The rumor is that the were put up by Ted Turner the lunatic and genius who started CNN, and who won World Cup yachting races. You know, Jane Fonda's former husband. We can only guess why he put them up. He may have believed in the necessity for world population reduction in order to save the Earth, and wanted his beliefs set in stone. The guidestones were really just a modern art piece, and not a very good one. A cheap knock-off of Stonehenge covered with banal treacle.