Mysterious Stone Spheres of Costa Rica and a US Agent

Hiya ATS. A chance news article reminded me of something I first read about in a Von Daniken book. As some of you know, I'm not really into mysteries and usually opt for the scientific explanations. The article mentioned the curious stone spheres of Costa Rica and revived some sense of that wonder and curiosity I used to feel for ancient mysteries. I set off around the web looking for more information and found espionage and a remaining mystery...



These intriguing items litter the beautiful Costa Rica...when I say litter, I mean there are hundreds. They're found under jungle cover, hidden beneath foliage or half-buried in the ground. When we think about the spheres we tend to imagine the 12 feet tall ones that get the attention. Some may be surprised to find that they come in many different sizes...as small as a child's fist in some cases. Made from diorite (a very hard rock) by people who hadn't yet discovered iron and for what reasons? We've seen what the Egyptians could do with diorite and stone tools...but their intentions remain clearer.

What did the people of Costa Rica hope to achieve by creating hundreds of stone spheres? What did these balls symbolise and why is the memory of their creation lost in the dimness of the past?

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/9f8efbab81ab.jpg[/atsimg]

They'd stood like silent sentinels from the past, hidden away in the shadows and forgotten paths of the island's forests. Much like Stonehenge, they withstood the passage of time and people lived their lives around them without really paying them the attention they once demanded. So it remained until the 1930s and the business interests of the modern world came calling in the shape of the United Fruit Company. They began a land clearance for a banana plantation and discovered a number of these big objects getting in the way of the 20th Century....they used dynamite and steam shovels to shift them.

Luckily for history, a relative of the fruit company, Dr Doris Stone was a historian and she stepped in to study them before all hope was lost. By 1943 she'd had her findings published and caught the attention of archaeologist Samuel Kirkland Lothrop. The image below is he and his wife (I bet you all recognise that one) and adjacent is a sphere being dragged away in chains...



His wife wrote in her journal the very same questions we are asking decades later...

Why should hundreds of these perfectly shaped spheres, ranging in diameter from a few inches to eight feet, be scattered through the jungles southwestern Costa Rica? How could prehistoric people have shaped them with only the crudest of tools? And how could they have moved them over hill and dale from the distant sources of stone? No other stone balls of like size have been found anywhere else in the world, except for a few in the highlands of Guatemala and in Vera Cruz. The smooth, beautiful and almost perfectly rounded spheres give mute testimony to the artistic powers of an ancient people and tax modern man’s ingenuity in explaining their workmanship and significance.

Prehistoric Stone Balls--a Mystery By Eleanor Lothrop

This is where the story gets a little more interesting. Lothrop was a genuine archaeologist and a secret agent working for the US Naval Intelligence in WW2. By the time he got to Costa Rica he'd been working for none other than J. Edgar Hoover as part of the Special Intelligence Service (SIS). These guys were expected to engage in espionage, grooming informants and destabilising 'anti-American' interests...the proto-CIA. His time in Costa Rica was openly studying the spheres and culture, which could provide excellent cover for other activities. He'd spent time in Peru and had been so engrossed in the spy game that he voiced concerns of blowing his cover on either side. He simply wasn't showing any evidence of being an archaeologist...

"As regards the archaeological cover for my work in Peru, it was based on the understanding that I was to be in the country six months or less. It is wearing thin and some day somebody is going to start asking why an archaeologist spends most of his time in towns asking questions. This won't happen as soon as it might because the Rockefeller grant for research in Peru makes me a contact man between the field workers and the government."

Anthropologists as Spies

According to the FOIA mentioned in the above link, Lothrop resigned from the SIS in late 1944. In a biography after his death, the author doesn't seem to know about his past services and remarks that Lothrop was an independent man of means until his death in '65. Does that sound like a retired agent? Who knows?

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/09351581eea9.jpg[/atsimg]

Lothrop's studies of the Costa Rican culture that possibly created the spheres came up with a number of artifacts and suggestions of what some of these spheres could be. Pottery pieces found underneath and around spheres have been dated back to the Aguas Buenas and Chiriquí cultures...around 6th century. As the pieces were underneath the sphere...the expectation is that they were there first. Other pieces of potsherds have been dated to between the 10th and 15th century...source

This is taken as evidence that the people making the spheres must have been settled for almost a thousand years and creating spheres. Of course, if anyone had moved the spheres during that space of time, we'd have even less idea about their age...

The latest guy to research these enigmatic spheres is Dr John W. Hoopes. He's got a lot of the answers and is one of two leading experts on the subject.

"We really don't know why they were made," Hoopes said. "The people who made them didn't leave any written records. We're left to archeological data to try to reconstruct the context. The culture of the people who made them became extinct shortly after the Spanish conquest. So, there are no myths or legends or other stories that are told by the indigenous people of Costa Rica about why they made these spheres."

University of Kansas researcher investigates mysterious stone spheres in Costa Rica

The answers we want are out of his reach too...it's possible we'll never know for sure what drove the people of Costa Rica to devote their energies to these stone mysteries. Sun worship? Agriculture? Status? Calendars? Religion?

Eleanor Lothrop would have made a perfect ATSer when she wrote this...

Some day more information may be procured, but meanwhile the balls remain as enigmatical as the huge statues on Easter Island or the monuments of Stonehenge. In each of these places, enormous stones have been quarried, shaped, and moved without mechanical devices except ropes for hauling them and inclined ramps for lifting them.

Maybe our own civilization contains elements of material culture that will survive all knowledge of their purpose. So it goes: one era’s triumph is the next era’s riddle.

Thanks for reading this far

EDIT to promote Costa Rica back to part of the mainland...must be a timeline shift...it was an island last year...ahem



[edit on 9-4-2010 by Kandinsky]

Maybe those go inside the giant stone jars of Laos.

en.wikipedia.org...

We have one group making giant stone balls, and across the ocean we have another group making giant stone jars.

Nicely researched and presented. I had never heard of these before and I am quite intrigued. Wow. I wonder if these were meant to represent constellations and/or planets laid out (in their original locations) in a sort of star map on the ground? Whatever the reason they are very impressive.

Costa Rica IS NOT an island.

whoever wrote that article didn't do enough research.

I've been to Costa Rica and I have family there.

reply to post by grey580


There ARE island off of Costa Rica, though. Perhaps that is just what he meant.

(edit) ok I looked at all of his source material and then google maps... they are on Costa Rica's Isla de Cano. So yes they ARE on an island.

[edit on 9/4/2010 by Chamberf=6]

[edit on 9/4/2010 by Chamberf=6]

Originally posted by Chamberf=6
I wonder if these were meant to represent constellations and/or planets laid out (in their original locations) in a sort of star map on the ground?

That's what crossed my mind exactly.... if you hadn't written it, I would have. I had totally forgotten about this phenomenon. Extremely curious, and interesting I might add.

reply to post by hhcore


Yeah, and now its almost impossible to examine such a possiblity since over hundreds of years, who knows how many times they have been moved and rolled around from their original locations?

Forgive me for posting this without actual source references but:

I read somewhere years ago that the legend was atleast one of these granite spheres contained all the ancient knowledge of man's origins inside it. Originally they were repositories of information, sort of like crystal memory banks. Thousands of years after that technology was lost they became status symbols among the local tribes. The sphere at the center of town square in San Jose is quite remarkable.

Kandinsky,

You know full well that these are the gamepieces left from a marbles game when the Nephilim had to beat it out of there in a hurry when they heard about the wrath of God.

Harte

reply to post by Chamberf=6


OK that makes more sense.
Costa Rica has a few islands off the coast.
I just didn't want anyone thinking that Costa Rica itself was an island.

They were for their strong man competitions!!!!

Lol.

Interesting info though for sure.

Edit to add:

Have they ever broken one open....?

[edit on 9-4-2010 by Crossfate]

Originally posted by Crossfate
Have they ever broken one open....?

Hell yes. With dynamite!

RE Stone Spheres

From The answer is right n front of you department

--------------------------------

Costa Rica is a series of valleys and steep hills. there isnt a flat place in the country.. the small flat areas are where you often build a village...surrounded by steep valleys.

*IF* I were king in a mountain top village before there was gunpowder, I would use gravity to fight my enemies and stack up huge piles of these things at the tops of hills, as a deterrent to being invaded, or having my wife and her jewels stolen, and my heart cut out as an offering...

I would make them out of harder than normal stone so that I could use them again, like the space shuttle.

If a band of marauders were to come from the next valley... I would mow them down like bowling pins on the steep paths going up the village.

These tactics would work best when there was dense growth so that you could not see them coming, and time to get out of the way. The paths going up and down could have been gently engineered to guide these projectiles...

And you wondered why the Inca built cities on the tops of mountains,, can't roll any big boulders over them there... and you can mow down the approaching enemy as if you were bowling..

Originally posted by Kandinsky

[edit on 9-4-2010 by seataka]

Originally posted by Harte
Kandinsky,

You know full well that these are the gamepieces left from a marbles game when the Nephilim had to beat it out of there in a hurry when they heard about the wrath of God.

Harte

....possibly

I thought the espionage aspect was intriguing...perfect cover back then. I plan to read some more about that angle and post anything people might find interesting. Ties in with the Iraqi Timegate Recovery Team...archaeologists? I think not!

Soul spheres? In a way. I remember in a class we discuss the easter island ones moai or whatever and pretty much concluded it was status symbols due to boredom. In a way, everyone made one that represented them to create 'immortality'.

In that case easter island had scarce resources and lots of infighting (as the 'big-eared people' or something invaded them from the sea) and in aftermath the remainder were desperate and used carvings as a method of control and to occupy themselfs from life, after food went scarce they went cannibal (far as I remember).

And as well they had a strange cult, they had these ridiculously elaborate homes built in to hills, too small for people though? They were chicken coops, it was as if they worshipped the chickens, treated them better than people. But understandable if chickens were their lifeline.

I guess im kinda off topic but I could imagine, island scenario, the same thing happening. It seems disappointing to chock it up to boredom of islanders who have no where to go nothing to do kind of thing, but thats what I think. Makes sense to me. That or the calendar idea, ancient people liked to leave lasting marks, ie stonework, and if it could be moved could track the stars, or at least one significant date (that they would line up to the stones).

reply to post by Kandinsky


So they were broken open with dynamite or just shifted. Anything cool inside?

Was hoping they were giant geodes.

Edit:

No I got it! Remember "The day the earth stood still"? It's gotta be unactivated orbs like from that movie!!!



[edit on 9-4-2010 by Crossfate]

One things for sure,

Them Costa Ricans had some big balls.

H.

These are obviously the first sign of Capitalism. I have seen these outside many a Target store, but they are painted red and used for parking barricades.

Who knew the Costa Ricans would have such foresight to corner the market on this type of thing thousands of years ago.

I should wonder if these stone sheres show any tool marks or any indications of being hand made....?
Here in nanaimo BC can. we have stone spheres that are encased in other stone....yes completely....
they are the result of a volcanic past and were naturally produced .
They apear encased in the stone cliffs along some roads and on some beaches...
Its is remakable how absolutely round they come, though not all absolute spheres, there are many that come very close....
Perhaps the puerto rican ones are similarly formed and were removed from some other site in which the same volcanic action as happened here created them....
they could then have been freed from the softer sandstone in which they apear and used as some form of worship or ceremonial objects?
can provide pics if you think i am full of BS...

Originally posted by seataka
RE Stone Spheres

From The answer is right n front of you department

--------------------------------

Costa Rica is a series of valleys and steep hills. there isnt a flat place in the country.. the small flat areas are where you often build a village...surrounded by steep valleys.

*IF* I were king in a mountain top village before there was gunpowder, I would use gravity to fight my enemies and stack up huge piles of these things at the tops of hills, as a deterrent to being invaded, or having my wife and her jewels stolen, and my heart cut out as an offering...

I would make them out of harder than normal stone so that I could use them again, like the space shuttle.

If a band of marauders were to come from the next valley... I would mow them down like bowling pins on the steep paths going up the village.

These tactics would work best when there was dense growth so that you could not see them coming, and time to get out of the way. The paths going up and down could have been gently engineered to guide these projectiles...

And you wondered why the Inca built cities on the tops of mountains,, can't roll any big boulders over them there... and you can mow down the approaching enemy as if you were bowling..

[edit on 9-4-2010 by seataka]

I like this idea. It is the most practical explanation I have heard.