"Stone forest" ("stone garden") or "Beat stones", most often translated as "hammered stones" is the name of a desert area in Bulgaria, dotted with shoots of stones up to 10 m in height, the most bizarre forms, hollow from the inside, which still causes disputes of ufologists, archaeologists and geologists about their origin. The impressive "spotted" landscape on satellite images stretches north to south of the Varna lowland in the form of a belt from 3 to 8 km wide. The stones are grouped into seven large formations and several separate small areas with a total area of over 50 square kilometers. They are localized southward from the city of Beloslav to the villages of Strashimirovo, Slynchevo, Povelyanovo and Banovo.
Stones have been known as sacred sites for centuries, but only documented in 1929 by correspondent Viktor Teplyakov, assigned to General Diebitsch's army. Moreover, the stone forest received the status of a national tract only in 1938, and nowadays, only due to the increased interest and lobbying of many scientists, "Beat the stones" should be included in the World List of geological forms.
There are a lot of hypotheses and theories describing the origin of the driven stones. Bulgarian ufologists insist on the existence of a unique hepatogenic zone around the stone forest with maximum energy indicators. Thanks to this, the pillars of the stone forest can draw out negative energy from a person, thereby clearing the aura of any negatives. Of course, this is more a pseudo theory than a reality based on scientific facts. Moreover, the very origin of the stone pillars is not explained by UFOlogy.
More realistic are theories of the formation of hollow columns as a result of fossilized organic deposits around giant algae on the bottom of the sea. This can explain the appearance of a cavity inside the columns after the decomposition of an underwater plant and is partly confirmed by the presence of remnants of mussels, numelites, and snails in the limestone of the columns.
At present, the most reliable theory is the appearance of carbonate-cemented sandstones as a result of microbial oxidation of methane released from sea sand about 50 million years ago. This phenomenon is known as "boiling reefs" and is described in the landscape of a "submarine" off the shelf of Denmark, where the rock formations are very similar to the "hammered stones" of Bulgaria.
Theoretically, methane from a gas field deeply buried under the seafloor finds migration routes due to high pressure, causing carbonization processes along the channel of its exit to the surface. The pillar of the structure grows from the outside, and a similar process can occur from the sides of the formation of the substrate layer, as can be seen from the thickenings of some stone pillars. On the seabed, the impact on carbonate-cemented sandstones is quite small, and as a result of erosion of the surrounding loose sediments, the pillars are gradually "exposed" and protrude above the level of the soil surface. And after many years of vertical tectonic movements of the earth's crust, the stone forest turned out to be visible to people, although most of the stone structures, like icebergs, are still hidden underground and inaccessible.
Promotional video:
For centuries, nature has shaped stones with the help of wind, water and sun to transform them into sculptural creations - animals, people, monsters, mythical creatures. “Stone Guards”, “Family”, “Stone Forest”, “Soldier”, “Monk”, “Throne”, “Devil” are just some of the common names of pillars invented by impressionable Bulgarians. The most impressive and best preserved today is the stone forest 18 km west of Varna. The "composition" includes about 300 large and small pillars in the form of a large strip (about 850 × 120 m), and more than 50 of them are concentrated in a small place in the southern direction.
