Scientists are perplexed: who, when and for what made huge balls that are scattered across different continents
That's so kuglya
A stone ball with a diameter of more than one and a half meters, discovered in Bosnia and Herzegovina - in a forest near the town of Zavidovichi. Archaeologist Semir Osmanadzic believes that the ball is man-made. And this supports his theory that a very developed civilization once existed here for a very long time, which for some reason made balls and built pyramids. After all, both are found on the territory of the former Yugoslavia.
Most often, stone balls come across on the slopes
Reports of strange stone spheres began to surface in the late 1990s. Locals have found them since ancient times and called them kugly. To date, archaeologists have collected several dozen coals. One and a half meter - became the largest.
Osmanadzic assures that Bosnia and Herzegovina was once strewn with hundreds of stone spheres, but many were destroyed - people smashed them, believing that gold was hidden inside.
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The ball seemed to come out of the ground
They roll uphill
Yugoslavian balls by no means pretend to be the most mysterious. For over 70 years, scientists have been puzzling over their more famous and massive cousins - stone balls from Costa Rica and other regions of South America. In the forties of the last century, they were discovered by workers who cut down thickets for banana plantations. Here you come across a placer of small balls 10 centimeters in diameter. And gigantic "statues" of three meters each, which weigh under 20 tons. The material is different - from volcanic rock to granite.
At the time of discovery, some of the balloons looked as if they had recently been brought into place. Others were partially buried. Or barely sticking out of the ground. Several specimens were found at a depth of two meters. We didn't dig deeper. Nevertheless, the impression was created as if the balls were crawling out of the bowels.
Later, by the way, in the Mexican silver mines there were stone spheres similar to the Costa Rican ones, only even larger. And in Guatemala, balls were found that "crawled" into the mountains - to a height of more than 2 thousand meters.
Ball from Costa Rica
A joke of nature or a miracle of technology
Geologists do not exclude that balls - both American and European - appeared naturally. But there is no consensus on their nature. Perhaps the balls are the so-called ferruginous nodules, which are formed during the compaction of sediments in ore and coal deposits. In the center of the concretion, organic remains, mineral or bacterial accumulations are often found, which serve as a "seed" for its growth.
Some scientists emphasize that the nodule becomes spherical and grows evenly when substances are deposited in a rock that is equally permeable in all directions. And the ocean floor is called the ancestral home of the balls. Like, they formed around the remains of shells, animal bones, algae in soft sediments. And they were on land when the seabed rose.
Someone sees the reason for the "ball formation" in the crystallization of volcanic magma. Someone in filling voids with a foreign substance - bubbles (similar to holes in Swiss cheese). And the appearance on the surface is in elementary weathering.
There is a hypothesis that balls appear in the pits and folds of the stone bed of mountain rivers. Like, there the current makes the boulders rotate quickly. And over time, it processes to a round state.
Archaeologists argue with geologists. Not all balls. Some of them, perhaps, indeed, were somehow created by nature. But it is unlikely that she can handle huge specimens. Especially from granite or other material with increased hardness, made with the precision available only to modern technology.
At the time, Samuel Lothrop, a staff archaeologist at the Museum of Archeology and Ethnography at Harvard University, was the first to carefully measure some balls from Costa Rica.
“Obviously,” he wrote in the report, “the big balls were of the highest quality. And they are so perfect that measuring the diameters with a tape (in five directions) and a plumb line showed no difference.
The archaeologist found only surface irregularities of about 2 millimeters.
Scientists found ancient household items next to the balls. But they themselves were located away from habitats and possible manufacturing. And who and why dragged multi-ton stone spheres into the distance? Sometimes to the mountains? Riddle.
Stone spheres are also found in Mexican forests.
By the way, in the chronicles of Costa Rica, which have been going on since 1512, there is not a single mention of stone balls. Even if they once had a cult significance much earlier, what kind of cult was it? It is also not clear.
NOT BALLS ONE
European pyramids are older than Egyptian ones
The Bosnian stone spheres are rich in iron. Most likely they are the same glandular nodules. But Semir Osmanadzhich insists: representatives of a civilization that owned advanced technologies - at least in construction and stone processing - had a hand in the balls. After all, where the balls are found, there are also pyramids.
Yugoslavian pyramid
For example, according to the archaeologist, a hill called Visocica actually hides a man-made pyramid 220 meters high. For comparison: the height of the Cheops pyramid is 147 meters.
The archaeologist emphasizes: the hill has an irregular geometric shape. The slopes go exactly at an angle of 45 degrees.
During the excavation, which began here, the researchers discovered tunnels and stone blocks with traces of processing and polishing. The assumption is this: some mysterious builders found a suitable hill, hewn it, lined it with blocks. And thus they built a pyramid.
“It looks like it is stepped,” Osmanadzic says, “like some of the pyramids in Giza and Mexico.
It is not yet clear when the gigantic structure was erected. But it is known that people have been living in the Vysoko Valley for more than 7 thousand years. And according to some sources - and from the Stone Age. According to the archaeologist's estimates, the Bosnian pyramids were erected 12 thousand years BC.
The blocks with which the pyramid is faced
The authorities take Osmanajic's ideas seriously. Here is what the Prime Minister of the country, Nejad Brankovich, once said: “They laughed at us when we decided to support this excavation. But how could you remain indifferent? Why should we deny what has attracted the world's attention? We want to have formal research institutes in Visoko."
Research is ongoing. Although skeptics do not see anything man-made in the Bosnian pyramids. And yet … The proximity of pyramids and balls exacerbates the mystery. Maybe it is not accidental?
Vladimir LAGOVSKY