Some finds made on our planet often puzzle scientists - there is no explanation where these or those artifacts came from …
Multi-tone "balls"
30s of XX century, Costa Rica. A group of workers from the famous United Fruit Company are clearing dense thickets of tropical plants to establish another banana plantation. And suddenly … Among the wild jungle they stumble upon something unimaginable and incredible - huge stone balls of absolutely regular shape. The diameter of these "balls" was about 3 meters, and their weight was about 16 tons. True, later it turned out that there were medium and small specimens nearby - some the size of a children's ball.
It turned out that the balls are arranged in a certain order, representing certain groups. Some of these groups formed straight or sinuous lines, triangles and parallelograms.
In 1967, similar balls were discovered in Mexico in silver mines - only they were much larger.
Soon, hundreds of huge stone balls were also found on the high plateau of Aqua Blanca in Guatemala.
Later, similar mysterious artifacts were found in Mexico, USA, New Zealand, Egypt, Romania, Germany, Brazil, Kazakhstan and on Franz Josef Land. And more recently, they began to be found on the territory of Russia - in Siberia, Krasnodar Territory and Volgograd Region.
Promotional video:
The exploration of the balls began immediately after their discovery. No sooner had workers discovered the stones in Costa Rica than the American archaeologist Doris Stone arrived there. In 1943, her observations and findings were published in the academic journal of US Archeology.
Samuel Lothrop, an archaeologist at Harvard University, began studying balls in 1948. In 1963, the results of his research were published. They contained maps of the areas where the balls were located, descriptions of pottery and metal objects found near the balls, and many photographs, data on measurements and drawings of the balls, and their relative position.
Modern scientists have continued these studies, but there is still no clear answer - what are the balls, where did they come from and what they served for …
Mayan map
So where did these balls come from on our planet? The famous Swiss writer and ufologist Erich von Deniken called them "balls played by the gods", and, perhaps, this fantastic explanation is the closest to the truth, because it is almost impossible to explain their origin from the point of view of science and common sense.
Scientists are still engaged in fierce disputes about the balls, there are many versions of their appearance, but none of them has been confirmed.
So, geologists attribute their appearance to volcanic activity. They argue that a ball of this ideal shape can form if the crystallization of volcanic magma during the eruption occurs uniformly. But this version does not fit the fact that the balls clearly have traces of grinding, and besides, they are clearly laid according to some kind of system. And one more objection - balls are found in places where no volcanic activity is observed at all.
Archaeologists, unlike geologists, recognize that the balls were not made by nature, but by humans. In their opinion, they were made from round boulders in several stages. First, the boulders were heated and then processed with stone tools. Then they were polished to a shine, removing all the roughness. Samuel Lothrop of Harvard University said: "Obviously, the balls were of the highest quality, and they were so nearly perfect that tape and plumb line measurements showed no difference."
Archaeologists ask themselves - what did these balls serve? Some of them believe that they were installed in front of the houses of noble people as a symbol of their power.
Others believe that they have a religious purpose - the balls were related to certain cults and sacrifices.
Interestingly, in Costa Rica, one group of four balls was clearly aligned with a line pointing strictly north. A number of archaeologists suggest that this proves the familiarity of the creators of the balls with astronomy and, in turn, with the relation of stone artifacts to space. This version can be proved by the fact that the Maya Indians who once lived in Costa Rica were outstanding astronomers. They accurately divided the year into seasonal cycles, observed the movement of the planets and made maps of the starry sky with more or less fixed coordinates of celestial objects.
Some archaeologists even claim that the balls represent a map of the starry sky and, accordingly, serve as landmarks for spaceships. There is also an opinion that the balls have a topographic function. Stone balls played the role of landmarks for travelers and marked the boundaries of certain territories.
There is an exotic version that balls are money. It is confirmed by the fact that some tribes still use stone money. Different sizes of balls are just "coins" of different denominations - from the most expensive to the smallest "pennies".
Looking for gold
Nowadays, it is very difficult to refute or confirm this or that version. In the course of research, agricultural work and just for the sake of self-indulgence, almost all the balls were moved from their original place. Many lovers of antiquity have stolen smaller balls to decorate their gardens and yards.
Much damage was done to science after someone spread a rumor that there was gold inside the balls. Fans of easy money around the world immediately began, following the example of Panikovsky and Balaganov, the heroes of the immortal novel by Ilf and Petrov, The Golden Calf, who sawed weights in search of gold, to “saw” stone balls. No one found precious metals inside them, but a huge part of the artifacts was lost without a trace.
Aside from all the other unsolved mysteries, it remains unclear when the balls were made. Archaeologists often determine the date of origin of certain objects by the cultural layer in which they were found. But the balls are found in completely different layers, which date from 200 BC to 1500 AD.
However, many of the researchers are sure that they were made much earlier - in the most ancient times. American scientist George Erickson claims that balls appeared more than 12 thousand years ago. This is also proved by the finds of balls on the seabed, where they were installed at a time when there was still land here …
Another mystery is the way the balls are transported from the place of manufacture to the place of installation. According to scientists, sometimes this distance was tens of kilometers, and the balloons had to be delivered through the jungle, swamps, rivers …
It is not known whether the mysteries of the "balls of the gods" will ever be solved. Scientists themselves doubt this. Archaeologist Doris Stone said at one time: "We must classify stone balls as incomprehensible megalithic riddles."
Victor NIKOLAEV