Science has reached the depths of the sea and cosmic heights, but is still powerless in front of some stones - ancient and unknown.
Balls of the Gods
For many decades now, archaeologists and geologists from all over the world have been trying to establish the origin of the mysterious stone balls scattered all over the world, from Franz Josef Land to New Zealand. The largest number of stone spheres is in Costa Rica - there are about three hundred of them. The age of most of them is estimated at about 12 thousand years.
Scientists have found that most are made from solid lava rock, but there are specimens made from sedimentary rock. The balls have been found in many countries and continents - in Central America, USA, New Zealand, Romania, Kazakhstan, Brazil and Russia. Many unique specimens were stolen, destroyed or even blown up, as treasure hunters believed that gold could be hidden inside.
According to historians and archaeologists, in Central America, balloons could be displayed in front of the houses of noble people, thereby demonstrating their status, but this does not explain their purpose, in particular, in Novaya Zemlya or Franz Josef Land.
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Weathering pillars on the Man-Pupu-Ner mountain
The weathering pillars, or Mansi dummies, are a natural monument of the Komi Republic on the territory of the Pechora-Ilych reserve on the Man-Pupu-Ner mountain (which in the Mansi language means “Small mountain of idols”). The Mansi and Komi deified the grandiose stone statues, worshiped them, but it was impossible to climb Man-Pupu-Ner - this was considered the greatest sin.
200 million years ago, there were high mountains in the place of stone pillars. For thousands of years, they have been destroyed by rain, snow, wind, frost and heat. But hard sericite-quartzite schists were destroyed less and survived to this day. The pillars have bizarre outlines and, depending on the place of examination, resemble either the figure of a huge man, or the head of a horse or ram. Six of them lined up at the edge of the cliff. One pillar, 34 meters high, stands somewhat to the side and resembles a huge bottle turned upside down.
Numerous legends are associated with this place. One of them says that once the stone pillars were seven giants-Samoyeds who walked through the mountains to Siberia to destroy the Vogul people. But when they climbed Man-Pupu-Ner, their shaman-leader saw Yalpingner in front of him - the sacred mountain of the Voguls. In horror, he threw his drum, which fell on the high conical summit of the Koype, and all his companions were petrified with fear.
Kurumy, or Taganaya Stone River
Kurums are called rock taluses (rivers) of significant area in the southern Urals, lying on mountain slopes with slopes reaching 30-45 degrees. The Bolshoi Kamennaya Taganaya River is a linearly elongated accumulation of stone blocks located between the ridges of Bolshoy and Middle Taganai. It stretches for 5-6 km, with an average width of 100-200 m and consists of boulders weighing 9-10 tons. 100 sq. meters there are up to 300 huge boulders, in depth they lie at least four to six meters in three to four layers.
The Stone River consists mainly of aventurine, a type of quartzite. Lumps of aventurine of various colors with lichen patterns on them.
As a result of physical and frosty weathering and under the influence of gravity, the kurums gradually slide down, and when individual large blocks of stone move, they often tilt and even break trees encountered in their path. Walking on kurums is difficult and unsafe: sometimes, under the influence of a person's weight, individual large blocks or part of the talus can start moving.
However, now the Taganaya River is practically motionless, the slope here does not exceed 2.5 degrees.
This unique deposit is a national treasure, all the more so as stones similar to it in size and beauty are known only in India and nowhere else on the globe.
Death Valley Moving Stones
In the US state of California, in the US Death Valley National Wildlife Refuge, stones ranging in size from a small cobblestone to a huge boulder weighing half a ton make strange walks along the bottom of the dried-up Lake Restrack Playa (Racetrack Playa). This is the hottest place on Earth. So, the temperature up to 50 degrees Celsius was kept here in 1917 for 43 days. The stones move alone and in groups slowly, sometimes in a zigzag manner, overcoming tens of meters of path and leaving clearly visible traces in the sandy ground. They do not roll, do not rotate, but crawl along the surface, leaving behind uniform furrows, as if someone invisible pulls them along. Boulders roll against the wind and climb upward on slightly sloping surfaces. Experts have repeatedly tried to record the movements of restless boulders, but so far to no avail:people just can't catch boulders while traveling. However, as soon as observers move a little to the side, away from the objects of their observation, they begin to move - sometimes up to half a meter per hour.
Trail maps of the Raistrek Stones have been compiled since the early 1950s. Paula Messina, a NYU graduate student in Earth Sciences and Environmental Issues, teamed up with her colleague Phil Stoffer in 1996 to create the first detailed maps using the latest computer technology. The coordinates of each of the 162 boulders were taken, the traces of their movement were photographed. The longest trail was found on a pebble-sized dolomite stone - it stretches in an almost straight line for 900 meters. The average length of such a track is about 200 meters. The resulting map revealed a high degree of consistency in the direction of the traces of movement (the stones mainly slide north and northeast). The straightness and length of the tracks do not depend on the size and shape of the stones, but are determined by the geographical place of the beginning of the movement. A general analysis of the relief of the valley showed that there are two natural corridors of air masses entering it, which become turbulent in some places of penetration. According to the researcher, it is the terrain and air currents that determine the nature of the traces of movement, and not the properties of the stones themselves. However, so far none of the scientists has seen how the "creeping" stones of the Death Valley slide …
Dolmens
Dolmens - literally "stone tables" - are mysterious stone structures several millennia old, found in different countries, including in several regions of Russia. The appearance of dolmens is diverse: in England, such megaliths represent four retaining stones on which a huge stone slab rests. In the Russian Caucasus, dolmens are an almost sealed chamber composed of four walls, a base plate and a roof. Less common are trough-shaped dolmens - in this case, a cavity was carved from top to bottom in a large stone, which was then covered with a slab from above. There are composite dolmens - when the walls were made up of several slabs. The rarest type is the monolith dolmen - a large boulder, through a round hole in which a cavity is built inside.
An interesting dolmen on Vera Island in the South Ural Lake Turgoyak: it is a room up to 2 meters high and an area of 19 square meters. meters, cut into the rocky ground. According to the layout, this is a corridor with cell rooms of different sizes. According to the conclusions of archaeologists, the dolmens on Vera Island are 6 thousand years old. In March 2009, Vera Island was declared a landmark of the Chelyabinsk region. And in 2010 the island of Vera was awarded the status of a participant in the route of the World Federation of the UNESCO ACC “World Cultural Heritage. Dialogue of cultures, dialogue of civilizations”.
There are many theories about the purpose of the dolmens. Official science leans towards the version that dolmens were built for the burials of the nobility. There are also exotic versions: portals to other worlds, resonators for increasing soil fertility, grain barns, means of communication with aliens, hives for ancient bees …
There is a lot of ambiguity in how these structures were built from multi-ton slabs of various materials. Indeed, sometimes these plates were hewn out in some way and moved for many tens of kilometers - this with a weight that sometimes exceeds the weight of a loaded KAMAZ!
Krasnoyarsk pillars
Krasnoyarsk pillars are about a hundred rocky outcrops up to 700 meters high, of the most bizarre shape, consisting of ancient pink granite-syenite. These rocks are located in the famous Stolby reserve, one of the oldest in Russia.
About 450 million years ago, in the turbulent volcanic past of the planet, the molten magma that raged inside the earth was able to break through to the earth's surface only through cracks in solid rocks. Geologists call this phenomenon intrusion. The result was bizarre rocks, which were then processed by wind and water for millions of years.
The beauty of this place, together with the relative accessibility (the rocks are located only 8 km from the city limits), made Stolby a place of real pilgrimage. From their tops a panorama of a unique beauty opens up. An enthusiastic sense of harmony, lightness, flight envelopes those who stand here. FREEDOM - the word written on the rock "Second Pillar" more than 100 years ago, seems to be the true motto of this place and its inhabitants. The authors of this "graffiti" are young free-thinkers-pillars who wrote it on a rock a hundred and fifty years ago.
It was the columnists who glorified this place, it was they who managed to achieve the status of protection for it, they gave names to the rocks, and tracts, and paths. Their traditional "charter" is written to protect the nature of this place, to prevent vandalism and disgrace. The first director of the Stolby reserve, Alexander Yavorsky, was an inveterate columnist, a recognized historiographer of Stolbov, who left detailed descriptions of rocks, huts, companies, traditions; and even the author of the poem "Pillars". The rocks "Lion's Gate", "Chinese Wall", "Manskaya Baba", "Big Berkut", "Mogul", "Totem", "Farm", "Hearth", "Toad", and many, many others represent a bizarre world natural beauty combined with inexhaustible human imagination.
Shilin stone forest
Stone Forest is located 126 kilometers southeast of Kunming in China. Hundreds of stone pillars, ravines and cracks have grown in the seabed due to centuries of erosion and washout by sea waters.
On an area of 350 square kilometers, you can see a myriad of grotesque turrets that have formed a kind of stone forest. Shilin is divided into seven distinct parts: large and small stone forests, Naigu stone forest, Zhiyun cave, Qifeng cave, long lake, moon lake, Da Dieshui waterfalls. These formations are believed to be more than 270 million years old.
Desert Stone Roses
In the African Sahara, called the "desert rose", crystals of gypsum are often found, shaped like the lush flowers of a rose, consisting of many thin petals. This miracle was created by nature itself. For flowers made of stone, as well as for living ones, water is needed: roses from stone appear precisely in the rainy season.
Gypsum crystals are formed in cavities of sand, through the thickness of which water seeps, washing out sulfate salts. It is they who paint the petals of stone flowers in a variety of colors - from delicate purple to deep brown. At times, small balls resembling dew drops form on the stone petals. It is worth noting that finding stone roses is not at all easy: they live in the thickness of the sand at a depth of 10-15 centimeters.
Trovante, the living stones of Romania
There is a real miracle in Romania: living stones - Trovantes. These mysterious stones have rounded shapes, outwardly they are similar to ordinary boulders, which are innumerable in these places. The amazing properties of the trowans appear after the rain: miracles begin to work with them - mysterious cobblestones, like mushrooms in the forest, begin to quickly gain weight!
When trovantes are "born", their weight is calculated in grams, but after a while the stones incredibly gain tens and even hundreds of kilograms in weight. Young trowants grow very quickly and gain weight, but upon reaching adulthood, their growth begins to slow down.
Although the trowant is made of ordinary sandstone, its internal structure is of great interest. If this amazing stone is divided in half, then in the places of the cut, as well as on the trees, the age rings located around the hard core are clearly visible. Researchers of the Trowans do not lose hope of unraveling their secret and therefore do not classify the miracle of stones as mysterious phenomena. Scientists are convinced that the appearance of trowants is associated with the process of long-term cementation of sand that took place in the depths of the earth for a long period. And on the surface of the earth, these miracle stones appear due to intense seismic activity. Scientists explain the growth of trovants by the presence of a large amount of mineral salts in the miracle stone. Therefore, when the trowants are exposed to rain and are saturated with water, a process of expansion occurs in mineral compounds,as a result of which these compounds press on the sand and the so-called "growth effect" of the trowers occurs.
However, trovants have another phenomenal feature that scientists have not yet been able to explain: these stones are not only capable of growing, they can also multiply. This amazing event takes place, so, after saturation of the stone with water, a tiny build-up forms on the trovan. Over time, this formation increases and gains a certain weight. After that, the newly formed stone falls away from the parent.
Some researchers suggest that miracle stones may be an unusual form of life that arose on our planet and has existed for millions or even billions of years in parallel with organic life.
Stonehenge
About 130 kilometers from London there is a very strange place - a pile of huge stones neatly arranged in a circle in the middle of a clear field. Their age does not lend itself to accurate assessment even by means of modern science - either three thousand years, or all five. This is Stonehenge (from the English Stone Hedge - stone fence) - the world famous stone megalithic structure on the Salisbury Plain, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In this one of the most mysterious buildings in the world, there are 82 five-ton megaliths, 30 stone blocks of 25 tons each, and 5 giant triliths weighing up to 50 tons.
Why did our ancestors suddenly begin to cut huge blocks out of the rocks and drag them hundreds of kilometers? An ancient observatory, a cult building of the Druids, a landing site for aliens and even a portal to another dimension - all kinds of versions have been put forward about Stonehenge.
The way to build such an unusual structure is also incomprehensible. The aerial survey confirmed that the stones for the construction were transported by sea along the Avon River. But where can ancient people get such strong boats and how to load stones on them without sinking transport? The stones could have been moved by glaciers, but archaeologists have not found evidence of this movement. It has been proven in practice that the stones can be moved with the help of wooden levers and sledges, but this would require the participation of thousands of people over a long time … It is also known that Stonehenge was rebuilt three times over 200-400 years. How in such ancient times, from generation to generation, was it possible to continue this construction? Earthen inclined slopes could be used to install the jumpers, but there are no signs of irregularities on the soil. Or wooden scaffolding - but lifting stones up would be a daunting task. These and other questions still remain open, the stones keep their secret …