30s of the XX century, Costa Rica. A group of workers from the famous United Fruit Company is clearing dense thickets of tropical plants to establish another banana plantation.
And suddenly... Among wild jungle people stumble upon something unimaginable - huge stone balls absolutely correct form.
The diameter of these “balls” was about three meters, and their weight was approximately 16 tons. True, it later turned out that there were medium and small specimens nearby – up to the size of a child’s ball.
And then another mystery arose. It turns out that the spheres are not located chaotically, but in a certain order. Some rows formed straight lines, others formed triangles and parallelograms.
In 1967, such balls were found in Mexico in silver mines - only these artifacts were even larger. And in Guatemala, on the high mountain plateau of Acqua Blanca, for the time being, hundreds of huge stone sculptures were also hidden perfect shape.
Subsequently, something similar began to be discovered almost everywhere: in the USA, New Zealand, Egypt, Romania, Germany, Brazil, Kazakhstan, and Franz Josef Land. And more recently - on the territory of Russia: in Siberia, Krasnodar Territory and Volgograd Region.
Workers had barely discovered the stones in Costa Rica when American archaeologist Doris Stone arrived there. In 1943, her observations and conclusions were published in an academic journal of US archeology.
And Samuel Lothrop, an archaeologist at Harvard University, began studying stone spheres in 1948. In 1963, the results of his research were published: maps of the areas where the balls were located, descriptions of pottery and metal objects found next to them, as well as many photographs and drawings.
Modern scientists have continued this research work, but there is still no clear answer to the most basic questions: what are the balls, where did they come from and what did they serve?
Multi-ton “balls” played by the gods
The famous Swiss writer and ufologist Erich von Däniken called the balls “balls played by the gods,” and, perhaps, this fantastic formula is closest to the truth, because it is almost impossible to explain their origin from the point of view of science and common sense.
Geologists attribute the appearance of the “balls” to volcanic activity, arguing that a ball of such an ideal shape can be formed if the crystallization of volcanic magma during an eruption occurs evenly. But this version does not fit the fact that the balls clearly have traces of grinding, and, in addition, they are not laid chaotically, but according to some kind of system. And one more objection - “round stones” are also found in places where no volcanic activity is observed at all.
Archaeologists, unlike geologists, recognize that stone spheres were not produced by nature, but by people. According to scientists, the “balls” were made from round boulders in several stages. First they were heated, then processed with stone tools and finally polished to a shine, removing all roughness.
Archaeologist Samuel Lothrop said: “Obviously, the balls are the products of the high quality. They are so perfect that measuring the diameters showed no difference.”
Cosmodrome or “cash”?
Researchers are wondering: what did these mysterious formations serve for? Some believe that they were installed in front of the houses of noble people as a symbol of their power, or that the stone balls were related to certain cults and sacrifices.
Interestingly, in Costa Rica, one group of four balls was aligned along a line pointing due north. A number of archaeologists suggest that this is evidence that the creators of the spheres were familiar with such a science as astronomy, and that the spheres themselves somehow interacted with space. This version is confirmed by the fact that the Mayans, who once lived in Costa Rica, were outstanding astronomers. They accurately divided the year into seasonal cycles, observed the movements of the planets, and compiled star charts with more or less fixed coordinates of celestial objects.
Some are even sure that the stone spheres represent a map of the starry sky and, accordingly, serve as “beacons” for spaceships. There is also an opinion that the balls had a topographical function - they played the role of landmarks for travelers and marked the boundaries of certain territories.
There is an exotic version that the balls were used as money - after all, some tribes still have stone “cash”. Spheres different sizes- these are just “coins” of different denominations - from the most expensive to small “pennies”.
Looking for gold
These days it is very difficult to refute or confirm one or another version. During research, agricultural work and just for the sake of pampering, almost all the balls were moved from their original places. Numerous connoisseurs of antiquities stole smaller “balls” to decorate their gardens and courtyards.
Much damage to science was caused after someone started a rumor that there was gold inside the balls. Of course, no one “dug up” the precious metals inside them, but a huge part of the unique objects was irretrievably lost.
In addition to all the other unsolved mysteries, it remains unclear when the balls “came into being.” Archaeologists often determine the date of origin of artifacts by the cultural layer in which they were discovered. But the balls are found in completely different layers, which date back to 200 BC. before 1500 AD
However, many researchers are confident that the “balls” were made much earlier. American scientist George Erickson claims that ancient craftsmen produced them more than 12 thousand years ago. This is also proven by artifacts recovered from seabed, where they could appear, most likely, only at a time when there was land there.
Another mystery is the method of transporting the balls from the place of manufacture to the place of installation. According to scientists, this distance was sometimes tens of kilometers, and heavy stone products had to be transported through the jungle, swamps and rivers.
It is unknown whether the secrets of the “balls of the gods” will ever be solved. The researchers themselves doubt this. Archaeologist Doris Stone once said: “We must classify the stone balls as incomprehensible megalithic mysteries.”
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30 June 2012, 17:45In the small Central American republic of Costa Rica in the late 40s of our century, an interesting discovery was made. Workers who were cutting down dense thickets of tropical jungle for banana plantations suddenly came across some strange stone sculptures of the correct spherical shape. 
The largest of them reached a diameter of three meters and weighed almost 16 tons. And the smallest ones did not exceed the size of a handball ball, having a diameter of only about 10 centimeters. It should be noted that with a large diameter the deviations are only +8 millimeters. The balls were usually distributed in groups of three to forty-five. 
But the most amazing thing happened next. Costa Rican scientists, interested in the stone balls, decided to look at the discovery site from above, from a helicopter. The helicopter rose above the jungle - and suddenly a page from a geometry textbook, stretching for tens of kilometers, seemed to float underneath it. The strings of balls formed into giant triangles, squares, circles... They lined up in straight lines, precisely oriented along the north-south axis... The thought immediately comes to mind that these balls were made and laid by very skillful people. But when and for what purpose were they erected? What tools did the ancient craftsmen use to give the stone the correct spherical shape? With the help of what devices did the giants “roll” the balls from place to place, making precise geometric shapes from them? Of course, it remains a mystery how these multi-ton huge balls were delivered through the jungle and swamps from quarries located several tens of kilometers away from the place of discovery. Unfortunately, most of these questions have not been answered satisfactorily. Immediately after the discovery of the balls, archaeologists began intensive excavations. Suddenly stood in front of them incredible fact: except for stone spheres in this area there was not a single object indicating the presence of a person ever here. No tools for working stone, no shards, no bones were found. Nothing! .jpg)
When a void appears in knowledge, a mass of hypotheses immediately appears that seek to fill it. Let's look at some of them. Hypothesis 1. The balls are arranged like a model of a certain constellation. It is possible that these bizarre stone mosaics made of balls were intended for astronomical observations related to calendar calculations and determining the timing of agricultural work. In this case, it is quite appropriate to assume that somewhere nearby there existed a highly developed civilization - the predecessor of all ancient civilizations Central America. Hypothesis 2. The ancient inhabitants of Costa Rica were surprisingly warlike, possessing powerful technical military means. For example, they could have throwing weapons of exceptional power. Stone balls are just "projectiles" scattered on the battlefield. Maybe it wasn’t even a battle, but military exercises (maneuvers) took place here; a huge field is a kind of training ground for throwing weapons. Hypothesis 3. Proponents of this hypothesis, which was one of the most widespread, argued that guests from other cosmic worlds chose this particular place for their permanent cosmodrome. In this regard, the huge spheres that captured the imagination of earthlings are located in the form of boundary lines because they performed a function similar to the current landing strips of airfields. In 1967, an engineer who worked in the silver mines of Western Mexico and was interested in history and archeology told American scientists that he had discovered the same balls in the mines as in Costa Rica, but significantly more large sizes Then, on the Acqua Blanca plateau, located at an altitude of two thousand meters above sea level near the village of Guadalajara, an archaeological expedition discovered hundreds of balls that were an exact copy of the Costa Rican ones. Now there was almost no doubt: traces of some unusual and incomprehensible civilization had been found. 
One of the balls was discovered near a smooth stone platform. And immediately an assumption: perhaps it served as an altar? Again labor-intensive excavations. Thousands of tons of soil are transferred - and again nothing! No trace material culture. The mystery became even murkier. Unlike modern scientists, the ancients understood everything: what the balls were and how they appeared... The gods of the ancient Mexicans, for example, loved playing ball. But if people played with an elastic rubber ball, then the gods tossed stone balls. In those places where the gods competed, scatterings of stone balls of various sizes remained - from a few centimeters to three meters in diameter... C light hand Erich von Däniken dubbed the balls “the balls that the gods played with.” 
However, geologists, geophysicists and geochemists have a completely different point of view on the origin of these stone spheres and believe that obsidian balls are of a natural nature. Apparently, 25-40 million years ago, several dozen volcanoes suddenly awoke in Central America. Their eruptions caused catastrophic earthquakes. Lava and hot ash covered vast areas. In some places, glassy particles ejected from the volcanoes began to cool. They were the embryos of giant spheres. Around these nucleoli, surrounding particles of eruption products gradually began to crystallize. Moreover, crystallization proceeded evenly in all directions, so that a ball with an ideal shape gradually formed. Geologists and petrographers believe that the “creators” of the balls are the natural influences of factors such as water, wind and rain, which washed away the ash and soil day after day. Thanks to this, over time, the “whitened” stone balls ended up on the surface. Scientists managed to find similar stone balls in completely different places on our planet - in the Kashkadarya region of Kazakhstan, Egypt, Romania, Germany, Brazil and even on Franz Josef Land. Archipelago Franz Josef Land. Champa Island is dotted with many strange round stones. The perfectly round balls, from a centimeter to several meters in diameter, lie here as if in the courtyard of a sculpture workshop - hewn by the hand of a skilled sculptor for some unknown purpose. 
Mysterious stone ball on Mount Vottovaara in Karelia. 
There were reports that sailors of the Murmansk Shipping Company found similar balls on the coast of the Arctic Ocean. And here is a picture of balloons on the coast of one of the islands of New Zealand: 
A strange stone ball near Hoverla, Carpathians (Ukraine) It would seem that the mystery of the origin of stone balls has ceased to exist, but not everything is as simple as it seems at first glance... No matter how convincing these assumptions may sound, there is still no final solution to the phenomenon . First of all, they are not able to explain the appearance of granite balls, but only explain the appearance of obsidian ones. In addition, the ancient volcanoes could not correctly arrange in the form of figures many balls, which also had traces of grinding! And although a significant part of such balls indeed seem to be of purely natural origin, some specimens, for example the Costa Rican balls, do not fit into the framework of this theory, since they show obvious traces of leveling and polishing. 
And yet, how, how the ancient craftsmen managed to give the hardest granite such a perfect spherical shape remains a mystery, the same as the mystery of the formation of mysterious geometric shapes and lines oriented to the cardinal points... The time of production of the balls also remains unknown. Since there are currently no reliable methods for dating stone products, archaeologists are forced to rely only on stratigraphic studies and determine the date of manufacture of the balls from cultural remains found in the same deposits. Such remains found during excavations are now dated by archaeologists in the range from 200 BC. to even 1500 AD. But even such a wide range cannot be considered final. The fact is that stratigraphic analysis always leaves a lot of doubt about the dating of such artifacts. If only because if the balls are now moving from place to place, then nothing can exclude the possibility of such a movement of the balls at the very time that stratigraphy gives. Consequently, the balls may well turn out to be much more ancient. Up to hundreds of thousands and millions of years (there are such hypotheses). In particular, the version expressed by George Erickson and other researchers that the balls are more than 12 thousand years old is absolutely not excluded. With all the skepticism of archaeologists regarding such a date, it is by no means without foundation. In particular, John Hopes mentions the balls in Isla del Caco, which are underwater off the coast. If these balls were not moved there at a later time and were there initially, then they could have been placed there only when the sea level was significantly lower than the modern one. And this gives them an age of at least 10 thousand years... 
Costa Rica is a nature reserve country located in Central America. Wonders of nature and very beautiful places there's plenty here. Stone balls in Costa Rica, found in the southeast of the country near the town of Palmares, amaze both scientists and experienced travelers.
Perfectly shaped stone spheres
We found massive spheres, as often happens, completely by accident. One fruit company was clearing the impenetrable jungle and preparing a place for a future banana plantation. In the depths tropical forest the workers stumbled upon an incredible size. There was something to be surprised about!
Where did the strange balls appear on the coast? There is no answer to this question yet. Similar creations human hands There are also other places around the world. But it is on this beautiful earth that the spheres are the largest. Some weigh up to 16 tons, and their diameter is up to 3 meters! There are smaller balls.
All products are characterized by ideal surface smoothness. What tools were used to process lava masses or sedimentary rocks from which unusual three-dimensional figures were made? Nobody knows? How were they transported to their current location? Also a mystery. In these parts there are no rocks from which these round ones are carved. Where they were brought from is also unclear? In a word, questions without answers.
Guests from the past
Fewer questions would arise if these strange Costa Rican stone balls were made two or three centuries ago. But their age is almost 12 thousand years! In those distant times there were no grinding machines, no lasers, no special drying chambers. Perhaps we are mistaken, and in those days a highly developed civilization lived on Earth? Researchers of antiquity find too much evidence of intelligent activity and complex objects made in those times.
Quite a lot of time has passed since 1940, when amazing spheres were discovered. But scientists are no closer to the solution. They don't know how the stone balls got to the coast of Costa Rica. Some of the smaller finds were stolen by curious and “black archaeologists”; some spheres were buried in the ground to preserve them for posterity. Several of the most massive ones were left on display for tourists, who, while visiting the reserve country, examine with great interest the mysterious creations of ancient craftsmen.
Stone balls in Costa Rica photo
In the small Central American republic of Costa Rica in the late 40s of our century, an interesting discovery was made. Workers who were cutting down dense thickets of tropical jungle for banana plantations suddenly came across some strange stone sculptures of the correct spherical shape.
The largest of them reached a diameter of three meters and weighed almost 16 tons. And the smallest ones did not exceed the size of a handball ball, having a diameter of only about 10 centimeters. It should be noted that with a large diameter the deviations are only +8 millimeters. The balls were usually distributed in groups of three to forty-five.
But the most amazing thing happened next. Costa Rican scientists, interested in the stone balls, decided to look at the discovery site from above, from a helicopter. The helicopter rose above the jungle - and suddenly a page from a geometry textbook, stretching for tens of kilometers, seemed to float underneath it. The strings of balls formed into giant triangles, squares, circles... They lined up in straight lines, precisely oriented along the north-south axis... The thought immediately comes to mind that these balls were made and laid by very skillful people. But when and for what purpose were they erected? What tools did the ancient craftsmen use to give the stone the correct spherical shape? With the help of what devices did the giants “roll” the balls from place to place, making precise geometric shapes from them? Of course, it remains a mystery how these multi-ton huge balls were delivered through the jungle and swamps from quarries located several tens of kilometers away from the place of discovery. Unfortunately, most of these questions have not been answered satisfactorily.
Immediately after the discovery of the balls, archaeologists began intensive excavations. Suddenly, an incredible fact arose before them: apart from stone spheres, in this area there was not a single object indicating the presence of a person ever here. No tools for working stone, no shards, no bones were found. Nothing!
When a void appears in knowledge, a mass of hypotheses immediately appears that seek to fill it. Let's look at some of them.
Hypothesis 1. The balls are arranged like a model of a certain constellation. It is possible that these bizarre stone mosaics of balls were intended for astronomical observations related to calendar calculations and determining the timing of agricultural work. In this case, it is quite appropriate to assume that somewhere nearby there existed a highly developed civilization - the predecessor of all the ancient civilizations of Central America.
Hypothesis 2. The ancient inhabitants of Costa Rica were surprisingly warlike, possessing powerful technical military means. For example, they could have throwing weapons of exceptional power. Stone balls are just "projectiles" scattered on the battlefield. Maybe it wasn’t even a battle, but military exercises (maneuvers) took place here; a huge field is a kind of training ground for throwing weapons.
Hypothesis 3. Proponents of this hypothesis, which was one of the most widespread, argued that guests from other cosmic worlds chose this particular place for their permanent cosmodrome. In this regard, the huge spheres that captured the imagination of earthlings are located in the form of boundary lines because they performed a function similar to the current landing strips of airfields.
Some archaeologists believed that under the balls there could be some kind of capsules with messages from our alien brothers in mind, left by them when they finally decided to leave our planet. Naturally, projects arose for raising the balls and conducting excavations, which, apparently, would have been carried out if new discoveries had not been made...
In 1967, an engineer who worked in the silver mines of Western Mexico and was fond of history and archeology told American scientists that he had discovered the same balls in the mines as in Costa Rica, but much larger in size. In his opinion, they were made by the Aztecs. This sensational statement had the effect of a bomb exploding. Then, on the Acqua Blanca plateau, located at an altitude of two thousand meters above sea level near the village of Guadalajara, an archaeological expedition discovered hundreds of balls that were an exact copy of the Costa Rican ones. Now there was almost no doubt: traces of some unusual and incomprehensible civilization had been found.
One of the balls was discovered near a smooth stone platform. And immediately an assumption: perhaps it served as an altar? Again labor-intensive excavations. Thousands of tons of soil are transferred - and again nothing! No traces of material culture. The mystery became even murkier.
Unlike modern scientists, the ancients understood everything: what the balls were and how they appeared... The gods of the ancient Mexicans, for example, loved playing ball. But if people played with an elastic rubber ball, then the gods tossed stone balls. In those places where the gods competed, there were scatterings of stone balls of various sizes - from a few centimeters to three meters in diameter...
A large number of balls were discovered in the Jalisco region near the city of Aulaluco de Mercazo in Mexico, in Palmar Sur in Costa Rica, in the Los Alamos area and in the state of New Mexico (USA). It should be noted that all these areas are characterized by active volcanic activity...
To conclude the conversation about the archaeological expedition that carried out research in Guadalajara, it must be said that in the end it was lucky. Just to be on the safe side, several scientists from other specialties took part in it: geologists, geophysicists and geochemists. Ignoring the just anger of archaeologists, they mercilessly destroyed two balls and established that the stone spheres had nothing in common with either aliens, or the Aztecs, Incas or Mayans... The balls turned out to be of natural origin.
Apparently, 25-40 million years ago, several dozen volcanoes suddenly awoke in Central America. Their eruptions caused catastrophic earthquakes. Lava and hot ash covered vast areas. In some places, glassy particles ejected from the volcanoes began to cool. They were the embryos of giant spheres. Around these nucleoli, surrounding particles of eruption products gradually began to crystallize. Moreover, crystallization proceeded evenly in all directions, so that a ball with an ideal shape gradually formed.
Geologists and petrographers believe that the “creators” of the balls are the natural influences of factors such as water, wind and rain, which washed away the ash and soil day after day. Thanks to this, over time, the “whitened” stone balls ended up on the surface. For example, it has been established that in areas of the Earth with large daily temperature differences (fluctuations), ordinary weathering, called exofolization, “works” very effectively. In this case, the rocks are destroyed spontaneously according to the “falling husk” type, that is, the outer layers of the rock formation are gradually separated, like the husk of an onion, which ultimately allows only the solid spherical core to remain “alone.”
If the centers of the balls were located close to each other, then the stone spheres could even grow together with one another. The discovery of such fused balls confirmed the scientists’ guess.
Thus, not some unfounded assumption appeared to explain the origin of the stone balls, but a completely substantiated hypothesis. Scientists managed to find similar stone balls in completely different places on our planet - in the Kashkadarya region of Kazakhstan, Egypt, Romania, Germany, Brazil and even on Franz Josef Land. It would seem that the mystery of the origin of the stone balls has ceased to exist, but not everything is as simple as it seems at first glance...
Firstly, as it turned out, there are two types of balls - obsidian and granite. If the theory of volcanic origin for the former is confirmed by laboratory studies, which showed that the balls from Jalisco arose in the Tertiary period (man, as is known, appeared only in the Quaternary period), then it is impossible to explain the appearance of granite balls with this theory. Moreover, some of the granite balls (for example, a giant ball from Costa Rica) are polished in a way that only human hands can polish. And everything seems to be clear. Except perhaps for this moment: how were people armed only with stone tools able to do this? Obsidian balls created by nature most likely served as models for the Mayans (who, naturally, did not doubt the divine origin of the first balls), and skilled craftsmen carved giant balls from blocks of granite, worthy of being both the amusement of the gods and the subject of human worship, and perhaps they and were used in various types of human activity. Thus, H. Kink in the book “How they were built Egyptian pyramids" indicates: "At the foot of the pyramid of Djoser, many stone balls with a diameter of 12 to 19 centimeters were found, and the diameter of some of them reaches 40 centimeters. These balls, specially made of stone, were used as rollers for dragging large boulders..."
And yet, how and how the ancient craftsmen managed to give the hardest granite such a perfect spherical shape remains a mystery, the same as the mystery of the formation of mysterious geometric figures and lines oriented to the cardinal points... What if these are special signs? Who, for whom and why scattered them “all over the world”? There are no answers to these and many other questions yet.
Ancient civilizations left us a legacy of many interesting mysteries that have not yet been solved by modern scientists. This mysterious heritage also includes the amazing stone balls of Costa Rica, which can be seen on Caño Island, the Nicoya Peninsula and at the mouth of the Diquis River.
Prehistoric petrospheres of amazingly regular shape were discovered in the 30s of the 20th century by workers of the United Fruit Company while clearing the jungle for banana plantations. Local legends said that there was supposed to be gold hidden inside the mysterious stone balls.
In search of ancient treasures, workers split the balls they found, but they were all empty. As a result, most of the found petrospheres were blown up or broken by treasure hunters. The vandalism was stopped only after someone intervened in the situation local authorities. Today, about 300 stone balls have survived, ranging in size from one inch to two meters.
The strikingly regular ancient stone balls were made from different materials- made of sandstone, limestone or igneous rock called gabbro. that the largest petrospheres weigh 16 tons.
In the forties, archaeologist Lothrop began studying the mysterious stone balls of Costa Rica. Then the first magazine articles began to appear, telling about the unusual ancients of Central America. The age of the artifacts spanned the entire pre-Columbian era, so the creation of stone balls was attributed to various ancient cultures of that time.
Mysterious stone balls have become a popular attraction. To attract tourists, jungle balls were transported to museums and installed in city squares. Now only six of the found petrospheres remain at the site of their original discovery.
Despite many hypotheses, the origin and purpose of Costa Rica's mysterious stone balls still remains unknown. The fact that petrospheres were created not by ancient human civilizations, but by representatives of other worlds, is one of the popular versions among scientists involved in the study of unusual phenomena.