Close to our home town, about 10 km out, up a hill and into a forest, knowing where to go, one will find a natural stone table.
It’s easy to believe that this was a druid sacred place, according to one of the legends. It’s very peaceful, special place, close, yet remote.
The formation is a large natural stone slab or »table« lying on a narrow stone pillar. The stone slab is naturally centered and in contact with the pillar almost at only one point. The table can be called a »geological book«, it records many events in the form of geological records, from the formation of the rocks that build the table to the gradual formation of today’s form.
The table is, from a human perspective, quite large. Its measurements are: just under 5 m long and 4 m wide, the pillar measures something less than 3 m in diameter.
The formation lies on uneven terrain, so the hight differs on different sides, on one side it’s about 3 m tall, on the other side, with lower terrain, the formation is close to 4 m tall.
Geological history
The stone table and its surroundings are built by layered limestone, marl and dolomite from trias era. Due to the limestone, there are karst elements in the area distributed across the break zones. Triassic and postmiocene tectonic events were involved in the formation of the table.
Interestingly, the table was made at the time of the formation of the rock, which builds the table and the surrounding area itself. It began at the geological age of anisies 240 million years ago. It was also deposited as limestone mud in the tidal coastal zone. Limestone mud deposition was disturbed in the form of storms, adding varying amounts of clay material from the land. Clay sediment covered limestone mud in layers of various thicknesses and due to different chemical properties in the process of rock formation, limestone and clay did not combine and two separate rocks were formed.
In the stone wall some meters away from the stone table is the same structure – limestone with interruptions of clay. It is exactly this interruption that divides the formation into a »pillar« and a »table«.
The next emerging phase was tectonic shifts in north-south and east-west directions. Even further formation is related to tectonic shifts that occurred during the the most recent geological period and is still ongoing – these are longitudinal fractures in the northwest-southeast and northeast-southwest directions. Atmospheric influences followed, which with dissolving and erosion, widened the fractures, created a groove and formed a table block.
The sole structure is a consequence of numeral geological coincidence that took place over 240 million years.
An unusual phenomenon indeed.
The place is peaceful and energetically strong, maybe because of the remoteness and, consequently, peacefulness.
Reference: Čar, Jože: Tomaževa miza. Proteus, 2015, no. 7 (mar.), 290, 294–301.