The balls of Costa Rica are the balls of the Gods. stone balls
In the 40s of the twentieth century, in the tropical thickets of Costa Rica, interesting discovery. United Fruit Company workers cutting down dense thickets tropical jungle under banana plantations, suddenly stumbled upon giant stone statues correct spherical shape.
The largest reached three meters in diameter and weighed about 16 tons. And the smallest were no larger than a children'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 amateur in history and archeology, who worked in Mexico in silver mines, told American scientists that he had found the same balls in the mines, but much larger.
Some time later, on the Aqua Blanca plateau near the village of Guadalajara (Guatemala) at an altitude of 2000 m above sea level archaeological expedition found hundreds more stone balls.
Similar stone balls were also found near the city of Aulaluco (Mexico), in Palma Sur (Costa Rica), Los Alamos and the state of New Mexico (USA), on the coast of New Zealand, in Egypt, Romania, Germany, Brazil, Kashkadarya region. Kazakhstan and Franz Josef Land.
With the light hand of Erich von Daniken, the balls were dubbed "balls played by the gods."
Some geologists attributed their appearance to volcanic activity. A ball of ideal shape can form if the crystallization of volcanic magma occurs evenly in all directions.
According to the leading researcher of the Central Research Institute of Geology of Rare-Earth and Non-Ferrous Metals, Candidate of Geological and Mineralogical Sciences Elena Matveeva, the balls could come to the surface as a result of the so-called exopholization - weathering, which works in areas with large daily differences. In the same place, where the temperature is more stable, similar balls are found, but underground.
However, no matter how convincing these assumptions 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 a lot of balls, which, moreover, have traces of grinding! And although a significant part of such balls does seem to be of a purely natural origin, some specimens, for example, balls from Costa Rica, do not fit into the framework of this theory in any way, since they have obvious traces of alignment and polishing. More than 300 have now been found in Costa Rica. stone spheres.
The first scientific study of the balls was undertaken by Doris Stone immediately after their discovery by the workers. United Fruit Company. The results of her research were published in 1943 in "American Antiquity", the leading academic journal for archeology in the United States.
Samuel Lothrop, a staff archaeologist at the Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnography at Harvard University, conducted the main field work on the balls in 1948. The final report of his findings was published by the Museum in 1963.
It contains maps of the sites where the balls were found, detailed descriptions of pottery and metal objects found near the balls, and many photographs, measurement data and drawings of the balls, their relative positions and stratigraphic contexts.
Additional exploration of the balls by archaeologist Matthew Stirling has been reported in the pages national geographic in 1969.
In the 1980s, the orb sites were explored and described by Robert Drolet during his excavations.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Claude Baudez and his students at the University of Paris returned to the Lothrop excavations to undertake a more thorough analysis of the pottery and more accurate dating of the balls' stratigraphic contexts. This study was published in Spanish in 1993, with a summary in English language which appeared in 1996.
Also in the early 1990s, John Hopes did fieldwork around Golfito, documenting the easternmost known examples of these orbs. At the same time, Enrico Dala Lagoa, a student at the University of Kansas, completed his dissertation on balls.
The most thorough study of the balls since Lothrop, however, was the fieldwork undertaken in 1990-1995 by the archaeologist Iphigenia Quintanilla under the auspices of the National Museum of Costa Rica.
She was able to unearth several orbs in their original state. As of 2001, most of the information she collected had not yet been published, although it was the subject of her graduate research at the University of Barcelona.
results archaeological research featured in the following publications:
Lothrop, Samuel K. Archeology of the Diquis Delta, Costa Rica. Papers of the Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology, Vol. 51. Harvard University, Cambridge. 1963
Stone, Doris Z. A Preliminary Investigation of the Flood Plain of the Rio Grande de Terraba, Costa Rica. American Antiquity 9(1):74-88. 1943
Stone, Doris Z. Precolumbian Man Finds Costa Rica. Peabody Museum Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. 1977
Baudez, Claude F., Nathalie Borgnino, Sophie Laligant & Valerie Lauthelin Investigaciones Arqueologicas en el Delta del Diquis. Centro de Estudios Mexicanos y Centroamericanos, Mexico, D.F. 1993
Lange, Frederick W. (ed.) Paths Through Central American Prehistory: Essays in Honor of Wolfgang Haberland. University of Colorado Press, Boulder. 1996
Unlike geologists, archaeologists recognize the artificial origin of the balls of Costa Rica.
Almost all balls are made from granodiorite, a hard lava rock, the outcrops of which are located in the foothills of the outskirts Talamanca. There are several examples made from coquina, a hard material similar to limestone, which is formed 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 strong heating and cooling, as a result of which the upper part of the boulders peeled off like the leaves of an onion.
Granodiorite, from which they are made, as it was revealed, still retains traces of large changes in temperature. When they approached the shape of a sphere, they were further processed with stone tools from a material of the same hardness. At the final stage, the balls were placed on the base and polished to a shine.
Often in funds mass media there are claims that these balls have a perfect spherical shape with an accuracy of 2 millimeters. In reality, there are no grounds for such categorical statements.
The fact is that no one has ever measured the balls of Costa Rica with such a degree of accuracy. Lotrop wrote:
“To measure the circumference, we used two methods, neither of which is completely satisfactory. When large balls were buried deep in the ground, it might take several days to dig a trench around them. Therefore, we examined only the upper half and then measured two or three more diameters with a tape and a plumb bob. Measurements have shown that small specimens, usually 2 to 3 feet (0.6 to 0.9 meters) in diameter, have differences in diameter of 1 or 2 inches (2.5 to 5.1 centimeters).”
Lothrop also measured balls that were completely taken out of the ground by applying a piece of tape around five circles. He's writing:
“Obviously the big balls were of the highest quality, and they were so nearly perfect that measuring the diameters with a tape and a plumb bob showed no difference. Therefore, we measured the circles horizontally and, as far as possible, at a 45 degree angle to the four main points.
We usually didn't measure the vertical circumference as the big balls were too heavy to move. This procedure was not as easy as it sounds because several people had to hold the tape and all measurements had to be checked. Since the difference in diameters was too small to be detected by the eye even with a plumb bob, the diameters were calculated mathematically.”
Obviously, differences "too small to be detected by the eye" cannot be translated into a claim of accuracy "within 2 millimeters".
In fact, the surface of the balls is not completely smooth and has irregularities clearly exceeding 2 millimeters in height. In addition, significant damage to the surface is often noticeable on the balls. Therefore, it is impossible to determine how even they could be at the time of manufacture.
In fact, no one knows for sure what exactly these balls were made for.
By the time of the first Spanish conquests, balls were no longer being made, and they remained completely forgotten until they were rediscovered in the 1940s.
Some archaeologists believe that the balls were located in front of the houses of noble people as a symbol of their power or secret knowledge.
There is also an opinion that the very creation and movement of the balls was of great religious or social significance, no less than their final location.
As already mentioned, a significant part of the stone balls were located in certain groups. Some of these groups formed straight or winding lines, triangles and parallelograms. One group of four balls was determined to be aligned in a line oriented to magnetic north.
This led Ivar Zappa to speculate that they may have been placed by people familiar with the use of magnetic compasses or astronomical orientation.
However, the hypothesis of Ivar Zappa that the groups of stone balls were navigational devices pointing to Easter Island and Stonehenge seems to be unfounded.
This group of four balls occupies (according to Lothrop's measurements) only a few meters, which is obviously not enough to avoid planning errors over such long distances.
In addition, with the exception of balls located in Isla del Caso, most balloons are too far from the sea to be useful for ocean navigators.
There is also a version that the location of the stone balls resembles some celestial constellations. In accordance with this, some "researchers" often consider the balls of Costa Rica to be a kind of "planetarium", "observatory" or landmarks for spacecraft.
However, despite the attractiveness of such versions for the general public, it should be noted that the authors of such versions relied more on their imagination than on the results of field research.
Many of the balls, some of them in groups, were found at the top of the mounds. This has led to speculation that they may have been kept inside buildings built on top of the mounds, making them difficult to use for observation.
Moreover, by now all but a few groups have already been destroyed, so measurements made almost fifty years ago cannot be verified for accuracy.
Virtually all known balls have been moved from their original location in the course of agricultural work, destroying information about their archaeological contexts and possible groups.
Some of the balls were blown up and destroyed by local treasure hunters who believed the fables that the balls contained gold. Balls rolled into ravines and gorges or even under water for sea coast(how in Isla del Caso).
Nowadays, a significant part of the balls is used as an unpretentious decoration of lawns. It is possible that at least some of the balls were also once used for similar purposes.
So, for example, in the center of Izapa, located off the Pacific coast on the border with Guatemala, which existed a little later than the Olmecs, small round balls were found next to small stone pillars, which could well serve as supports for them.
The time of making 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. until even 1500 AD. But even such a wide range cannot be considered final.
The fact is that stratigraphic analysis always leaves a lot of doubts about the dating of such artifacts. If only because if now the balls are 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.
Therefore, the balls may well 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 in relation to such a date, it is by no means without foundation.
In particular, John Hopes mentions balls in Isla del Caso that are underwater off the coast.
In the event that these balls were not moved there at a later time and were there initially, then they could be placed there only when the sea level was significantly lower than modern. 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 the alleged origin of the material for their manufacture, tens of kilometers, a significant part of which falls on swamps and dense thickets of tropical forests ...
Archaeologist Doris Z. Stone ended the very first report on the exploration of Costa Rica spheres with the words: "We must attribute the perfect spheres of Costa Rica to incomprehensible megalithic mysteries." It's impossible not to agree with him on this...
Stone balls are actually found not only in Costa Rica. There were reports that such balls sailors Murmansk Shipping Company found on the coast of the North Arctic Ocean. And this is a shot of balloons on the coast of one of the islands of New Zealand:
Or here are some more facts:
In 1969, in Germany, in the Eifel, during the explosion of a quarry, it rolled out of the slope perfectly round ball five meters in diameter and weighing over 100 tons.
In Kazakhstan, when developing a sand pit, several large stone balls were dug from a great depth.
Balls of unique beauty were found along the sides of the Bukobai beam in the Sol-Iletsk district of the Orenburg region.
A few dozen more of these stones were located in a ravine five kilometers west of Zhirnovsk. Volgograd region. In 2002-2003, unfortunately, the most beautiful and expressive of them were destroyed by local oil bulldozers who laid several pipelines.
Balls in the Volgograd region
Full of balls (up to 2 meters in diameter) on the Arctic island of Champa in Franz Josef Land. However, there are also quite tiny ones.
In October 2007, at depths of 10-25 meters at the bottom of the Black Sea near Gelendzhik, the Kosmopoisk expedition found balls with a diameter of 0.7 to 1 meter. The smallest one was raised and examined on the shore.
Geologists and historians concluded that the ball was artificially carved, and a “side” and an X-shaped cut were visible on its surface. Why did they make such balls that are too large for the most gigantic powder cannons, and for the most big catapults, unknown.
Boguchanskie balls by no means claim to be the most mysterious. For more than 60 years, scientists have been puzzling over their more famous and massive counterparts - stone balls from Costa Rica ( Central America) and other parts of South America.
Some Boguchan balls lie cut into slices.
In the forties of the last century, they were discovered by workers cutting down thickets for banana plantations. There are also placers of small balls 10 centimeters in diameter, and giant "statues" of three meters each, which weigh under 20 tons. The material is different - from volcanic rock to granite.
Some balls at the time of discovery looked as if they had recently been brought to the place. Others were partially buried. Or barely sticking out of the ground. And several copies were found at a depth of two meters. Nobody dug deeper. Nevertheless, it seemed as if the balls were crawling out of the bowels.
The Arctic island of Champa is one of the most unique places on Earth - all strewn with strange, perfectly round stones.
Without pretending to the ultimate truth, we can draw the following preliminary conclusion. Of course, the stones from Champa can be classified as spherical nodules. Concretions - from the Latin word concretio- accretion, thickening.
These are concretions, rounded mineral formations in sedimentary rocks. Mineral grains, rock fragments, shells, teeth and bones of fish, and plant remains can be centers of such constriction.
Most of them are formed in porous sedimentary rocks - sands and clays. By structure, concentric-layered are most often found - as if composed of several shells.
They usually consist of calcium carbonates, iron oxides and sulfides, calcium phosphates, gypsum, and manganese compounds.
The formation of nodules occurs something like this: outgrowths appear on the walls, which, growing towards each other, close and form various shapes. On Earth, nodules are spherical, disk-shaped, less often found in the form of an ellipse or irregular - fused.
There are as many opinions about the origin of stone balls as there are researchers. According to Viktor Boyarsky, from every geologist who has ever visited Champa, he heard his explanation of this phenomenon.
Victor Boyarsky does not rule out that there are still places where spherical stones are concentrated on Franz Josef Land: “I would not be surprised if new expeditions report something like this. In geological terms, this corner of the planet is capable of presenting a lot of the most unexpected surprises.
The proximity of mysterious civilizations and their places of worship like the pyramids naturally gives rise to supernatural hypotheses. Up to the fact that the balls were made by aliens either from outer space or from Atlantis. Or at least under their guidance.
After all, some actually find traces of processing. And inscriptions. And some of the balls from Costa Rica were originally lined with some kind of ornaments - it seems that their drawings corresponded to the location of the constellations.
However, now the finds have been rearranged, taken to private farmsteads and museums. And it is no longer possible to restore the previous picture.
The famous researcher of the anomalous and a great visionary, Erich von Däniken, generally dubbed the balls "balls played by the gods." Alluded to football. Although they are more suitable for playing golf or croquet.
Geologists are not very surprised at the balls. But put forward different hypotheses of their occurrence.
“Aliens, of course, have nothing to do with it,” says Associate Professor of the Department of Geology and Geophysics of the Irkutsk state university Alexey Korolkov. - Most likely, these are the so-called ferruginous nodules. They are formed during the compaction of sediments in coal deposits. In their center, organic remains, mineral or bacterial accumulations are often found, which serve as a "seed" during its growth.
Some scientists emphasize that the concretion turns into a ball and grows evenly when substances are deposited in a rock that is equally permeable in all directions. And the ocean floor is called the ancestral home of the balls. Like, formed around the remains of shells, animal bones, algae in soft sediments. And ended up on dry land when the sea bottom rose.
But the properties of the surrounding rock are such that the formations become disks. Or even cylinders up to several tens of meters long. Both that, and another it is quite possible to take for man-made products. Cylinders, for example, are considered columns - the remains of structures that are supposedly many millions of years old.
Someone sees the reason for "spherization" in the crystallization of volcanic magma. Someone - in filling voids with foreign matter - bubbles (similar to holes in Swiss cheese). And the appearance on the surface is in elementary weathering.
Stone for spicy Easter
There is a hypothesis that the balls appear in the pits and folds of the stone bed mountain rivers. Like, there the current makes the boulders rotate quickly and eventually processes them to a round state.
Archaeologists argue with geologists. Not all balls. Some of them, perhaps, indeed somehow created by nature. But it is unlikely that she can afford huge specimens. Especially from granite or other material with increased hardness, made with an accuracy accessible only to modern technology.
At one time, Samuel Lothrop, a staff archaeologist at the Museum of Archeology and Ethnography at Harvard University, was the first to carefully measure some balls from Costa Rica.
“Obviously,” he wrote in the report, “the big balls were of the highest quality. And they are so perfect that measuring the diameters with a tape (in five directions) and a plumb line showed no difference.
The archaeologist found only surface irregularities about 2 millimeters in size.
Scientists have found objects of ancient life next to the balls. But they themselves were located far from their habitats and possible manufacture. And who and why dragged multi-ton stone spheres into the distance? Sometimes in the mountains? Mystery.
By the way, in the chronicles of Costa Rica, which have been conducted since 1512, there is not a single mention of stone balls. Even if they once had a cult significance much earlier, then what kind of cult was it? It's not clear either. So, while these balls remain a mystery to us.
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The enigma of the stone balls of Costa Rica
Stone balls of Costa Rica are strange stone formations perfectly round, discovered in the 1930s, one of the greatest mysteries of pre-Columbian America. Hundreds of such stone balls, ranging in size from a few centimeters to 7 feet in diameter, the largest of which weighs 16 tons, have been discovered in the Dikvisa region of Palma Sur, off the Pacific coast in southern Costa Rica. Most of them are made of granodiorite, an igneous rock similar to granite. But several copies are carved from shell rock - a kind of limestone, consisting mainly of shells and their fragments.
How were the stone balls found?
The balls were first talked about in the 1930s, when the United Fruit Company was clearing the jungle for banana plantations and other fruit plants. The workers of the company found the balls and, remembering the local legend about the spheres covering the golden cores, tried to split them with dynamite, hoping to find the gold hidden inside.
Ball research
1948 - Dr. Samuel Lothrop of the Peabody Museum at Harvard University and his wife undertook a comprehensive study of the stone spheres. 1963 - Research results were published. In his report, Lothrop described all 186 known specimens and noted that he had heard that there were 45 more balls somewhere in the Yalaki region, where they were, but they were transported somewhere.
Several spheres have been found in pacific ocean on the island of Kano, which is 12.5 miles to the southwest. This may serve as confirmation of the version that several hundred such stones were once created. Starting in the 1940s, stone spheres began to be transported - often they were moved by rail from one end of the country to the other. Some of them can be seen in the National Museum, others - in the parks and gardens of the country's capital - San Jose. To date, only six stone balls from Costa Rica are known to have remained where they were found.
Scientific analysis of the stone balls of Costa Rica has been going on for decades. The work began in 1943 by archaeologist Doris Zemurray-Stone, the daughter of Samuel Zemurray, the founder of the United Fruit Company. She conducted research on stones found by fruit company workers, and later became director of the National Museum of Costa Rica, and in 1943 her work was published in American Antiquity. There were 5 maps of the area, on which 44 stone balls were placed.
According to Stone, these balls could be cult statues, tombstones, or were elements of some kind of calendar. Lothrop's publication in 1963 also included maps of the places where the spheres were found, given comparative analysis found nearby pottery and metal artifacts related to stone balls, as well as many photographs and drawings depicting balls, data on their sizes and notes on the location of the spheres.
Archaeological excavations
Later, in the 50s. XX century, were held archaeological excavations, thanks to which stone balls were discovered in the south of Costa Rica along with pottery and other artifacts related to the cultures of pre-Columbian America. Since that time, research has been carried out regularly, but the most thorough excavations have been carried out by the archaeologist Iphigenia Quintanilla from the National Museum of Costa Rica in the 90-95s of the 20th century.
Versions of the origin of stone balls
For many years, archaeologists have been trying to find out the origin of these strange balls. Whether they are natural objects or handmade. Some of the geologists claim that the spheres have natural origin. They put forward a theory according to which magma rising into the air after a volcanic eruption settles on a hot, ash-covered valley, then the magma balls cool down and form spheres.
According to another version, the granite blocks were in specially dug pits, at the bottom huge waterfall and under the influence of the flow of falling water over time acquired an almost perfect spherical shape.
However, the version that the stones were created by a person is more likely, especially considering that granodiorite, from which the balls are mainly made, is not found in these places. The deposits of this rock are found in the Talamanca mountain range, approximately 50 miles from the find site.
Archaeologist Iphigenia Quintanilla, during field research, was able to establish the source of raw materials: she discovered boulders that can be called unfinished copies of stone balls. During the excavations of Quintanilla, fragments of balls were also found, which made it possible to restore the method of their creation. To give the stones a rounded shape, most likely they did this: at first, an approximately rounded boulder was alternately affected by heat and cold, until rock cracks did not begin to appear, then the surface was leveled with heavy stone sledgehammers, possibly made of the same material, and polished with some kind of stone tool.
There is only one objection: the stones have an almost perfect spherical shape. They are hewn to within "0.5 inch ±0.2%". The version could have been flawless if the spheres had not been carved with such precision. However, the surface of the boulders is not absolutely perfect: the diameters of some of them differ by 5 cm from the parameters of a regular sphere. It is also unclear how the inhabitants of pre-Columbian America could transport and install them in the right places. Such skills indicate a highly developed culture and a well-organized community (although if the stones were cut right in the quarry, in the mountains, it was not difficult to roll the balls down).
So who created these balls?
The question of who could create these mysterious spheres and why is more difficult task. According to archaeological data, the spheres were carved over 2 periods. The earlier of these, the aguas-buenas period (100-500 AD), only a few balls belong. Most of the stone balls in the lowlands of the Terraba River were created in the second period - Chirikui (800-1500). But this cannot help to clarify the purpose of the spheres.
Let's bypass such a convenient explanation as the intervention of aliens and Atlanteans. The original theory is that they were created by a highly developed prehistoric culture and served as antennas of the ancient world electrical network. But without concrete evidence, such a theory is baseless and seems as mythical as the legend that local residents there was a potion that was able to soften rocks.
Why were the stone balls of Costa Rica created?
It is not exactly established what these spheres were created for. It is especially difficult to find out because most of the balls have been transported to other places. This problem is important because the arrangement of the balls seems to have played an important role in the lives of the people who created them. It should be noted that initially many balls were arranged so that each place corresponded to the position of the Sun, the Moon and all the planets known at that time. There is even a version that they reflected the entire solar system.
In the 1940s, while studying the balls, Lothrop noticed that some of them had rolled down from the nearby hills, which once contained dwellings. Probably, the spheres at one time were located in the center of the settlements, on the tops of the hills. In this case, they could not be used in astronomy and, of course, in navigation. Most likely for more than thousand years of history of existence, stone balls performed many functions that changed over time. Curious is the version that the labor-intensive production of balls in itself could be an important ritual process. At the same time, it played the same role (and perhaps even more significant) as, in fact, its result.
Nowadays
2001 - with the assistance of various government organizations National Museum Costa Rica began transporting the balls from San José through the high mountain range to the places where they were found. Nowadays, they are under protection in the store, but when it is built Cultural Center, spheres will be placed in it and they can be seen in the very places where they were originally located in the Diquis River Delta.
Archaeologists still find balls in the muddy deposits of the Dikvis River delta. Today, stone balls can be seen in museums in Costa Rica, they decorate the lawns in front of various official buildings, hospitals and schools. Two of them were taken to the USA: one is exhibited in the Museum of the National geographical society(Washington, DC), and the other is in the courtyard of the Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnography, Harvard University (Cambridge, Massachusetts). Stone balls from Costa Rica also decorate the gardens of the rich, as symbols of their position in society.
The surrounding world contributes to this passion. The mysteries of nature, space, history - you can choose any and dedicate a single human life to its study. Perhaps one of the most mysterious and unusual mysteries modern world are stone balls discovered in Costa Rica.
Scientists cannot determine either the age of these structures, or who they were created by: man or nature. Only one thing is clear - the balls have existed for more than one thousand years. Their antiquity is also evidenced by the fact that when the conquistadors came to the land of America, the stones at local population no more legends, no more memories.
In favor natural origin says only that the balls are composed of igneous rocks. In addition, it is quite possible that on the site of modern Costa Rica in ancient times several volcanoes could wake up and erupt. However, the way these balls look suggests that they are most likely man-made creations.
Firstly, all the balls are of different sizes: from small ones that can fit in the palm of your hand, to huge ones, the mass of which is one and a half dozen tons.
Secondly, on many balls traces of grinding and alignment are noticeable. Only a person or a creature endowed with reason can engage in such actions. Modern analyzes show that the stones were subjected to repeated heating and cooling during processing.
Thirdly, these structures were located in a certain way. For example, a line of these balls was found, located strictly from north to south. The chances that this is how nature arranged them are extremely small. And some balls stood on pedestals.
Unfortunately, at present it is difficult to establish how, where exactly and in what order all the balls were located, it is very difficult. Many were dismantled by local residents to decorate their territory, some ended up in museums, and some were barbarously destroyed by workers who decided that gold was in the center of the sphere.
Nevertheless, the fact that they were located in a certain way and carried a certain information load is confirmed by images from space. Various geometric shapes and lines are clearly traced on them.
Perhaps it was the largest calendar of the ancient world, indicating the most important holidays and dates, as well as sacrifices. And perhaps they were signs for travelers and designated certain borders and state territories.
There is a version that the balls repeat the star map of antiquity. Or maybe these were certain sources of energy power? Who knows…
There is a possibility that they marked certain points on the planet. Since later similar structures were found all over the world, and even on the coast of the Arctic Ocean.
Or maybe the balls of Costa Rica, Egyptian pyramids, Stonehenge stones, dolmens and others mysterious structures antiquity, are these parts of one large system and mechanism? This mystery has yet to be unraveled by mankind.
In any case, their purpose and use currently remains unknown. No less a mystery is who created them. However, there is no doubt about one thing: if these were people, then their civilization possessed much knowledge and great technologies.
STONE BALLS OF COSTA RICA
Photograph by Connor Lee (GNU Free Documentation License). Stone ball in the courtyard of the National Museum of the capital
One of the greatest mysteries of pre-Columbian America is the amazing stone spheres of Costa Rica. Hundreds of these stone balls ranging in size from a few centimeters to 7 feet in diameter, the largest of which weighs 16 tons, have been found in the Dikvisa region of Palma Sur, near the Pacific coast in southern Costa Rica. They are mostly made of granodiorite, an igneous rock similar to granite. However, several specimens are carved from shell rock - a type of limestone, consisting mainly of shells and their fragments.
The spheres were first mentioned in the 1930s, when the United Fruit Company was clearing the jungle for banana plantations and other fruit plants. Company workers discovered the objects and, remembering the local legend about the spheres covering the golden cores, tried to crack them with dynamite, hoping to find the gold hidden inside. In 1948, Dr. Samuel Lothrop of the Peabody Museum at Harvard University and his wife began a comprehensive study of stone balls. In 1963, the results of the study were published. In his report, Lothrop described all 186 known specimens and noted that he had heard about the existence of another 45 balls somewhere in the Yalaki region, where they were located, but they were transported somewhere. Several spheres were found in the Pacific Ocean on the island of Kano, which is 12.5 miles to the southwest. This confirms the version that several hundred such stones were once created. Since the 40s of the XX century. balls began to be transported - often they were moved by rail from one end of the country to the other. Some of them can be seen in the National Museum, others - in the parks and gardens of the country's capital - San Jose. It is known that today only six stones remain where they were discovered.
Scientific analysis of the stone balls of Costa Rica has been going on for over 60 years. Work began in 1943 by archaeologist Doris Zemurray-Stone, the daughter of Samuel Zemurray, the founder of the United Fruit Company. She examined the stones found by the workers of the fruit company, and later became director of the National Museum of Costa Rica and in 1943 published her work in the American Antiquity magazine, placing in them five maps of the area, on which 44 stone balls were placed. According to Stone, these spheres could be cult statues, tombstones, or were elements of some kind of calendar. Lothrop's publication in 1963 also included maps of the locations where the spheres were discovered, data from a comparative analysis of pottery and metal artifacts found nearby that were related to stone balls, as well as many photographs and drawings depicting spheres, data on their sizes and notes on the location of the balls.
Later, in the 1950s, archaeological excavations were carried out, thanks to which stone spheres were discovered in the south of Costa Rica, along with pottery and other artifacts related to the cultures of pre-Columbian America. Since then, research has been regularly carried out, but the most thorough were the excavations, which in 1990-1995. conducted by archaeologist Iphigenia Quintanilla of the National Museum of Costa Rica. For many years, archaeologists have been trying to figure out the origin of these strange spheres. Whether they are natural objects or man-made remains a subject of much debate. Some geologists claim that the stones are of natural origin. They put forward the theory that magma rising into the air after a volcanic eruption settles on a hot, ash-covered valley, then the globules of magma cool and form spheres. According to another version, granite blocks were placed in specially dug pits at the bottom of a huge waterfall and, under the influence of the flow of falling water, gradually acquired an almost perfect spherical shape. But the version that the stones were created by man seems more likely, especially considering that granodiorite, from which the spheres are mainly made, does not occur in this area. The deposits of this rock are located in the Talamanca mountain range, about 50 miles from the find site. Archaeologist Iphigenia Quintanilla identified the source of the raw materials during field research: she found boulders that can be called unfinished examples of stone spheres. During the excavations of Quintanilla, fragments of balls were also found, which made it possible to restore the method of their creation. Thus, in order to give the stones a rounded shape, they most likely did this: first, an approximately rounded boulder was alternately affected by heat and cold until cracks appeared in the rock, then the surface was leveled using heavy stone sledgehammers, probably made of of the same material, and polished with some kind of stone tool.
There is only one objection: the stones have an almost perfect spherical shape. They are hewn to within "0.5 inch ±0.2%". The theory would be flawless if the boulders were not carved with such precision. However, the surface of the balls is not absolutely perfect: the diameters of some differ by 5 cm from the parameters of a regular sphere. It is also unclear how the inhabitants of pre-Columbian America transported and installed them in the right places. Such skills indicate a highly developed culture and a well-organized community (although if the stones were cut right in the quarry, in the mountains, it was not difficult to roll the balls down).
The question of who created these mysterious spheres and why is a more difficult task. According to archeological data, the balls were carved during two periods. The earlier of these, the Aguas Buenas period (AD 100–500), contains only a few balls. Most of the stone spheres in the lowlands of the Terraba River were created in the second period - Chirikui (800-1500). However, this does not help to clarify the purpose of the spheres. Let's leave aside such a convenient explanation as the intervention of aliens and Atlanteans. The original theory is that they were created by a highly developed prehistoric culture and served as antennas of the ancient worldwide electrical network. However, without concrete evidence, this theory is baseless and seems as mythical as the legend that the locals had a potion that could soften rocks. Iver Zapp and George Erickson, authors of Atlantis in America: Navigators of the Ancient World (1998), argued that the spheres were designed as navigational tools for a highly developed ancient race seafarers, a race that inspired the Greek philosopher Plato to write about the disappeared land - Atlantis. According to this theory, the spheres must have been close enough to the coast that they could be seen by sailors, and this does not correspond to their original location. In addition, this version assumes the accuracy of the placement of the balls, which cannot be said about the instances that have not been moved.
For sure, it is not established what these objects were created for. It is especially difficult to find out because most of spheres moved to other places. This issue is important because the arrangement of the orbs probably played an important role in the lives of the people who created them. Given the data now known, the most plausible is the assumption that the spheres were some kind of marks, perhaps the boundaries of land plots or symbols of social status. It is also worth paying attention to the fact that initially many balls were arranged in such a way that each place corresponded to the position of the Sun, the Moon and all the planets known at that time. There was even a theory that they reflected the entire solar system. In the 40s of the 20th century, while studying the balls, Lothrop noticed that some of them rolled down from the nearby hills, on which there were once dwellings. Perhaps the balls at one time were located in the center of the settlements, on the tops of the hills. In this case, they could not be used in astronomy and, of course, in navigation. Most likely, over the more than a thousand-year history of the existence of the spheres, they 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 perhaps even more significant) as, in fact, its result.
Ever since the balloons were discovered in Costa Rica, they have been constantly exposed to the harmful effects of temperature changes, rain damage and occasional fires. In 1997, land management services began to be created to protect holy places and landscapes around the world. In 2001, with the assistance of various government organizations, the National Museum of Costa Rica began transporting the balls from San Jose to the places where they were discovered through the high mountain range. They are currently under protection in the reserve, but when the cultural center is built, the balls will be placed in it and can be seen in the same places where they originally were in the Dikvis Delta.
Archaeologists still find balls in the muddy deposits of the Dikvis River Delta. Today, the stones can be seen in museums in Costa Rica, decorating lawns in front of various official buildings, hospitals and schools. Two of them were taken to the United States: one is on display at the Museum of the National Geographic Society (Washington, DC), and the other is in the courtyard of the Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnography, Harvard University (Cambridge, Massachusetts). Orbs also decorate the gardens of the rich, as symbols of their position in society. Many stones have long since changed their usual location, but some of them again perform the functions for which they were created.
A call from the Kotovsky district of the Volgograd region from the honored worker of culture of Russia, the artist Vasily Krutskevich, made me hastily get ready for the road. It was about stone balls found in a ravine near the village of Mokraya Olkhovka. Stormy melt waters, due to an unprecedented snowy winter, collapsed part of the slopes of the ravine, and the world appeared amazing structures- stone balls more than a meter in diameter, identical in shape, as if calibrated.
“Material?.. Well, something similar to hard quartz sandstone of a layered structure,” said Vasily Dmitrievich. - But the most striking thing is that the balls are hollow inside! Rather, they are filled with something like grayish-yellow sand. It feels like the petrified eggs of a huge animal. Maybe a dinosaur? Find the same ... - I suggested.
- No, it's too big. Fossilized dinosaur eggs found in different parts of the world range in size from 18 to 24 centimeters and weigh up to five kilograms. And here it weighs almost a ton ...
An endless belt of asphalt led us from Volgograd to the Kotovsky district. In a shallow ravine with a dry sandy path in the place of a spring stream, we descend in a chain led by Krutskevich. It includes researchers from Volzhsky Valery Moskalev, Sergey Lobanov with two young assistants, Volgograd writer Oleg Bazhanov and the author of these lines.
We see in a sheer wall of red sandstone a ball half the height of a man with a cracked stone surface. Several similar balls lie in a row at a distance. Two spheres are broken, inside is really a void filled with sand.
Most of all attract balls that are not broken. They are whimsically covered with a hard mesh resembling petrified blood vessels. This is reminiscent of a chicken egg at the stage when the embryo of the future chicken is being formed (photo # 1).
True, the balls do not look like laying eggs: the distance of the extreme balls from each other is at least two hundred meters. They stretch in a chain along the bottom of the beam. Several spheres in the ground lie right under their feet, as if left in a muddy bottom, untouched for many millions of years. Such a time period - tens of millions of years - we, without saying a word, determine for a mysterious find. The abyss of time that you can see, touch, capture in a photo!..
- Come here! Sergey Lobanov, a young researcher, called us. “There is something strange here!”
He clears with a sapper shovel the roundness that is hidden in the ground. Near strange building five meters long, consisting, as it were, of three fused "eggs". The structure of the surface resembles the shell of a giant tortoise. (photo No. 2.) In total, we counted twelve balls in the ravine, except for three spheres connected together.
Visitors from the Mesozoic
When everyone was already satisfied with the contemplation of the mysterious spheres, made measurements, took samples, the time for hypotheses began.
The first thing I thought was: is this something like traces of volcanic activity? Bubbles of molten lava rock bubbled out of a crevice at the bottom of the Tethys paleoocean, which once splashed here, and such balls formed ... But the objections of ourselves rejected a convenient version: the material does not look like lava, and it is too structured according to uniformity. There is always a petrified shell 20–30 centimeters thick and an internal cavity 50–60 cm in diameter. It is unlikely that the volcano will create such identical “bulges”, and traces of ancient fire-breathing mountains have not been found in these places before.
Or are they really the eggs of some gigantosaurs that lived millions of years ago on Earth? These strange balls are painfully similar to giant eggs or, let's say, to eggs.
We left home full of doubts and incomprehensible intrigue. Stone balls excited the mind, and soon we again wanted to go to an inconspicuous gully near Wet Olkhovka. The “folk” path has already been beaten and trodden here - inquisitive compatriots are drawn from all over the area to gawk at the miracle of nature.
Upon arrival, we immediately notice losses: two balls have disappeared. To whom and for what purposes they were needed is unclear. Worse, the balls continue to be smashed with sledgehammers.
By the way, Professor of Saratov State University, Doctor of Geological and Mineralogical Sciences Yevgeny Petrushov recently visited here. The scientist determined the age of unique formations at 180 million years. And by this alone, you see, Kotov's balls acquire a special value.
New research has yielded results. There were about thirty balls, if we count the broken formations and those that lie almost completely buried in the ground. They are approximately on the same plane, a meter above or a meter below. Like they were buried in mud. The sandy path along the bottom of the beam is entirely an internal substance of broken balls. There are several "egg" balls connected together.
“Note that it looks like a plant organism, and I do not exclude that here we observe a pronounced mineral form of life,” the researcher summed up his conclusions. anomalous phenomena Vladimir Efimchuk. - There is a wonderful work by Albert Bokovikov, in which the silicon form of life is practically proven using the example of the mineral agate. His research is confirmed by other mineral scientists.
Indeed, there was a feeling that unknown giant organisms developed and were at different stages of maturation. Many had already burst, been washed away by water, and only strong stone cores and fragments of the stone shell, stretching like a train along the bed of spring streams, showed that these strange organisms were also here. Laboratory analysis of gray sand from the balls showed that it was 80 percent organic. So it was a living organism!
Miracle around the world
The stone riddle in the Kotovsky district was very captivated by its secret Volga citizen Yuri Peskishev, a researcher, a chemical engineer by education. He did a great job of identifying numerous similar finds of strange balls in different parts of the world via the Internet.
Yuri now knows a lot about dinosaur eggs: he found detailed descriptions and photographs in China, India, Peru, Mongolia, etc. The egg clutches are laid in a circle and are all petrified. But all are small in size (photo No. 3).
But large spheres are found in various parts of the planet.
The small fishing village of Moeraki on the coast of New Zealand has become famous all over the world thanks to geological miracle- the so-called "Moeraki boulders", huge spherical stones scattered across sandy beach. Boulders of almost perfect spherical shape, with a diameter of 1.5 to 2.2 meters. Their age is estimated at 60 million years.
“I saw the pictures,” Peskishev called me, “some of the balls resemble those of Kotovsky!” They have the same grid of veins on the surface... (photo #4).
In the southeast of Costa Rica lie several dozen strange stone balls with a diameter of up to three meters, which weigh under 20 tons. The material is different - from volcanic rock to granite. All of them are almost perfectly round, and have traces of processing. The most surprising thing: the age of the mysterious spheres is supposedly about five hundred years. But it is not clear to whom and for what purposes it was necessary to grind them. After all, this is a very long titanic work!
Stone spheres were found in Mexican silver mines, in Guatemala they found balls that somehow seemed to “crawl” into the mountains to a height of more than 2 thousand meters. The Arctic island of Champa, which is part of Franz Josef Land, is also dotted with perfectly round stones. They lie like cannonballs stacked in a pyramid. The local balls are clearly of natural origin.
There are also places in Russia where you can admire strange spherical formations. For example, on the Vyatka River in the Kirov region. They were discovered by workers in a quarry for the extraction of building materials. The age of the balls is approximately 253 million years, the sizes are different - from half a meter to two in diameter. Weight - one and a half to two tons, and the largest stone - 4 tons (photo No. 5). In 2007, more than 15 balls from 0.7 to one and a half meters in diameter were found at the bottom of the Black Sea near Gelendzhik. Most of the balls had cruciform notches. Geologists and historians concluded that the ball brought from the depths was artificially carved, and a “side” and an X-shaped cut were visible on its surface.
In general, stone balls are not uncommon. In Kazakhstan, when developing a sand pit on great depth several large stone spheres were discovered. They are also found in coal mines. In the region of Southern Mangyshlak, in the town of Turysh, Ustyurt, Karagie, whole placers of mysterious spheres of various sizes and configurations were found (photo No. 6). There are ball giants in Mexico, the USA, Brazil, Tanzania, Romania, Egypt and other places. And now also in the Volgograd region ... And more and more often when explaining the nature of the balls, we came across the word "concretions".
Is it lightning?
It turns out that concretions are from the Latin word concretio - accretion, condensation. These are concretions, rounded mineral formations in sedimentary rocks. The centers of such contraction can be grains of minerals, shells, teeth and bones of fish, plant remains - that's where the organics come from! Most of them are formed in porous sedimentary rocks - sands and clays. Some scientists emphasize that the concretion turns into a ball and grows evenly when substances are deposited in a rock that is equally permeable in all directions. As the ancestral home of the balls, the muddy ocean floor is most often called. Typical concretions are pearls in mollusk shells, stones in the kidneys, pancreas.
Apparently, these are actually concretions, although there is still a lot of incomprehensibility here ... And suddenly, one day, Yuri Peskishev announced a new hypothesis.
- It is possible that these are traces of ball lightning in the ground! - he said. — G. V. Tarasenko, a geologist-geophysicist from Kazakhstan, is studying such nodules, and he has quite convincing evidence.
“Yes, these are spherical concretions,” said Gennady Tarasenko, Candidate of Sciences, when asked by a correspondent about the nature of “Kotovsky” balls. — Their origin is associated with electrical discharges in the earth's crust and mantle, in zones of active tectonic faults. Real underground thunderstorms occur along them with lightning tens of kilometers long. At the end of linear lightning, their closest relatives, ball lightning, also appear. Many balls are 90 percent iron oxide. Iron is attracted by electromagnetic fields, thus forming a concretion. Only it was millions of years ago, and the balls became stone. But what is interesting is that underground lightning appears where there are oil deposits. After all, oil is a dielectric.
So, a new version… No one has yet come to a unified hypothesis about the nature of balls. One thing is clear: the find near the village of Mokraya Olkhovka is the rarest geological phenomenon, and it must certainly be preserved as an interesting one. natural phenomenon. Whether the stone balls are concretions, a product of plant origin, or the creation of underground fireballs, in any case, we should not lose this phenomenon due to our indifference and neglect. Dig some balls out of the ground, equip here something like a museum under open sky, and here, in the Volga steppes, they will travel curious tourists, it will be possible to organize exciting sightseeing tours. People go to the end of the world New Zealand or to Costa Rica to admire the strange formations!
