From time to time, stone balls are found in the most remote corners of the Earth. Their diameter ranges from a few centimeters to 3 m, and their weight ranges from several hundred grams to 16 tons. These spheres are a headache for scientists: is there a connection between them? Who made them? When? And most importantly why?
Find in the jungle of Costa Rica
It all began in the 30s of the XX century in Costa Rica. Unaited Fruit expanded its banana plantations. Workers cut down the virgin forest, machinery leveled the site. In the office, according to the reports received, new areas of the cleared areas were marked on the map. One of the days from the construction, an urgent message came: the new site could not be prepared on time, since huge stone balls lie in its very center. Moving them requires additional time and equipment. This is how the stone balls of Costa Rica were discovered.
Research has established
Almost immediately, the American archaeologist D. Stone arrived in Costa Rica. He presented the results of his many months of research in a report, the essence of which was in the last phrase: "the stone spheres of Costa Rica should be recognized as another megalithic mystery." That is, the archaeologist found absolutely nothing about the balls. And soon it turned out that there were a lot of stone balls in Costa Rica, and those who wanted to solve another riddle rushed to the Latin American republic just in jamb.
Dozens of expeditions explored the mysterious spheres, but all reports ended with a disguised admission of their impotence to understand and explain the nature of the found balls. Theories have been put forward about the natural origin of the megaliths, but the spheres, as it turned out, are composed of various materials, from sandstone to granite. They could be formed only under mutually exclusive conditions. Several spheres were sawed by the workers who had found them - each ball turned out to be a solid stone. Someone quick-witted suggested looking at the stones from above - and guessed right.
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What the top view gave
Usually the balls came across in groups of 3 to 45. The very first helicopter flight gave an interesting result: the chains of stones formed squares, triangles, circles and parallelograms. There was no doubt that someone sensible had a hand in the stones. The only nuance was that no civilizations existed here in the pre-Columbian era.
The Indians who inhabited this area had just begun to form inter-tribal alliances before the arrival of the Spaniards, and did not even dream of any megalithic projects. In myths and legends, stone spheres appeared, but only as an object of fun for the gods (football, ping-pong, badminton), and no matter how hard ethnographers tried, not a single mention of a state or city that existed here earlier was found in myths and legends.
Scientists decided to start large-scale excavations.
What archaeologists have "dug up"
The results were shocking: not a single material evidence of a person's presence in this area was found. Not a bone, not a shard, not a fragment of the simplest tool - nothing! One of the participants called the expedition an "archaeological nightmare". But the main nightmare was yet to come.
The wave of finds
In 1967, stone balls similar to the Costa Rican ones were found in West Mexico City in silver mines. Then more than a hundred spheres were found by an archaeological expedition in Guatemala. There were reports of stone balls found from Kazakhstan, Egypt, Germany, Romania, Brazil, New Zealand, Chile and Bosnia. In Russia, they were found in the Volgograd and Irkutsk regions. And on the Champa Island of the Franz Josef Land archipelago, these balls lie in the hundreds.
Dead end
There was no explanation for the phenomenon of stone balls, and no. Scientists cannot even decide on their dating. The radiocarbon method is great for analyzing organic materials: animal bones, wood, but it is absolutely not suitable for stone. So the age of the stone spheres can be from several hundred to millions of years. Scientists, assuming that people could use the "rounds" they found for their own purposes, are persistently looking for a version explaining the appearance of stone balls as a result of some natural processes. Only so far they do it poorly.