Mysterious Stone Spheres of Costa Rica and a US Agent

reply to post by hhcore


Perhaps the leaders of the civilization got interested in the solar or lunar cycles and guessed correctly that all of the planets and stars were spheres? Although we have lost the original orientation of the spheres could there still be any mathematical information encoded in the different diameters?

Originally posted by seataka
RE Stone Spheres

From The answer is right n front of you department

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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...

I really like your theory. That's one plausible-sounding possibility. The other possibility I'm thinking (and maybe it's way out there) is that they could have been decorations for an elaborate garden or palace that might have existed once upon a time. People might have moved the spheres out of their original locations, leading them to eventually spread all over the island. It could be that once upon a time they were arranged systematically, maybe even according to size. They could have served a purely aesthetic purpose.

Another thought I had was that maybe (and I don't exactly know how) they could have been marker stones, maybe used to find one's way through the jungle. Elaborate marker stones they would be, but when I think of some of the ancient monuments that have been found, many of them are astounding in complexity.

There are actually stone balls in New Zealand as well, although these are purported to be natural...one must wonder.
Heres thelink -www.thunderbolts.info...

Originally posted by Bordon81
reply to post by hhcore

 

Perhaps the leaders of the civilization got interested in the solar or lunar cycles and guessed correctly that all of the planets and stars were spheres? Although we have lost the original orientation of the spheres could there still be any mathematical information encoded in the different diameters?

I would be interested to know if there is any connection as such.... But - like Chamberf=6 stated, with all the moving around of the stones from original locations will be deemed impossible to know. If there is a very studious group of researchers willing to measure each stone for a scale model of the stars..... well that just seems ridiculously impossible . Especially if there are more stones covered up with earth, or otherwise hidden. But then again, with the volcanic nature of earth, it very well could be natural I suppose. Just another thing to go into the WTF category.

If i had to move a lot of stone from quarries to a site i wanted to build something.

I could do it like the Egyptians and drag a bunch of stone blocks with a lot of manpower.

Or just cut the stones round and roll them to the building site with a few people and levers.
And yes i might lose a few in the mud or other ways, but once the ones got to my building site they then could be cut into blocks for buildings.

Originally posted by stirling
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...

I was thinking along the same lines and came up with a paper on something called "spheroidal fracturing" extract below:

In the mountainous Rio Icacos watershed in northeastern Puerto Rico, quartz diorite bedrock weathers spheroidally, producing a 0.2–2 m thick zone of partially weathered rock layers (2.5 cm thickness each) called rindlets, which form concentric layers around corestones. Spheroidal fracturing has been modeled to occur when a weathering reaction with a positive DV of reaction builds up elastic strain energy. The rates of spheroidal fracturing and saprolite formation are therefore controlled by the rate of the weathering reaction.

www.essc.psu.edu...

Frankly I am not sure if they mean the end product are spheres but it is food for thought.

Also here is an extract from :

"Yosemite National Park: A Complete Hikers Guide"

books.google.co.uk... &ei=xLq_S4-HK4e80gSllM2ZCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CCEQ6AEwBzgK#v=onepage&q=diorite%20ball&f=false

Which describes beach ball sized spheres so as you have stated it is possible for these shapes to be naturally occuring.


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Hello! My mother went to Costa Rica the country not an island three years ago, they people there think the Chinese brought the rocks on boats as
balasts to weigh the boats down? Or, Maybe they are star markers ?

These are very interesting and still a mystery. I once saw a clip of a man making one, it was about five feet in diameter. He was rubbing, rubbing with an ancient tool, and I was trying to find the clip to see how long it took him to make it. It was months.

I will post this brief clip, although there is nothing really new in it, just some footage of the area. There are also many of these in Bosnia, mostly found in creekbeds, and near old cemetery sites.

I thought someone might find the footage from Bosnia interesting. Their's are not quite as tidily groomed as the ones in Costa rica. Yes, take a walk on the wild side.

reply to post by ladyinwaiting


WOW thanks for the Bosnia vid....I had no idea.

Maybe they were just carved longer ago? Maybe they went to South America?

Hmmmmm.

Hey Kandinski, nice job! Very well presented and documented.

I first encountered the spheres of Costa Rica while in my teens, reading a Berlitz book (NOT the one about the Bermuda Triangle ). I thought about the star/planet map back then and I still think it may have been the case but with all the moving around of so many spheres we cannot verify this with adequate certainty.

Unless of course we end finding a huge cannon

[edit on 9-4-2010 by Maegnas]

is it possible they were formed when the earth was? they seem too perfect like they were molten, then formed.

Originally posted by MR BOB
is it possible they were formed when the earth was? they seem too perfect like they were molten, then formed.

I can see where you and other members are coming from this. There are similar spheres in nature, I'm thinking of the South African ones. The spheres in this case are almost certainly made by artificial means. Such is the certainty that it's the only perspective on them.

Funnily enough, there are no 'unfinished' spheres near to where they were presumably quarried or recovered. No stone hammers and no chipping floors where we'd expect to find evidence of the original carving. Interesting huh?

reply to post by Kandinsky


Of Course I want one . In a fountain on my front lawn. Or in the back on one of those pedestals.

Get me one, Kandinsky. *flutters eyelashes*.

reply to post by ladyinwaiting
Are you asking for my balls?

There's a couple of pics of them in the garden...here...and nicer one here too.

reply to post by Kandinsky


Eeeek! Didn't see that coming.

They are lovely though, and I'm glad to see the countries where they are indigenous making artful and decorative use of them.

I had no idea that stone balls were so widespread in fact you could almost call them a global phenomena

More balls here

As that seems to be a slow site here are some pics :


















Also a speculative theory on manufacture.

Lange, Frederick W. (ed.)
1996 Paths Through Central American Prehistory: Essays in Honor of Wolfgang Haberland. University of Colorado Press, Boulder

The vast majority the balls are made of a granodiorite that outcrops in the lower Terraba River. Quintanilla has located the raw material source and some boulders that may be unfinished balls. In her excavations, she also found flakes from the balls that suggested a method of manufacture. The stone from which they are made, when heated and then rapidly cooled (as with fire and cold water), exfoliates in thin, onion-like layers. Done repeatedly, this technique could have been used to shape boulders into their near-perfect sphericity. After this, they were polished to a high luster with ground stone tools.

Link to above




edits to include manufacture theory and picture format

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reply to post by sherpa
Bloody good post. Cheers!

reply to post by seataka


While you do propose an interesting theory, why would they make such huge boulders and try to roll them up the hill? I could see using smaller ones as they can be much easier to aim and toss down the hill. It seems it would be easier to just use rocks and pelt the people below. It doesn't make sense to spend all that time carving near perfect spheres when the basic roundness would do the job also.

Also, wouldn't there be more evidence of a war going on than the hundreds of different sized boulders on the ground? And how many boulders have been found not near a hill at all?

Originally posted by kidflash2008
reply to post by seataka

 

While you do propose an interesting theory, why would they make such huge boulders and try to roll them up the hill? I could see using smaller ones as they can be much easier to aim and toss down the hill. It seems it would be easier to just use rocks and pelt the people below. It doesn't make sense to spend all that time carving near perfect spheres when the basic roundness would do the job also.

Also, wouldn't there be more evidence of a war going on than the hundreds of different sized boulders on the ground? And how many boulders have been found not near a hill at all?

1) So they would available to the village to roll DOWN the hill as enemies acended.

2) Re Big boulders... one of those big boulders... would flatten a good portion of an entire approaching army. And yes I would need more than one, piled up, as "ammo" cause sometimes I dont make a strike.

3) And if the target was a bunch of guys with wooden spears and blow guns and leather catapults and they were mowed down by those big rocks... in 2000 years athe rocks would be just fine... but the leather and bone would be long gone..

and u asked how many not near a hill... dunno...