Copyright 2026, all rights reserved,

Cryptic Formations.

Cryptic Formations is about the discovery of hidden red-rock images and an investigation into unusual visual patterns found within the red-rock geological formations of Sedona, Arizona. Many of the formations examined occur within sedimentary rocks whose host sediments were deposited approximately 280 million years ago, during the Permian Period. Through field photography, digital image processing, geological context, comparative imagery, and visual analysis, author Lance Kaufman examines whether recurring recognizable structures within these formations can be explained entirely by geology and human pattern recognition or whether they may represent a more complex phenomenon.

At the center of the investigation are three principal cryptic formations—Nefertiti, Blessing, and Temple. Kaufman interprets these formations as containing human-like figures and organized scenes involving family, children, ceremony, protection, reading, communication, and transition. Additional formations expand the apparent pattern to include education, writing, animals, conflict, suffering, death, burial, messengers, medical or ceremonial activity, and other characteristics associated with intelligent social existence.

The book uses the term cryptic formations for these recognizable visual structures while distinguishing the age of the host geology from the age or origin of individual visible features. The photographs are not presented as proof of a 280-million-year-old civilization. Instead, they provide the observational basis for asking whether related forms, relationships, and themes recur across geographically separate formations with greater consistency than would be expected from geology, photographic conditions, image processing, cultural expectation, coincidence, and human pattern recognition.

To examine this possibility, Kaufman develops the Formation Entanglement Hypothesis. The hypothesis considers structural relationships involving apparent figures and objects, relational patterns involving their positions and apparent activities, and cross-formation relationships in which similar concepts recur at different locations. Within this framework, recurrence is potentially more significant than any individual resemblance. If such recurrence can be independently demonstrated, a further question arises: could the complete pattern constitute information capable of persisting across deep time?

Ancient Egyptian imagery provides an important comparative framework throughout the investigation. Apparent similarities involving Nefertiti, royal figures, ceremonial scenes, animals, mummification, temples, and other symbols are examined alongside much later Egyptian representations. These comparisons are not presented as proof of a historical connection. Rather, they raise a central deep-time question: why can structures within ancient geological formations appear to correspond with recognizable forms and symbolic relationships that became culturally significant millions of years later?

The investigation also connects directly with the Fermi Paradox: if intelligent civilizations could have arisen elsewhere in a vast and ancient Universe, why have we found no confirmed evidence of them? Cryptic Formations considers whether part of the problem may be where we look for evidence and what we expect that evidence to look like. Searches for extraterrestrial intelligence commonly envision spacecraft, technological artifacts, engineered structures, or electromagnetic communications. The cryptaglyph hypothesis raises a different possibility: could information associated with an unknown intelligence become preserved within natural structures, including geological formations, in ways that we have not yet learned to recognize?

In this sense, the cryptic formations are explored as a possible answer to one aspect of the Fermi Paradox. The absence of recognized evidence would not necessarily mean that no evidence exists; it could also mean that the evidence does not resemble the technologies or messages we expect to find. This possibility remains speculative and requires independent testing, but it expands the search from conventional technological signatures to the possibility of persistent informational patterns embedded within nature itself.

From this foundation, the book explores increasingly speculative possibilities involving information, intelligence, consciousness, magnetic phenomena, biological processes, broadcasting, intuition, networks, and the persistence of information through deep time. These ideas are presented as hypotheses and philosophical extensions rather than established mechanisms.

Ultimately, Cryptic Formations does not claim to have solved the Fermi Paradox or established the existence of an ancient intelligence. It presents photographs, recurring correspondences, and hypotheses that invite further examination. If the cryptic formations result entirely from geology and human perception, they demonstrate the extraordinary capacity of natural structures and the human mind to generate complex meaning. If independent investigation establishes recurring organization beyond those explanations, a much more profound possibility emerges.

What Would This Mean for Humanity?

If future investigation demonstrated that the cryptic formations contain organized information that cannot be adequately explained by geology, coincidence, image processing, or human pattern recognition alone, the implications for humanity would be profound. It would suggest that intelligence, communication, or information may operate across spans of time—and perhaps space—far greater than those encompassed by recorded human history.

Such a discovery would require humanity to reconsider where evidence of intelligence might exist and what form that evidence might take. The search for other civilizations could expand beyond radio signals, spacecraft, and technological artifacts to include persistent informational patterns preserved within natural structures. In that sense, the cryptic formations could offer a new perspective on the Fermi Paradox: evidence of other intelligence might not necessarily be absent; we may simply have been searching for forms of evidence we already understand.

The implications would extend beyond the question of extraterrestrial life. If information can persist within nature across deep time, humanity may be participating in a much larger process involving the creation, preservation, transmission, and rediscovery of knowledge. Human intelligence would then represent not merely an isolated achievement of our species, but potentially one stage within a far older and more extensive informational continuum.

Most importantly, such a finding would change humanity's perception of its place in the Universe. It would suggest that the geological record may contain more than the physical history of Earth—it might also preserve clues concerning intelligence, consciousness, and the evolution of knowledge.

The question would no longer be simply whether humanity is alone, but whether we are part of a much larger history of intelligence that we are only beginning to recognize.