Perfectly round stone spheres of various sizes were discovered on the territory of the small Latin American state of Costa Rica almost a hundred years ago, and all this time the mystery of their origin and purpose has been exciting the minds of researchers.
Scientists have not come to a single version, discussing both the natural processes that could have resulted in the formation of the balls, and some highly developed civilization capable of technologically processing the stone. True, what these round stones were used for in this case is also unclear.
How the stone balls were found
Workers came across a mysterious discovery while clearing the jungle for banana plantations in 1930. More than three hundred stones shared an obvious similarity - a perfect round shape and a smooth surface. The size of the spheres varies - from a few centimeters to a couple of meters in diameter, respectively, and the weight of the largest is quite impressive - about 20 tons. When flying over the area on an airplane, it turned out that most of the stones were located in a strict order, forming clear geometric shapes.
The workers, assuming that there might be a gold treasure hidden inside, immediately began sawing up the finds until the company management stopped the vandalism. However, several years later, less than a dozen balls remained in place - the rest were taken to museums, public buildings and for souvenirs. Today, stone balls decorate courtyards, archaeological collections, parks and squares.
In total, more than 300 round boulders were discovered in Costa Rica, but this number is inaccurate, since many of them were taken to various institutes, museums and schools.
Traces of processing or where they came from
The discussion of the origin of round boulders was immediately divided into two directions: natural or human. The second version is confirmed by obvious traces of grinding and polishing on the spheres, as well as their organized arrangement.
In the 60s, it was discovered that the stone spheres of Costa Rica were not unique: similar finds were made not only on the American continent (Mexico, USA), but also in New Zealand, Egypt, Germany and even in the Arctic. But, for example, in Mexico, similar spheres were found not on the ground, but under it - in silver mines. Others have not been processed and are “rounded” by nature.
The natural theory, supported by many scientists, is based on volcanic processes. As a result of uniform crystallization of magma, in principle, the formation of round forms is possible, and their subsequent rise to the surface is not excluded in areas subject to severe weathering. Where such processes are not observed, the spheres remain underground.
A prerequisite is significant temperature changes, and traces of them were found on the surfaces of the balls. But the catch is that the temperature effect could just be artificial - for mechanical processing. This again suggests human intervention, especially since the natural version does not explain why the balls were arranged in strict geometry and how they moved.
Remains of an ancient civilization?
As archaeologists suggest, the boulders were brought to a perfect round shape by mechanical finishing. To make working with the stone easier, it was repeatedly heated and cooled, the excess was peeled off, and then trimmed with a hard tool. The finished sphere was placed on a base and ground/polished with abrasive and probably leather.
However, many questions remain unanswered. What tools did the supposed craftsmen use? How were huge stones moved across terrain, sometimes tens of kilometers through jungles and swamps? Why and on what basis were they placed in groups?
Perhaps the riddle would have been easier to solve if the balls had remained in their original places. But by the beginning of the research, they had all been moved, information about the exact points of their location is unreliable, and the time of their appearance has not been established.
Suggestions that the groups of stones were prototypes of astronomical observatories or religious buildings are discussed, but suffer from a lack of factual evidence. From the same area are the ideas that these are the cores of ancient military weapons, landmarks for starships, or even just architectural decoration.
Thus, the American researcher I. Zapp linked the location of one of the groups of balls with Stonehenge and Easter Island, arguing that it was a kind of geographical indicator. And adherents of alien theories, of course, see traces of high-tech guests who set up spaceports for themselves here. But none of the official and semi-official versions is recognized as final and confirmed, so the stone balls of Costa Rica continue to excite the minds and imagination of millions of people.
30 June 2012, 17:45
In the small Central American republic of Costa Rica in the late 40s of our century, an interesting discovery was made. Workers who were cutting down dense thickets of tropical jungle for banana plantations suddenly came across some strange stone sculptures of the correct spherical shape. 
The largest of them reached a diameter of three meters and weighed almost 16 tons. And the smallest ones did not exceed the size of a handball ball, having a diameter of only about 10 centimeters. It should be noted that with a large diameter the deviations are only +8 millimeters. The balls were usually distributed in groups of three to forty-five. 
But the most amazing thing happened next. Costa Rican scientists, interested in the stone balls, decided to look at the discovery site from above, from a helicopter. The helicopter rose above the jungle - and suddenly a page from a geometry textbook, stretching for tens of kilometers, seemed to float underneath it. The strings of balls formed into giant triangles, squares, circles... They lined up in straight lines, precisely oriented along the north-south axis... The thought immediately comes to mind that these balls were made and laid by very skillful people. But when and for what purpose were they erected? What tools did the ancient craftsmen use to give the stone the correct spherical shape? With the help of what devices did the giants “roll” the balls from place to place, making precise geometric shapes from them? Of course, it remains a mystery how these multi-ton huge balls were delivered through the jungle and swamps from quarries located several tens of kilometers away from the place of discovery. Unfortunately, most of these questions have not been answered satisfactorily. Immediately after the discovery of the balls, archaeologists began intensive excavations. Suddenly, an incredible fact arose before them: apart from stone spheres, in this area there was not a single object indicating the presence of a person ever here. No tools for working stone, no shards, no bones were found. Nothing! .jpg)
When a void appears in knowledge, a mass of hypotheses immediately appears that seek to fill it. Let's look at some of them. Hypothesis 1. The balls are arranged like a model of a certain constellation. It is possible that these bizarre stone mosaics of balls were intended for astronomical observations related to calendar calculations and determining the timing of agricultural work. In this case, it is quite appropriate to assume that somewhere nearby there existed a highly developed civilization - the predecessor of all the ancient civilizations of Central America. Hypothesis 2. The ancient inhabitants of Costa Rica were surprisingly warlike, possessing powerful technical military means. For example, they could have throwing weapons of exceptional power. Stone balls are just "projectiles" scattered on the battlefield. Maybe it wasn’t even a battle, but military exercises (maneuvers) were taking place here; a huge field is a kind of training ground for throwing weapons. Hypothesis 3. Proponents of this hypothesis, which was one of the most widespread, argued that guests from other cosmic worlds chose this particular place for their permanent cosmodrome. In this regard, the huge spheres that captured the imagination of earthlings are located in the form of boundary lines because they performed a function similar to the current landing strips of airfields. In 1967, an engineer who worked in the silver mines of Western Mexico and was fond of history and archeology, told American scientists that in the mines he had discovered the same balls as in Costa Rica, but much larger in size. Then on the Acqua Blanca plateau, located at an altitude of two thousand meters above sea level near the village of Guadalajara, an archaeological expedition discovered hundreds of balls that were an exact copy of the Costa Rican ones. Now there was almost no doubt: traces of some unusual and incomprehensible civilization had been found. One of the balls was discovered near a smooth stone platform. And immediately an assumption: perhaps it served as an altar? Again labor-intensive excavations. Thousands of tons of soil are transferred - and again nothing! No traces of material culture. The mystery became even murkier. Unlike modern scientists, the ancients understood everything: what the balls were and how they appeared... The gods of the ancient Mexicans, for example, loved playing ball. But if people played with an elastic rubber ball, then the gods tossed stone balls. In those places where the gods competed, scatterings of stone balls of various sizes remained - from a few centimeters to three meters in diameter. .. With the light hand of Erich von Däniken, the balls were dubbed “the balls that the gods played with.” 
However, geologists, geophysicists and geochemists have a completely different point of view on the origin of these stone spheres and believe that obsidian balls are of a natural nature. Apparently, 25-40 million years ago, several dozen volcanoes suddenly awoke in Central America. Their eruptions caused catastrophic earthquakes. Lava and hot ash covered vast areas. In some places, glassy particles ejected from the volcanoes began to cool. They were the embryos of giant spheres. Around these nucleoli, surrounding particles of eruption products gradually began to crystallize. Moreover, crystallization proceeded evenly in all directions, so that a ball with an ideal shape gradually formed. Geologists and petrographers believe that the “creators” of the balls are the natural influences of factors such as water, wind and rain, which washed away the ash and soil day after day. Thanks to this, over time, the “whitened” stone balls ended up on the surface. Scientists managed to find similar stone balls in completely different places on our planet - in the Kashkadarya region of Kazakhstan, Egypt, Romania, Germany, Brazil and even on Franz Josef Land. Archipelago Franz Josef Land. Champa Island is dotted with many strange round stones. The perfectly round balls, from a centimeter to several meters in diameter, lie here as if in the courtyard of a sculpture workshop - hewn by the hand of a skilled sculptor for some unknown purpose. 
Mysterious stone ball on Mount Vottovaara in Karelia. 
There were reports that sailors of the Murmansk Shipping Company found similar balls on the coast of the Arctic Ocean. And here is a picture of balloons on the coast of one of the islands of New Zealand: 
Strange stone ball near Hoverla, Carpathians (Ukraine) 
It would seem that the mystery of the origin of the stone balls has ceased to exist, but not everything is as simple as it seems at first glance... No matter how convincing these assumptions may sound, there is still no final solution to the phenomenon. First of all, they are not able to explain the appearance of granite balls, but only explain the appearance of obsidian ones. In addition, the ancient volcanoes could not correctly arrange in the form of figures many balls, which also had traces of grinding! And although a significant part of such balls indeed seem to be of purely natural origin, some specimens, for example the Costa Rican balls, do not fit into the framework of this theory, since they show obvious traces of leveling and polishing. 
And yet, how and how the ancient craftsmen managed to give such a perfect spherical shape to the hardest granite remains a mystery, the same as the mystery of the formation of mysterious geometric figures and lines oriented to the cardinal points... The time of making the balls also remains unknown. Since there are currently no reliable methods for dating stone products, archaeologists are forced to rely only on stratigraphic studies and determine the date of manufacture of the balls from cultural remains found in the same deposits. Such remains found during excavations are now dated by archaeologists in the range from 200 BC. to even 1500 AD. But even such a wide range cannot be considered final. The fact is that stratigraphic analysis always leaves a lot of doubt about the dating of such artifacts. If only because if the balls are now moving from place to place, then nothing can exclude the possibility of such a movement of the balls at the very time that stratigraphy gives. Consequently, the balls may well turn out to be much more ancient. Up to hundreds of thousands and millions of years (there are such hypotheses). In particular, the version expressed by George Erickson and other researchers that the balls are more than 12 thousand years old is absolutely not excluded. With all the skepticism of archaeologists regarding such a date, it is by no means without foundation. In particular, John Hopes mentions the balls in Isla del Caco, which are underwater off the coast. If these balls were not moved there at a later time and were there initially, then they could have been placed there only when the sea level was significantly lower than the modern one. And this gives them an age of at least 10 thousand years... 
In the 40s of the twentieth century, an interesting discovery was made in the tropical thickets of Costa Rica. Workers who were cutting down dense thickets of tropical jungle for banana plantations suddenly came across giant stone sculptures of the correct spherical shape. The largest reached three meters in diameter and weighed about 16 tons. And the smallest ones were no larger than a child’s ball, having only ten centimeters in diameter. The balls were located singly and in groups of three to fifty pieces, sometimes forming geometric shapes.
In 1967, an engineer and lover of history and archeology, who worked in silver mines in Mexico, told American scientists that he had discovered the same balls in the mines, but much larger in size. Some time later, near the village of Guadalajara, an archaeological expedition found hundreds more stone balls.
Similar stone balls were also found in Mexico, Costa Rica, the USA, on the coast of New Zealand, Egypt, Romania, Germany, Brazil, and the Kashkadarya region. Kazakhstan and Franz Josef Land.
Some geologists attributed their appearance to volcanic activity. A ball of ideal shape can be formed if the crystallization of volcanic magma occurs evenly in all directions. According to Elena Matveeva, a leading researcher at the Central Research Institute of Geology of Rare Earth and Non-Ferrous Metals, the balls could come to the surface as a result of the so-called exofolization - weathering, which operates in areas with large daily differences. Where the temperature is more stable, similar balls are found, but underground.
However, no matter how convincing these assumptions may sound, there is still no final solution to the phenomenon. First of all, they are not able to explain the appearance of granite balls. In addition, the ancient volcanoes could not correctly arrange in the form of figures many balls, which also had traces of grinding! And although a significant part of such balls indeed seem to be of purely natural origin, some specimens, for example the Costa Rican balls, do not fit into the framework of this theory, since they show obvious traces of leveling and polishing. 
Unlike geologists, archaeologists recognize the artificial origin of the Costa Rican balls.
Almost all the balls are made of hard lava rock, the outcrops of which are located in the foothills of the outskirts of Talamanca. There are a few examples made from a hard material like limestone, which forms from shells and sand in coastal sediments.
According to archaeologists, the balls were made by processing round boulders into a spherical shape in several stages. In the first stage, the boulders were subjected to alternately intense heating and cooling, causing the top of the boulders to peel off like the leaves of an onion. Granodiorite has been found to still retain traces of extreme temperature changes. When they approached the shape of a sphere, they were further processed with stone tools made of a material of the same hardness. At the final stage, the balls were placed on the base and polished to a shine.
Today, a significant part of the balls are used as lawn decorations. It is quite possible that at least some of the balls were also once used for similar purposes.
The time of production of the balls remains unknown.
Since there are currently no reliable methods for dating stone products, archaeologists are forced to rely only on stratigraphic studies and determine the date of manufacture of the balls from cultural remains found in the same deposits. Such remains found during excavations are now dated by archaeologists in the range from 200 BC. to even 1500 AD. But even such a wide range cannot be considered final. Stratigraphic analysis always leaves a lot of doubt about the dating of such artifacts. If only because if the balls are now moving from place to place, then nothing can exclude the possibility of such a movement of the balls at the very time that stratigraphy gives. Consequently, the balls may well turn out to be much more ancient.
In particular, the version that the balls are more than 12 thousand years old cannot be ruled out. With all the skepticism of archaeologists regarding such a date, it is by no means without foundation. In particular, John Hopes mentions the balls in Isla del Caco, which are underwater off the coast. If these balls were not moved there at a later time and were there initially, then they could have been placed there only when the sea level was significantly lower than the modern one. And this gives them an age of at least 10 thousand years...
The method of transporting balls or blanks for them also remains a mystery - from their locations to the places of supposed origin of the material for their manufacture, tens of kilometers, a significant part of which is in swamps and dense thickets of tropical forest...
The archaeologist Doris Z. Stone ended his very first report on the study of the spheres of Costa Rica with the words: “We must classify the perfect spheres of Costa Rica as incomprehensible megalithic mysteries,” and on this it is impossible to disagree with him... 
Stone balls are actually found not only in Costa Rica. There were reports that sailors of the Murmansk Shipping Company found similar balls on the coast of the Arctic Ocean. And this is a photo of balloons on the coast of one of the islands of New Zealand. 
Stone balls of Costa Rica
Another megalithic mystery, which, among similar ones, again turned out to be completely insoluble for modern adherents of academic science, was the mystery of the stone balls of Costa Rica. And in front of me - there were so many of them: ancient flying machines, and the pyramids of Egypt, and Stonehenge, and Karnak, and Mitla, and the labyrinths of the North - you can’t list everything, again and again the eternal question arises - will I be able to cope with this task? , will I solve this ancient crossword puzzle? And as it happened with others: at first, it was as if everything was in darkness, and then more and more, first small, and then larger details of clarity appeared... And then, you see, this is the result!
But, everything is in order.
At the end of the 30s of the last century, a report appeared in one of the local newspapers about an unexpected discovery in the jungles of Costa Rica, this small Central American republic. It turns out that while cutting a clearing, workers at a fruit company came across a scattering of stone balls that had come out of nowhere. Among them were huge ones, reaching 3 m in diameter and almost 16 tons in weight, and there were also very small ones, no more than 10 cm in diameter. There was also a curiosity: the workers who discovered these objects remembered a local legend about the spheres covering the golden cores, and tried to split them with dynamite, hoping to find, like Balaganov and Panikovsky, the gold hidden inside. But, for some reason, their expectations were not justified, nothing foreign was found in the core, everything was just solid stone.
Original location of stone balls discovery
The stone balls were originally found in the delta of the Terraba River near the cities of Palmar Sur and Palmar Norte. Subsequently, it turned out that they are scattered throughout Costa Rica from the north (Estrella Valley) to the south (Coto Colorado River).
Several balls were found in the Diquis River delta, others were discovered in the Jalisco region near the city of Aulaluco de Mercazo in Mexico, in the area of the city of Los Alamos and in the state of New Mexico (USA). It should be noted that all these areas are characterized by quite active volcanic activity...
In 1967, an engineer who worked in the silver mines of Western Mexico and was fond of history and archeology, told scientists from the United States that in the mines he had discovered the same balls as in Costa Rica, but much larger in size. In his opinion, they were made by the Aztecs. This sensational statement had the effect of a bomb exploding. Then in Guatemala, on the Acqua Blanca plateau, located at an altitude of 2000 m above sea level, near the village of Guadalajara, an archaeological expedition discovered hundreds of balls that were an exact copy of the Costa Rican ones.
Stone sphere in the courtyard of the National Museum of Costa Rica
Scientists managed to find similar stone balls in completely different places on our planet - in the Kashkadarya region of Kazakhstan, Egypt (Kharga oasis), Romania (Costesti), Germany (Eifel), Brazil (Korupa deposit), Chile, New Zealand and even on Franz Josef Land (Champ Island). And in 2008-2009, they began to be found in Russia - in Siberia, the Krasnodar Territory and the Volgograd Region.
As you can see, there are a lot of stone spheres on Earth. But still, Costa Rica’s balls are considered the most unique of these products. Their quality is admirable: some have such an absolutely correct shape and smooth surface that the question involuntarily arises: how were they made? And what is their purpose?
The National Museum of Costa Rica has a catalog that includes about 130 spherical stones that are still preserved. But there are many more balls that are not included in the lists. In general, more than 300 stone spheres have been found in Costa Rica. Undoubtedly, many are yet to be found: they are hidden underground and in dense jungles.
Counting these ancient monuments caused a number of difficulties: many of them were removed from their original location and are now located one by one in gardens and temples. Other similar stone artifacts adorn official buildings in Costa Rica, such as the Legislative Assembly, or hospitals and schools. They can be found in museums, as well as in the estates of wealthy residents of the republic. Two balls are also on display in the United States: one of them is in the museum of the National Geographic Society in Washington, the other in the courtyard of the Museum of Archeology and Ethnography at Harvard University.
Location geometry
The very first studies showed that the balls were located, as a rule, in groups of three to forty-five pieces. Many of the balls, some of them in groups, were found on top of mounds. But the most amazing thing happened next. Costa Rican scientists, interested in the stone balls, decided to look at the discovery site from above, from the air. The helicopter rose above the jungle - and suddenly a page from a geometry textbook, stretching for tens of kilometers, seemed to float underneath it. Strings of balls formed into giant triangles, squares, parallelograms, circles... They lined up in straight lines, some precisely oriented along the north-south axis...
These geometric constructions were then used to put forward some hypotheses of functionality.
Hypothesis 1. The balls are arranged in groups, like models of certain constellations. It is possible that these bizarre stone mosaics of balls were intended for astronomical observations related to calendar calculations and determining the timing of agricultural work. In this case, it is quite appropriate to assume that somewhere nearby there existed a highly developed civilization - the predecessor of all the ancient civilizations of Central America.
Hypothesis 2: As already stated, one group of four balls was aligned along a line oriented toward magnetic north. This has led some scientists to speculate that they may have been placed by people familiar with the use of magnetic compasses or celestial orientation.
In general, there have been plenty of versions of the functional purpose of stone balls. I am not going to comment on them, just, in addition to the above 2 hypotheses, I will list others:
the arranged balls are like constellations, they are symbols of celestial bodies, a reflection of the entire solar system;
the balls served to mark the boundaries between the lands of different tribes;
these are navigation instruments of a highly developed ancient civilization - Atlantis;
stone spheres are symbols of social status;
Or maybe these were the balls of the gods when they played their game?
guests from other cosmic worlds chose this place of accumulation of balls as their permanent cosmodrome, and the huge spheres are located in the form of boundary lines because they performed a function similar to the current landing strips of airfields;
some archaeologists believed that under the balls there could be some kind of capsules with messages from our alien brothers in mind, left by them when they finally decided to leave our planet;
most likely, over more than a thousand years of existence, the spheres performed many functions that changed over time;
An interesting version is that the labor-intensive production of balls in itself could be an important ritual process. Moreover, it played the same role (and maybe even more significant) as, in fact, its result;
The ancient inhabitants of Costa Rica were surprisingly warlike and possessed powerful technical military means. For example, they could have throwing weapons of exceptional power. Stone balls are just "projectiles" scattered on the battlefield. Maybe it wasn’t even a battle, but military exercises (maneuvers) were taking place here; a huge field is a kind of training ground for throwing weapons.
Difficulties. By now, almost all groups have already been destroyed, so measurements taken about fifty years ago cannot be verified for accuracy. Virtually all known balls have been moved from their original location by agricultural activities, destroying information about their archaeological contexts and possible groups. Some of the balls were blown up and destroyed by local treasure hunters who believed fables that the balls contained gold. The balls were rolled into ravines and gorges or even under water on the sea coast.
Question: where did they come from?
Scientists are still engaged in fierce debate about the balls; there are many versions of their appearance, but none of them has yet been confirmed. But, there are 2 main versions - natural and artificial.
Version – geological natural formations
According to it, it is believed that 25-40 million years ago, several dozen volcanoes suddenly awoke in Central America. Their eruptions caused catastrophic earthquakes. Lava and hot ash covered vast areas. That’s when the glassy particles ejected from the volcanoes began to cool. They, they say, were the embryos of giant spheres. Around these nucleoli, surrounding particles of eruption products gradually began to crystallize. Moreover, crystallization proceeded evenly in all directions, so that a ball with an ideal shape gradually formed.
And then nature acted - through factors such as water, wind and rain, which washed away the ashes and soil day after day. Thanks to this, over time, the “whitened” stone balls ended up on the surface. For example, it has been established that in areas of the Earth with large daily temperature differences (fluctuations), ordinary weathering, called exofolization, works very effectively. In this case, the rocks are destroyed spontaneously in a “falling husk” type, that is, the outer layers of the rock formation are gradually separated, like the peel of an onion, which, in the end, allows only the solid spherical core to remain “alone.”
If the centers of the balls were located close to each other, then the stone spheres could even grow together with one another. And to confirm this guess, several such balls were found fused together.
Thus, not some unfounded assumption appeared to explain the origin of the stone balls, but a completely substantiated hypothesis. It would seem that the mystery of the origin of the stone spheres has ceased to exist, but not everything is as simple as it seems at first glance...
And all because this – geological – version does not fit the fact that the balls clearly have traces of grinding, and, in addition, they are clearly laid according to some kind of system. And one more objection - balls are also found in places where no volcanic activity is observed at all. And the main thing here is that the version is not able to explain through volcanic activity the emergence of balls from a material such as granite.
In addition, many balls are made of granodiorite, a hard, coarse-grained rock of igneous origin that is intermediate in mineral composition between granite and quartz diorite. The granodiorite deposit is located in the foothills of the Talamanca mountain range. But this factor plays precisely against the geological version: in the area where the balls were found, such material is absent, and granodiorite deposits are found no closer than 50 miles from the place where the megaliths were found.
There are several balls made from coquina, a hard material similar to limestone that is formed in coastal sediments from shells and sand. Perhaps these balls were brought inland from the Terraba River delta.
The spherical formations of the Urals are natural geological objects
And these are also natural objects
Version - manual production
Archaeologists, unlike geologists, recognize that the balls were made not by nature, but by people. And they believe that these balls were made and placed by very skillful people. But what tools did the ancient craftsmen use to give the stone the correct spherical shape? Suddenly, scientists were faced with an incredible fact: apart from stone spheres, there was not a single object in this area indicating the presence of a person ever here. No tools for working stone, no shards, no bones were found. Nothing!
And, developing the version, it is believed that the balls were made from huge boulders, which were processed into a spherical shape by breaking off parts and grinding. Granodiorite exfoliates with sudden changes in temperature. To remove a thick layer of material, the workpiece must be heated, for example with hot coals, and then quickly cooled with water. When the boulder is already close to spherical in shape, the material is removed by striking it with the same hard material. Finally, the last stage of processing is polishing to a shine. This process is similar to that used to produce stone axes and stone statues and is believed to have been achieved without the use of metal tools, laser meters or alien helpers. To top it all off, the ball could be polished with sand or leather.
As one serious scientist explained, I will not propagate his name, the balls are larger " created by the most skilled craftsmen, and their shape is so close to perfection that measuring the diameters using a tape measure and a plumb line did not reveal any inaccuracies" He also says that the natives had mathematical abilities, extensive knowledge of stone processing and knew how to use tools. But since those tribes, apparently, did not have a written language, there are no records about the technology for making balls, and information about the manufacturing method, naturally, has not reached us.
The question is - when?
Besides all the other unsolved mysteries, it remains unclear when the balls were made. For such items, radiocarbon dating is not applicable, which is used to date only biological remains. Therefore, the determination of the age of the stone spheres was made using accompanying objects that were found along with them in archaeological layers. The stone balls were found in pottery beds from the Aguas Buenas culture, which dates from approximately 200 BC to 800 AD. Stone balls have been found in burials with gold decorations dating back to around 1000 AD. They were also found in layers of Chiriqui period pottery shards dating back to 800 BC. to 800 AD This type of pottery has been found along with iron tools from the colonial period, produced up until the 16th century. Thus, the balls could be made at any time and during any foreseeable period.
The age of the stone balls is unknown
However, many of the researchers are sure that they were made much earlier - in the most ancient times. US scientist D. Erikson claims that the balls appeared more than 12 thousand years ago. This is supposedly proven by the finds of balls on the seabed, where they were installed at a time when there was still land here...
Who made it?
The balls are believed to have most likely been made by the ancestors of the peoples who lived here before the Spanish conquest. These people spoke the Chibchan language and lived in an area from modern-day eastern Honduras to northern Colombia. Their current descendants include the Boruca, Teribe and Guaymi peoples. These people lived in isolated settlements that rarely consisted of more than 2,000 people. They fished, hunted and farmed. Crops grown included corn, cassava (a shrub whose roots produce a nutritious meal), beans, squash (a type of summer squash), papaya, pineapple, avocado, chili peppers, cocoa, and many other fruits, roots, and medicinal plants. They lived in mostly round houses with foundations made of river cobblestones.
And in order to claim that it was they who created these mysterious spheres, you need to have more evidence than you have, and therefore the answer to this question remains an unsolvable task.
Transportation method
Another mystery is the method of transporting the balls from the place of manufacture to the place of installation. According to scientists, sometimes this distance was tens of kilometers, and the balls had to be delivered through the jungle, swamps, rivers...
How were such blocks transported? What devices were used to “roll” the balls from place to place, making precise geometric shapes from them? Unfortunately, there were no satisfactory answers to these questions.
If blanks for balls were obtained from quarries, stone craftsmen, presumably, had to carefully monitor their descent. How can such a heavy load be moved such a long distance without modern technology? If granite was mined in a quarry and then transported, then almost a three-meter cube, which was required for a ball with a diameter of 2.4 meters, weighed 24 tons! Probably, the natives had to build the wide, smooth road necessary for transporting the blocks through the dense jungle, which again is not an easy task! Other balls are made of shell rock, a material much like the limestone found on the sea coast near the mouth of the Diquis River. Then it turns out that the rock was floated 50 kilometers upstream. Balls were also found on Caño Island, located approximately 20 kilometers from the Pacific coast, etc.
Researchers
The first to study the balls was an archaeologist from the United States, D. Stone, who arrived in Costa Rica immediately after the discovery of stone artifacts. And in 1943, in an academic journal on archeology, he published his observations and conclusions, which, which would turn out to be characteristic of all future studies and researchers, end with the words: " We must classify the perfect spheres of Costa Rica as incomprehensible megalithic mysteries"Everything is exactly the same as what another archeological authority, now the Frenchman P. Gio, spoke about other stone products a little later: " ...megaliths are a nightmare for archaeologists" And it’s impossible to disagree with them.
Then there were many followers and continuers of the study of stone balls, and an inquisitive reader who is ready to dive deeper into the topic can always find reports of their expeditions and materials of work in print. For this article, suffice it to say that apart from replenishing the statistics of finds, describing the locations of these stone products, and studying the accompanying cultural layers, no solid scientific conclusions were ever made. Just as before, the main questions remained unanswered: who?, when? and for what? made these stones.
So, attempts to scientifically analyze the stone balls of Costa Rica have been going on for more than 60 years. But, as they say, things are still there...
Not long ago, the question of assigning the status of a World Heritage Site to these ancient artifacts was raised to UNESCO. D. Hoopes, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Kansas and director of theGlobal Indigenous Nations Studies Program.
Scientist D. Hoopes next to an ancient stone riddle
And he, having carried out the necessary research with his colleagues, upon returning from a trip to Costa Rica, made a report at UNESCO, excerpts from which are given below.
The earliest reports of these stones date back to the late 19th century, but these reports were not scientifically confirmed until the 1930s, so they can be considered a relatively recent discovery, Hoopes said. - Official science dates the stones to 600-1000 AD, but they all appeared before the Spanish Colonization of America. We determine the age of the balls by the style of manufacture and radiocarbon dating of objects that are found with the balls. One of the problems with this technique is that it reports the date the balls were last used, but not the date they were created. These objects may have been used for centuries and are still in the same places for thousands of years. Therefore, it is very difficult to determine the exact date of creation.
According to Hoopes, pseudoscientists have distorted the general understanding of stone balls. For example, some publications claimed that the stones belonged to the “vanished” continent of Atlantis. Others suggested that the balls were navigational devices, or that they were associated with Stonehenge, or with the giant heads from Easter Island.
Myths based on a variety of incredible theories about imaginary ancient civilizations or alien visits were categorically rejected by Hoopes. However, in return, he did not present a single version of himself that would shed any light on the solution to the Costa Rican balls.
We really don't know why they were made,” Hoopes admitted. “The people who made them left no written records. We can only speculate based on historical dates and environmental reconstruction. The culture of the people who made them disappeared soon after the Spanish Conquest. Therefore, there are no myths or legends left about why these balls were made.
The only mystery that the scientist was allegedly able to explain was the method of their manufacture.
Most likely, the main techniques were hammering, drilling and stone grinding, Hoopes explained. - Some balls were found with traces of hammer blows on them. We believe that this is how they were created: by hitting large stones with a hammer and carving them into spherical shapes.
So, this one, if I may say so, “the head of the balls,” under the pressure of questions from members of the UNESCO commission, but not forgetting to throw a handful of dirt at ufologists, both himself and his science signed for complete professional insolvency and helplessness. So who should be called false and pseudoscientists, if not such hoopes?
So, modern researchers have no answer yet. Therefore, the question of assigning the status of a World Heritage Site to the balloons also remained open.
Stone balls from different countries (petrosphere)
Chudinov V.A.
In my work, I examined small stone balls from different countries, which turned out to be artifacts for everyday use, transmitting globes, although not very accurately. After this, it would be logical to look for large stone balls that could play the role of a real globe. One of them is shown in Fig. 1.
Rice. 1. Stone sphere (No. 1) in the courtyard of the National Museum of Costa Rica
About stone balls. Wikipedia writes about this ball: “ Stone balls of Costa Rica - prehistoric stone balls (petrospheres), at least three hundred of which have been preserved at the mouth of the Diquis River, on the Nicoya Peninsula and on Caño Island off the Pacific coast of Costa Rica. Made from gabbro, limestone or sandstone. Their sizes vary from an inch across to two meters; the largest weigh 16 tons.
The first balls were discovered in the 1930s. United Fruit Company workers clearing areas for banana plantations. Mindful of local beliefs that gold was hidden inside the stones, workers drilled them and split them into pieces. The vandalism was stopped thanks to the intervention of company management; the director's daughter subsequently wrote a monograph on the petrospheres of Costa Rica.
In the 1940s Harvard archaeologist S. K. Lothrop began studying the stone balls; Articles began to appear about them in archaeological journals. To attract tourists, petrospheres began to be transported from the jungle to museums and installed in city squares. Currently, only six balls are located at their original discovery sites; the rest can be seen in museums - both in Costa Rica itself and beyond its borders (in particular, in Washington and Cambridge).
Traditional stratigraphic methods for dating artifacts are of little use to stone balls that have been repeatedly moved from place to place. Based on the finds of ancient ceramics near the newly discovered petrospheres, they are trying to associate them with certain archaeological cultures of Central America. The spread of dating ranges from 200 BC. e. before 1500 AD e., that is, covers almost the entire period of existence of pre-Columbian civilizations.
The purpose and circumstances of the creation of petrospheres also pose a mystery to scientists. It can be assumed that these were symbols of heavenly bodies or designations of boundaries between the lands of different tribes. This could be judged more accurately if scientists had complete information about the places of their initial placement. Parascientific authors often argue that these “ideal” spheres could not have been made by the hands of ancient people and associate them with the activities of space aliens».
Strange and ridiculous statements of scientists. Every sentence here is either a riddle or a strange statement.
The purpose of petrospheres is a mystery to scientists. If they are globes, then there is no mystery. Consequently, my task is to prove that, in addition to being spherical, stone balls bear the contours of continents, and most likely, the names of geographical objects. Parascientific authors associate them with the activities of space aliens. - If there are readable and understandable inscriptions on the petrospheres, then in what language the inscriptions are made, they belong to such a people of earthlings. Based on the finds of ancient ceramics near the newly discovered petrospheres, they are trying to associate them with certain archaeological cultures of Central America. The spread of dating ranges from 200 BC. e. before 1500 AD e., that is, covers almost the entire period of existence of pre-Columbian civilizations.- Why on earth should one think that stone balls are somehow connected with ceramics or with Indian civilizations? - Small globes were associated with Rurik’s Russia.
It can be assumed that these were symbols of heavenly bodies or designations of boundaries between the lands of different tribes.- But small globes only in one case had, and even then presumably, the superposition of the celestial sphere on the contours of the earth’s continents (the spindle whorl from Slatino). Concerning boundaries between the lands of different tribes, then why put them on a huge globe, where they still won’t be visible on the scale of the entire Earth?
Finally, This could be judged more accurately if scientists had complete information about the places of their original placement.- What information about the purpose of small stone balls did we receive, having learned, for example, that one ball was found in Ecuador and the other in Egypt? - Absolutely none. So this is a false message.
But we have an exact statement and even a name: prehistoric stone balls (petrospheres). I have nothing against the name “petrosphere”, but I am surprised at the categorical expression of the opinion about the “prehistoricity” of stone balls. If they were made by people, then they were people who had excellent knowledge not only about the sphericity of the Earth, but also about the location of the continents on it. Consequently, this is the era of highly informed people, not only not savages, but not even barbarians.
Reasoning in this way, archaeologists could come to the conclusion that only a little remains - look for the corresponding inscriptions. But for some reason none of them came to this simple thought, although such a thought lies on the surface. And the most obvious of these thoughts is to look for inscriptions in Greek on the petrospheres, since supposedly it was the ancient Greeks who assumed the sphericity of the Earth. After all, even ordinary readers know the answer to the question: “What was the very first proof of the sphericity of the earth and who owned it?” - A certain Vladimir Flakov answered him like this: “ It is believed that the first person who proved the sphericity of the Earth was the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle (his years of life were from 384 BC to 322 BC). Indeed, in the fourteenth chapter of the second book of the treatise “On Heaven,” Aristotle provides several proofs of the sphericity of the Earth"(http://otvet.mail.ru/question/81735509).
But for some reason, scientists did not look for Greek inscriptions on petrospheres, although no one forbade increasing the glory of the ancient Greeks. So what was stopping them? - I believe that they, like the Germans in World War II, were undermined by their own ideology. The modern historical and archaeological paradigm claims that each ethnic group went through the evolutionary path of development from savagery to civilization itself, albeit at different speeds. The American Indians were allegedly helped along the course by European conquerors - the Spaniards, Portuguese, British and French. But the ancient Greeks were not among the conquerors. Consequently, there cannot be ancient Greek inscriptions on petrospheres. But there cannot be European inscriptions, since none of the named peoples made any petrospheres in their homeland.
One thing remains: if there are inscriptions on the stone balls, it will be in one of the Indian languages. - But historians don’t need this at all! Then it turns out that the Indian civilization has overtaken the European one? - This cannot be allowed for political reasons. It’s better to consider the balls as a game of nature or primitive maps of boundaries between tribes. Which, in fact, was announced.
And I, based on my paradigm, put forward a different assumption: petrospheres were made by people, Europeans, around the 10th-12th centuries AD, moreover, by Russians, and, most likely, in the temples of Rurik. At the same time, just like archaeologists, I reason by analogy: these were the results of my previous studies of small spheres.
Rice. 2. My readings of the inscriptions and identification of the contours of the continents on the petrosphere
My readings of the inscriptions. As usual, I am increasing the contrast. Unfortunately, the natural lighting of this ball is not suitable for scientific purposes: the top turned out to be light, the bottom was dark. As the contrast increases, the top will become even lighter, the bottom will become even darker, so that it will be almost impossible to distinguish the contours of both. However, for primary proof that there is a globe in front of us, even such an image is enough.
I start not by identifying the outlines of the continents, but by reading the largest inscriptions, since these inscriptions are barely visible, and drawing thick lines will make it impossible to read the barely visible letters of the inscription. Thus, the order of epigraphic analysis is dictated by the features of the image.
So, first I read the largest inscriptions located on the top of the ball. They say : MASK OF MAKAZHEV RYURIK YAR. From the analysis of inscriptions on small globes we know that the words MASKA MAKAZHEVA or MASKA MAKAZHI mean the current lexemes borrowed into the Russian language MAP or GLOBE . And the mention of Yar Rurik means that these geographical artifacts were made in the temples of Rurik.
I then move on to reading the inscriptions on the top third of the globe. Here the color saturation of the letters is much greater, the letters look much denser, although their size is somewhat smaller. I read the following text: MASK OF MAKAZHI YAR RURIK. Although it coincides almost word for word with the previous one, its presence is very important in order to understand that the first text was read correctly. The second text confirms the meaning of the first.
One of the eastern breaks in the Mediterranean Sea resembles the number 3. It is here that there is a fragment on which you can read the dating of the manufacture of the globe: 303 YEAR OF YAR. However, this dating is duplicated: at the bottom left in a rectangular white frame I read the numbers: 303-324 (as usual, the larger date is written first, then the smaller one). I believe that this is not the date of manufacture of this globe, since such an item can be made in less than a year, but the date of manufacture of a certain series, and the last year is precisely the year of manufacture of this particular artifact. Converted to our usual chronology, we get the following dating: 1159-1180 BC , that is, the second half of the 12th century.
Inside three white-boxed fragments I read the words: 33 YAR ARKONA. They are no different from the same address read on some small globes. This city is well known to me: later it was called Chersonesos, and today it is called Sevastopol. This inscription is very important to me: it says not only that this city of Russian military glory was the center of cartography in the 12th century, but also that the sailors of this port traveled around the world, for which they needed maps and globes. Including demo ones, like this one, from Costa Rica.
And in the last fragment I read the clarification: TEMPLE OF YAR. - Who would doubt that? The temple of Yar was, of course, responsible for cartography. - It is possible that on this globe there are several more inscriptions with original data that duplicate or clarify what I read, but for the first acquaintance with this type of artifacts, this is enough.
The next problem is identifying the contours of the continents. First you need to understand in general which hemisphere we see on the globe from this angle. Judging by the outlines of the lower left continent, this is Africa. In this case, above we see Eurasia, which extends above beyond the visible part of the globe. And from this it follows that the circumpolar parts of the Earth on it are greatly reduced, which is why Africa goes beyond the boundaries of the globe at the bottom, and Eurasia at the top. So the globe before us is represented by the Eastern Hemisphere.
Then you should read the labels of geographical objects. Of course, these names could be circled; however, then some frames will fall on others, and it will be very difficult for the reader to understand them. Therefore, I took a different path: under each inscription with the runes of Rod on the globe, I signed the inscriptions in modern letters. And I started with Africa: just above the white frame I found the word MAKAZHNYA, which he signed on the globe, and also spelled out the runes of Rod on the decipherment field. A little higher I found the word that is still often read on the geoglyphs of North Africa. This word SKLAVIA. Thus, in the 12th century, both the name of the entire continent and the name of its northern part were different from modern ones. Although it is possible that they have already fallen out of use. - At the same time, I checked myself: I identified the contours of Africa correctly.
Subsequently, the delineation of the coastline did not go so smoothly. The boot of the Arabian Peninsula was easily recognizable, but where exactly the line of its toe was was difficult for me to understand. On the one hand, it turned out to be very short in the foot area, but on the other hand, it was clearly pressed by the Persian coastline. To make sure, I read the names: on the boot I found the name ARABIA, and in the more eastern region - PERSIA.
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