To elaborate and share some of my shame, here is a 10+ year old picture of some fascinating triangular "stones" found in different locations (silver crown is dollar sized). The first (top) was found along the Illinois river by my father when we were looking for artifacts. Another found in an old box of artifacts and fossils from an auction, and the last I found in fresh washed gravel used in a parking lot (I was looking for fossils). It took nearly a decade to obtain all 3 so I figured we were just very lucky.
I'll bet ya 10 bucks that you'd find such items to be exceptionally intriguing as well, and argue ad-nauseam about the significance I once imagined they possessed.
To deepen the intrigue, I saw the same sort of faceted triangular objects of the same size presented in the "Central States Archaeological Journal" in the January (or thereabouts) 1997 issue, postulated as game-pieces or some other more ritually significant objects, so in college I picked the brains of all my archaeology professors and studied Native American symbolism, determining that they may have represented a stylized coiled snake (based on similar tri-lobed designs on ceramics etc.) and may have been somehow significant to their conception of the spiritual bridge between the underworld and mortal world (which snakes represented).
Well, it took a long while but I finally got in contact with the author of the article in the journal, and he informed me that he too was mistaken and had learned that the stones weren't special Native American talismans or game pieces, but instead relatively modern ceramic tumbling media used to remove burrs and roughness off of metal castings!
What a letdown...
Unfortunately no one at the University of Illinois had any idea about them and the archaeology professors encouraged my investigation; lending books etc. It taught me that despite their "expertise" even they don't know everything, and that it is better to be suspicious rather than overly credulous regarding anything of the sort. I've learned volumes since then but still learn more every day, and while I naturally prefer to defer to my own personal judgement it is a fact that there are many people out there who know far more about a particular subject than you or I or someone else knows, and thus they are to be heeded and respected even if not 100.00% correct at every moment in their life.
