Champa Island is very popular with tourists cruising in the Arctic. And it is not surprising - there are objects on it, the origin of which is still not clear, and in the near future the solution of this riddle is not expected.
Let's take a closer look at them and speculate a little …
Location
Champa Island is one of the many islands of the Arctic archipelago Franz Josef Land, which belongs to the most remote corners of Russia and is practically unexplored. The territory of this island is relatively small (only 375 sq. Km), and is attractive not so much for the picturesque, untouched by civilization, Arctic landscapes, as for mysterious stone balls of rather impressive sizes and ideally round shape, which make one get lost in numerous guesses about their origin on these uninhabited lands …
The island is dotted with a multitude of strange round stones of various sizes - from taller than human to very small - with a ping-pong ball; part represents perfect cannonballs. Many stones, due to the impact of strong wind, water and low temperatures, have lost their round shape, becoming like cobblestones.
Boulders of perfectly round shape, scattered throughout the island, seem to grow out of the ground. Melting glaciers expose the island's surface, washing away the rounded shapes.
Promotional video:
Spherolites of Champa Island are stones of densely compressed sand. They are clearly not of volcanic origin, and in some of them scientists have even found the teeth of ancient sharks.
from the comments: And this they lie in the Izhma River near the village of Maloye Galovo, Komi
The sizes of many balls reach several meters (some of them are difficult to cover completely even for three people), although there are also stone balls of ideally round shape from several centimeters in diameter.
Some balls seem to be dug in the ground, others just stand on the surface. Here you can also find many stones that look more like cobblestones - under the influence of wind, water and cold, they have lost their ideal roundness.
When you look at this amazing picture, you get the impression that some giants once played football here.
To date, there are several theories of the origin of these mysterious balls, although each of them is imperfect and, in general, does not answer the numerous questions associated with these mysterious objects of Champa Island.
According to one version, these balls are the result of washing ordinary stones with water to such a perfectly round shape.
But if with stones of small sizes this version still sounds believable, then in the case of three-meter balls it is somehow not very convincing.
Some are even inclined to believe that these balls are the result of the activities of an extraterrestrial civilization or the mythical civilization of the Hyperboreans. There is no official version, and everyone who has visited the island creates his own theory of the origin of these mysterious balls.
Natural mystery
Franz Josef Land is not the only place on the planet with round stones. In South America and Northern Europe, they have long been the subject of close attention of geologists. In the forests of Costa Rica, when cutting trees for banana plantations, stone balls came across here and there. And in the fall of 2003, Itogi correspondents found a huge plateau with spherical stones in Mangyshlak.
Balls are found both where people once lived or still live (as, for example, in Mexico), and where people have never settled (the best example is Champa Island). This suggests that round stones can be of both natural origin and man-made - in some parts of the world in ancient times, stones were specially processed for economic or architectural purposes. Some researchers have even expressed a version that the spherical stones are the work of space aliens who have made up some not yet deciphered anagrams. But this is too exotic version …
What do geologists think about this? Experts distinguish between several types of stone balls: obsidian (dark volcanic glass), granite and sandstone. It is to the category of the latter, according to Sepp Friedhuber, that the amazing natural formations of Champa Island can belong:
- The Geological Department of the University of Hamburg is struggling to solve the phenomenon of round stones. The only thing that we have managed to understand so far is that the stones are "rounded" very quickly. Their core is organic. I believe that they were born in seawater, formed in soft sediments from the remnants of shells that once drowned and stuck in the sandy bottom. The shells consisted of quartzite, a sedimentary rock that under the influence of heat or pressure takes the form of a crystalline structure, and marcasite, a mineral that is a compound as a result of chemical reactions between iron and sulfur. And it was precisely marcasite, as the analysis showed, that was the main connecting element in the balls. After Franz Josef Land rose from the depths of the sea and the resulting glaciers began to melt, sedimentary deposits were eroded, resulting in these amazing stone forms.
There is, for example, such an explanation: water cascades off a melted glacier, forming peculiar pools in the ice, into which these stones fall. Due to the softness of the volcanic rock and constant friction under the influence of the flow of water, the stones acquire a round shape. And if in the case of small stones this version sounds logical, then, looking at the three-meter "balls", you begin to doubt it.
The famous Russian polar explorer Viktor Boyarsky believes that the stones of Champa Island may be of organic origin, since they are composed of sandstone: “This is a soft rock that is capable of breaking down. While on the island, you will surely notice that some large stones have split into two halves, and the largest stone is crumbling more and more every year."
The balls lie here as if in the courtyard of a sculpture workshop - carved by the hand of a skilled sculptor for some unknown purpose. However, scientists say: no one has ever lived on the island, which means that this miracle was created by nature. It is curious that stone balls are found in different parts of the world: from Mexico and Costa Rica to New Zealand and Kazakhstan, and many speculations and romantic legends are associated with their origin everywhere. With the light hand of the Swiss writer Erich von Däniken, stone spheres were poetically called "balls played by the gods." Geologists use a more mundane term - "spherical nodules", from the Latin concretio (accretion, thickening). They usually consist of granite, obsidian or, as on Champa Island, of sandstone. How exactly these stones appeared here is still a mystery.
According to the Russian polar explorer Viktor Boyarsky, every geologist who has visited Champa at least once gives his own explanation of this phenomenon. There is, for example, this version: the melt water washed away the glaciers and created in them a kind of natural pools. Once in such a pool, the soft rock gradually rounded under the influence of water currents. Another hypothesis - the Austrian geologist Sepp Friedhuber - explains the appearance of boulders as a result of the accumulation of sedimentary material transported from land to sea. It was under water that these rounded sandstone shapes were formed, in the center of which is an organic core. - See more at:
Why are stone balls concentrated on Champa Island, where did they come from …? There are many questions, but the answers have not been found so far.
Here is what Marina Menshikova writes:
… I love reading Hemingway. He wrote beautifully and tasty about what he loved. Best of all he wrote about the sea…
Old Ham would probably envy me. I am writing a diary, in front of me is a porthole, in which I see the rocks of Champa Island. Two hours ago, when "Professor Molchanov" approached the island located in the very center of Franz Josef Land, the sun came out from behind the clouds, illuminating the incredibly beautiful picture. Lagoon, surrounded on all sides by islands dotted with glaciers. There are significantly more icebergs, they are larger than those that we saw on the way from Novaya Zemlya. Icebergs sparkle in the sun with the purest ice. Champa Island - I think it can be considered the heart of the FFI. There is everything you need for an experience: a glacier, bird colonies, streams flowing from the mountains with waterfalls, our favorite saxifrage of bright purple color. And the most important thing is spherulites, spherical nodules. The absolutely round stones seemed to have been scattered by the giant owners of these places. And such places must have reliable owners who have guarded the secrets of the islands for thousands of years. How amazing it is to be in the heart of the Arctic and breathe its crystal glacial air …
Our team is not alone here. In the distance, the icebreaker Captain Dranitsyn is walking out of the fog. Our tour leader, Viktor Boyarsky, agrees that we will be given two hours. We land on Champa Island. I want to capture everything - the landscape opening onto the sea, and the neighboring islands, the foothills of the black Champa mountains, spherulites. You know, when you sit on a mountain and look into the distance, at the horizon, at icebergs the size of a five-story building, you understand HOW beautiful our planet is, how much we need to see, how much we need to feel, so that we can tell our friends and loved ones later. The Arctic is a special place. Here you have to meditate. Here you need to be respectful, meek and real. Otherwise you will break …
Today we have the equator of the expedition. Exactly a week is behind, exactly a week remains. If the first days everyone was in some kind of nervous state - they were worried whether everything would go according to plan, whether we would see walruses, a polar bear, and so on, now I don't see a single person who would not smile. And the smiles became sincere, radiant. The cold Arctic cleans us, removes the raid of civilization, all unnecessary and assumed.
… Birds scream in the sky, glaciers sparkle, fogs envelop the ship in milk, we are happy. Champa Island will remain in my heart forever.
There is another question that still remains unanswered. Why are unusual stones found on this island? What attracted the gods, who decided to play with their gigantic balls? In 2007, the Swiss traveler Thomas Ulrich discovered a large, round boulder on the east coast of Nordbruck Island, in another part of the archipelago.
Whether he always lay here or was somehow moved from Champa in some incomprehensible way, whether there are the same stones on other islands - all this is yet to be found out by polar explorers.