The Trovante Museum has been operating in Romania for over ten years. It is located in old sand quarries near Costesti in Valcea County. The museum is small and occupies
hectare with a small area. On its territory there are collected large round stones, here called trovants and capable, unlike other mineral spheroids, of growth and reproduction.
“Wild” Trovenants “live” in Romania, although not everywhere, but in relative abundance. In the valleys of some streams and rivers, prosperous trovants of a variety of sizes can be found. The village of Otesani is especially famous for the Trovan.
Legends of the Trovants
According to the stories of local residents, the Trovants are endowed with considerable vital energy, they can move and breathe. According to rumors, the stones are not malignant and do not even take revenge for their own destruction - if only their fragments are not removed from their homes. Some of the Trovants are sociable and willingly share their stories with kind and sinless people.
Not a single trovant has a soul of his own, but he is ready to contain the soul of an innocent murdered person. Because in Romania there are so many trovants that for a long time murder and bloodsucking reigned here - Vlad Tepes alone is worth something!
The lifespan of the trowans extends for many centuries, but they are born small. Growth continues indefinitely, but there are no trovants more than ten meters in diameter - no one knows why.
Promotional video:
People coexist with Trovants without any harm to themselves. Attempts to tame the trovant and use them in magical practice have been unsuccessful. Either the character of the Trovantes turned out to be stony stubborn, or the sorcerers in Romania are so-so …
The most daring locals roll the trovants to the courtyards and place stones on both sides of the gate - like sentries. The rest either bypass the trowans, or adapt the round stones to serve as burial monuments.
According to local residents, the trowante guards are not particularly diligent. So it is not very clear why the Romanians chose a word derived from the English trove, which means "treasure", to name round sandstone nodules. After all, the trowans do not contain any treasures and bring little benefit - except that they attract tourists.
The science of trovants
Talking about trovants, the Russian academician Alexander Fersman spoke about the possibility of the existence of the most ancient form of life - inorganic life, silicon (in this case).
Modern science has not yet developed a comprehensive concept of life, although almost a century has passed since the time of Fersman's hypotheses. Describing the processes taking place in the Trovantes, mineralogists avoid analogies with biology - but it suggests itself. The changes taking place with the Trovants are so reminiscent of signs of life that an uninitiated person has a persistent illusion of a stone, if not alive, then living.
Trowants breathe
In this case, respiration means the ability of a round stone to slightly change its diameter under the conditions of a daily cycle. At night there is a "breath" - the trovant becomes larger. The exhalation begins in the afternoon and ends in the evening. Trovants do not breathe very often, but they do not need to walk and run, the inhabitants say.
Mineralogy explains the fluctuations in the volume of clay-calcareous sandstone nodules (which, in fact, are the trovants) by the natural change in the humidity of the environment. On a cool night, moisture condenses on the surface of the trowant and is absorbed into the loose outer layers of the stone. This is how the "inhale" happens. During the day, the sun heats up, and the breeze dries the trowant - and the stone sphere decreases somewhat in size.
Some enthusiasts declare that they even have some kind of analogy for a heartbeat. True, units of measurement and pulsation scales always turn out to be on the verge of instrument sensitivity …
Trowants are growing
The origin and growth of trovants has long been explained by layer-by-layer cementation developing around the seed center. The main condition is the presence in the soil of saturated solutions of mineral salts - carbonates, sulfates, silicates.
Nodules of the same nature are found everywhere on Earth - both in loose layers of the surface, and sedimentary rocks, and in old volcanic eruptions. It's another matter that few of the mineral nodules grow to impressive sizes - but here it all depends on the sum of geological factors.
The growth rates of trowels are always low. One should not believe the talk that after the rain, stones grow faster than bamboo.
Trowants breed
Trovants "multiply" like hydras - by budding. Somewhere under the surface of the stone, a seed center is activated, around which layers begin to grow intensively. A rounded bump forms on the maternal trovante, which over time grows so much that it breaks off from the parent and begins an independent existence.
It is clear when the process of budding of the trovant begins in the outer layers of the stone. But often the nuclei of the mother and daughter nodules are located very close to each other! According to the people, this is a great stone mystery. Experts do not see the secret in such a situation. This happens when the growth rates of the layered aggregate are insufficient for spontaneous separation of the trowans.
Trovan lies
They say that if you take a little trovant from Romania and settle it at home - by placing it in a nutrient salt medium, of course - you will not be in trouble. Trovante kids are restless and like to walk, so young stones rumble at night, rolling around the house and poking at closed doors. There is no intentional harm from them, but you can accidentally stumble over a clearing stone and fall.
Foreign relatives of the trowans
There are many massive nodules in the world, and some of them are similar to the Romanian Trovantes as twin brothers. However, nowhere except in Romania are round stones being promoted as aggressively and ingeniously.
Balls of loose sandstone are found in Russia in the Oryol region, there are many of them in Kazakhstan on the Mangyshlak peninsula. The nature of the stone balls of Costa Rica, New Zealand, Brazil, Israel, New Earth is different from the nature of the Trowans, but human speculations more than compensate for the mineralogical prose of the planetary lithosphere. Every group of stone balls has their own legends!