual Finnish-Russian border is marked by small white bollard, but on both sides of the border there are large striped bollards decorated with a coat of arms: a blue/white bollard on the Finnish side, a red/green bollard on the Russian side. Artificial cairns are found on the Norway-Russia-Finland tripoint (
Treriksrøysa) and Norway-Sweden-Finland tripoint (
Three-Country Cairn). The Sweden-Finland border on
Märket is marked with holes drilled to the rock, because seasonal
pack ice can shear off any protruding markers. In folklore, a type of
haltija,
rajahaltija, a kind of a local spirit, was believed to haunt borders that had been unjustly moved.
Germany The
Dreieckiger Pfahl is a granite pillar that once marked the border between the
Kingdom of Hanover and the
Duchy of Brunswick. The
Wolfsangel in its horizontal form was used as a boundary marker in forests, and has been recorded as early as 1616 in a boundary treaty concluded between
Hesse and the
Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg Greece The earliest reference to a boundary stone in Greek literature is in the
Iliad, which describes the goddess Athena using one as a projectile. Boundary stones, known as
horos, could be made of either carved or undressed stones, and were typically inscribed with the Greek word
horos. One such stone was used to indicate the edge of the Athenian
agora.
Rome of the
Roman Empire In ancient Roman religion, the god
Terminus was worshiped as the patron god of boundary markers. Ovid, in a hymn directed to the god, wrote: "O Terminus, whether thou art a stone or a stump buried in the field, … thou dost set bounds to people and cities and vast kingdoms". Numa Pompillius made the first Roman law requiring boundary stones around private property and instituting capital punishment for anyone found guilty of moving these stones. Prior to 1848, the Principality of Monaco included the villages of Roquebrune, Monti, Garavan and Menton. Of the original 91 boundary stones only 12 remain: 6 within the
Principality of Monaco, 3 in
Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, and 3 in
Menton. The boundary stones numbered 9, 12, 15, and 31 are located in
Monaco. Another stone has been cast in concrete in the Sainte-Cécile area of
Monaco thus rendering its number illegible. Stone number 55, originally located in
Roquebrune, was given as a gift from the city of
Roquebrune to the
Principality of Monaco and is now located in
Monaco's city hall. Stones numbered 56, 57, and 58 are located in
Roquebrune. Stones numbered 62, 71, and 73 are located in
Menton. All the boundary stones have three engraved sides: one side with their individual numbers (1 to 91), one side with the letter "M" indicating
Monaco's territory, and one side with a cross (+) indicating the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia's territory. The cross represents the coat of arms of the
House of Savoy, rulers of Piedmont-Sardinia.
Western Australia The history of
marking the Western Australian border on the ground states that the "Austral Pillar" and the "Deakin Pillar" are points used to determine their position east of
Greenwich and then fix a border from, in this case used to determine the line of the
129th meridian east longitude, as the
Western Australian border. The places where a road crossed the border of an ''ahupua'a
were marked with distinctive altars, known as ahu
or (stone) piles. These altars served not only as boundary markers but also as sites for the performance of religious rituals related to land taxation. C. J. Lyons, an early surveyor of Hawaii, recorded that "[u]pon this altar at the annual progress of the akua makahiki (year god) was deposited the tax paid by the land whose boundary it marked, and also an image of a hog, puaa
, carved out of kukui wood and stained with red ochre. … [F]rom this came the name, ahupuaa''“. Naturally occurring landscape features were also used as points of reference for district borders.
Washington, D.C. The original boundaries of the District of Columbia were marked using boundary stones. These were made of saw-cut sandstone blocks and stood two feet high when set in the ground. Ten boundary stones were placed along each side of the district of Columbia. Although the original surveyors intended each side to be long, their measurements were often inaccurate, resulting in the sometimes significant misplacement of stones and the overall skewing of the District boundaries. Some of these discrepancies are intentional, because the ground at the exact mile point was covered in water; "in such cases", Andrew Ellicott, the leader of the surveying crew, noted in 1793, "the stones are placed on the nearest firm ground and the true distance in miles and poles is marked on them". Information engraved on the stones includes the number (1 through 10) of the stone within the sequence on that side of the District, the date of placement, and the words "Jurisdiction of the United States". In the twentieth century, the Daughters of the American Revolution voluntarily took responsibility for preserving the stones, which had fallen victim to vandalization and urban development.
Other states In 1773, a Franciscan friar named Francisco Palou erected the
first boundary marker between
Alta and
Baja California. Commissioned by the
Spanish Crown, it consisted of a cross made from alder wood and placed standing upright on a rock. In the British colonies, milestones were shipped from England to mark the
Mason–Dixon line. A block cut from sandstone was placed at the intersection of Wyoming, Colorado and Utah in 1879, and stone posts were used along the western border of South Dakota. Boundaries were occasionally resurveyed and boundary stones replaced or restored, depending on their condition. ==Gallery==