Has The Amazing Purpose Of Petrospheres AKA Neolithic Stone Balls Finally Been Discovered?

reply to post by Robonakka


The size is too small, I had that idea also... I would go with game peaces...

reply to post by MysterX


WOW! Nice catch, OP! That's pretty amazing. If those are indeed representations of pollen, then it's clear they could SEE the real thing, microscopically, way back whenever! No debate at all. ONLY question would be, how accurate are the dates on the stones? If definitely OLD, as in, uncovered someplace they had to be older than a certain point, etc, then that's something!

I have long believed that there has been technology that was lost, because of some cataclysm, and something like this is pretty good proof!

Some fantastic thoughts and theories being offered from you good people, thanks.

To answer a question about what material these objects are made from, mainly stone of all kinds...some are made from sandstone, easy to carve, but probably wouldn't have been hard or resilient enough for weapons, or Bolos.

Others are made from Granites, including the extremely hard and difficult to carve Diorite.

It's also possible some were made from wood, although unless preserved would have rotted away. Others may have been carved from bone or ivory, and could possibly survive the passing of time...still waiting to be found somewhere in Scotland or elsewhere.

Wooden and bone spheres, carved in the same manner as these stone examples, would probably go some way to excluding them as weapons too, as they would be too light and brittle.

It's still entirely possible that there are many more yet to be found..only something like 390 have been found, plenty more could be laying around to be discovered.

It's also possible that the Celts or Picts didn't actually carve these things in their entirety...they may have found them already carved, and then further refined the designs on them, adding spirals, whirls and pictograms, maybe even thousands of years after they were originally made by persons unknown. The evidence of this is yet to be found, but would come from finding more examples of these stones in layers of strata much older than those occupied by the Celts or the Picts.

The posters speaking about platonic solids could be onto something...what though, eludes me to be honest..but perhaps there is a connection with sacred geometry.

I love the idea of the water drop magnification...perhaps the 'laser' element could simply have been a guided shaft of light from the Sun? Plenty of Neolithic monuments are focused on rising and setting of the Sun, perhaps the lightpaths were constructed to focus and concentrate beams of light for the purpose of making the unseen...seen. It's as valid a reason for these precise constructions as any, and i'd imagine would have had a profound effect, being able to see essentially invisible objects, like grains of pollen projected onto a wall at certain times of the year.

The effect would be like magic and very spiritual i'd imagine.

You guys are great, keep the theories coming!

reply to post by MysterX


further to the bolo theory, which imo is by far the most likely and best supported at present, these "balls" at three inches are the right size (counter to panic2k11 above) - the balls themselves do no have to cause damage as the purpose of the weapon is to entangle. this could have been used for hunting and acquiring slaves (which the celts certainly engaged in).

also it is not unusual that granite or diorite would be used, and they are infact emminently workable - a short trip on google will show this, but here are some easily found examples..






images2.bridgemanart.com...
in this pic the ground axe on the left is diorite

obvs the material is hard, but that just means it takes time to work it - the balls that you show may have taken a day or two to work but thats all.

effective bolos can and are made from wood, bone and antler too - there are a couple of examples in the link i posted on page one. all of these materials are dense (with wood you just need the right variety, and with bone/antler you just need to choose the right section of material to work - moose antler, or thick deer antler near the crown is extremely dense for example).

i think that with the idea that they are game pieces is a possibility, though celts and proto celts certainly had the skills to make them much smaller, if we are talking a board game such as fidchel which is mentioned in irish mythology for example - marble sized pieces would be more like it.

i'm open minded as to their purpose, just wanted to contribute

reply to post by MysterX


I hate cluttering excellent threads with dumb one liners that only the poster thinks are cute... but...

"I got yer neolithic stone balls right here!"

With that outta my system I want to say that the OP is cool if for nothing else than creative thinking. That ancient man might have had a way to see the microscopic through shamanic trance or by creating lenses isn't impossible.

It's just that I have a problem with many ideas about the identity and use of ancient objects, both mainstream and not. The objects we can identify since they're still being used in nearly the same form or spelled out in diagrams is one thing, but some objects are wide open to many interpretations and definitive labels can't work unless we invent time machines.

Throwing around ideas is still fun, though, and even constructive. I think they were for cosmetic purposes, as in Trucknuts, or doggy nueticles... round fertility symbols, sure.

Originally posted by evc1shop
I looked at this thread earlier today and wasn't sure what to make of it. Then, tonight while checking out this other ATS post, I was amazed to see your spheres in this post , check out the 3rd video in this post titled Sacred Geometry Explained Part 2 of 2. At about 3 Minutes 24 seconds into it.
Possible Explaination
I am not trying to take the wind out of your sails and I'm not saying he has nailed it either but it is convincing...

What do you think?

edit on 6-2-2013 by evc1shop because: fixed link

edit on 6-2-2013 by evc1shop because: added time notation

Been doing a little research and came across this video lecture.

It's more or less talking about platonic solids and sacred geometry in relation to these very stones.

Early Mathematics video lecture

reply to post by MysterX
Yes, I am going with these stones are eaither teaching aids or ornamental representaitons of the most basic structures found in nature. Commonly referred to as the Platonic Solids. The video that I pointed to in the post you have quoted also says there is another set of, shapes that are based on these which are interesting as well. There is a mention of the dodecahedron which we are more familiar with than the others since they are the famous "bucky balls". It woudl appear that the early civilizations had a pretty good grasp of things we still do not fully understand.

Regarding the similarity to pollen i go a little further.Could it be petrified pollen?
Today we know that the earth has undergone many upheavals through the ages.
And at each upheaval,the biggest creatures disappeared first.
The Internet has plenty,of photos of giant human skeletons.
Mammoths, Dinosaurs,all disappeared,in this upheavals.
I think there's a chance this is pollen,and when celts found it,they take it as souvenirs,sometimes drawing on then.

In the absence of another explanation
It's just an idea that came to mind

Originally posted by MysterX
the following theory is my own,

Well done. I like it. I also thought - plankton, or diatoms. But you have a nice correlation there.

And, yeah, history is cyclic, not linear. Nothing else makes sense.

ALl the evidence you need is in plain sight at Bal'Bek.


Note: I just read more of the posts in this thread, and I am amazed at the lengths people will go to mentally to retain their view that earlier man = primitive man.

It is plain to me that "we"' are not the apogee of human evolution (culturally or physically) and the necessary arrogance of thinking otherwise should be a bright red warning light to anyone who cares to be thoughtful about it for even a moment.

I like this post. Thanks.

The spheres seem to be copies of pollen, or that could be coincidence. But one would be led to think they were patterned after the pollen. But how could they be seen? You would have to have a magnifying device. Were there any in those times? Well yes there were in the early Greek times.

The earliest written records of lenses date to Ancient Greece, with Aristophanes' play The Clouds (424 BC) mentioning a burning-glass (a biconvex lens used to focus the sun's rays to produce fire). Some scholars argue that the archeological evidence indicates that there was widespread use of lenses in antiquity, spanning several millennia.[7] Such lenses were used by artisans for fine work, and for authenticating seal impressions. The writings of Pliny the Elder (23–79) show that burning-glasses were known to the Roman Empire,[8] and mentions what is arguably the earliest written reference to a corrective lens: Nero was said to watch the gladiatorial games using an emerald (presumably concave to correct for nearsightedness, though the reference is vague).[9] Both Pliny and Seneca the Younger (3 BC–65) described the magnifying effect of a glass globe filled with water.

This might account for the existence of magnification that possibly might be able to discern the pollen shapes. I will just leave that there.
Beyond that the spherical stones and the three sided stone appear as though they could well have been Bolo tips. Or a Cat of nine tails type weapon with a single handle or loop of leather/sinew and the stones affixed by shrinking the leather to fit, or tying them, or possibly some sort of braiding. Perhaps if they were weapons, they might have come loose in combat and fell to the wayside, or were it in rain, the leather which had been shrunk onto the spheres, relaxed due to becoming wet again, and were lost in that way.

Of course this does nothing to explain the Costa Rican stones and their meaning, since their size is vastly dissimilar.
You bring up some interesting questions...

I think in order to lend weight to the pollen representation theory, you should try to identify exactly what pollen grains they are depicting. Are they pollens of important plants (or at least important to that culture)?

As I was looking at the pictures before reading any other threads besides the OP, I kept seeing the stones as the business end of a mace with the grooves in many of them made to allow sinew or rope to attach the stone to a stick... Then for the last one which was all hollowed out that theory kind of didn't work as well - although I thought maybe a mace head that was made to be lighter...

Interesting thread.

re the lens/ancient microscope thang, it reminded me of this about ice lenses for fire starting, from the same site as my first link - some of the pics are no longer there but give it a read - could they have set up more than one in a tube etc and viewed pollen? unlikely in my view, though possible and jolly interesting never the less..

paleoplanet69529.yuku.com...




thought provoking for sure

I think they are models made to further their understanding of the universe, just like we have in schools today. These type of things could show up in a deep meditative/trance state or possibly in dreams or by lucid dreaming (for anyone who haven't tried it, look it up and try it, it's not that hard but it won't last long the first time), '___' produced by the brain could easily be responsible for these early vision. But they could also have been a gift I suppose, you never know.

reply to post by MysterX


Very cool similarities. I thought for sure you were going to show us coral, that's what it made me think of. Many shapes and forms are repeated throughout the "natural" world. I wonder if these can be found elsewhere that are visible to the unaided eye. Have you any information on the type of stone used for these carvings. Is it definitely stone and definitely carved; or could it be something which was fossilized?

reply to post by MysterX


Love how your mind works OP.

Be warming for sometime now to the idea that ancient technology was more advanced than we give credit for. In fact this was my first ATS post...

For uses of the rocks... what about this one...

Massage Balls



Managed to match some of the the other shapes also.

Be sure to CHECK OUT BAK BALLS!!! BakBalls

Tennis Balls and Golf Balls also often Used as Massage Balls

Why Stone Balls? - I would image these balls along with the hardness to act as a trigger point. Stone balls could also be heated near a fire and the heat of the fire would add a lot of benefit to the aches and pains of the people back then.

Just casting something out here :

Hi all,

What if these mysterious balls were just objects used to play like the famous game in France called Petanque

See link to have a view of the older type of nailed balls : www.boulistenaute.com...

Diaporama number 4 in the photos section if you end up on the main page in France

Otherwise type out the following in Google search and images "anciennes boules de pétanque cloutées"

Like i said... just casting something out!

Kindest respects

Rodinus

i was in new york to meet my soulmate that i had met over the internet,she is serbian i am bosnian,no longer together ,still soulmates,anyways,i got up there and we lived in brooklyn,One morning i had a dream that my mother is showing me huge stone spheres across the street from my grandmothers house,the stone spheres were stacked on top of each other and it was a lucid dream,the one that i know its a dream but my moms face was fluid so knowing carlos castanedas books i knew its not her but a guide or archangel.I didnt even know any stone spheres exist in bosnia,so i came home and went to google earth just to remenice the old times when we used to drive to my grandmas house,and there i found them ,right where i dreamt it,i was shocked and happy at the same time and also like "what am i to do with this now" they resonate a specific energy that u can catch from new york coz nyc is a meridian byitself,where as to florida its a bit harder,Or maybe i was just in a good mood free of worries...turns out there are many stone balls scatered across bosnia but the highest concetration of them is where my grandma lives,It has to do something with the pyramid formations in bosnia as well,as to what they served i have no clue.

reply to post by passit


My first thought when looking at the shapes of these balls were the similarities to sacred geometry. I am glad I am not the only one to notice that. Thanks for mentioning it Passit.

I've looked at the different images of bolo balls and just don't think that is what these ancient balls are. Not ruling it out completely, just a little skeptical about them being some kind of weapon.

Just my 2 cents.

reply to post by skalla


None of those look like that and some of the shapes wouldn't be good for holding the rope.

There are all sorts of natural processes that result in repeating patterns, and these patterns can be found virtually anywhere. The fact that there are only so many geometrical configurations possible, especially of general shapes, means that it is normal for them to crop up repeatedly. And the geometric shapes that are pleasing to the human eye are even fewer, and are also found throughout nature.

I think it is much more likely that this is coincidence. Actually, I am positive it is coincidence, as thinking these Neolithic peoples had the technology to view things on a microscopic scale is just illogical. If this were the case, there would be plenty of evidence of high technology being unearthed, and as of yet, absolutely none has been found. Anyone can make outrageous claims about anything, but when evidence is not there to back those claims up, it must be realized that the claims are simply bogus. Occam's Razor.