In the 1930s, tens of spherically shaped stones were discovered in the jungle of Costa Rica. The stone balls were found by workers who were clearing a jungle area for banana plantations. They did not know what the objects were and almost 80 years later we still don’t know.

The balls were found in the delta of Terraba River, near the towns of Palmar Sur and Palmar Norte. Almost immediately after their discovery, the balls were dispersed throughout Costa Rica. They were transported by train and landed up in different markets where people would buy them as lawn ornaments. A couple of them can be seen in the U.S., at the museum of the National Geographic Society in Washington and in a courtyard near the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Some stone balls have definitely been loaded in the wagons with difficulty. All present the same shape, spherical, but their sizes differ from small examples no bigger than tennis balls to some 2 meters high and weighing almost 16 tones. Their sizes are not achieved naturally; in fact there are clear clues which suggest that the stone balls were made by humans.

Scientists attributed the spherical stones to the Aguas Buenas culture which dates from 200 BC to 800 AD. Other stones found together with various gold ornaments can date after 1000 AD. They were probably made by the ancestors of the natives who populated the region at the time of the Spanish conquest, but nobody knows for sure. Of course, as many other historical mysteries, Costa Rica’s stone balls have been attributed to the civilization of Atlantis.

There is absolutely no evidence that the people of Atlantis came and forged the stone balls, this is pure fiction as Atlantis itself. In fact all of them are made of granodiorite which is a hard and igneous which can be found in the nearby area of their discovery.

We can associate them with pre-Columbian cultures but in the same time it is impossible to tell if they really were forged by these cultures or others far older. Some scientists say that we can date their context but not the stone balls.

[digg-reddit-me]The actual mystery is that nobody knows what the stone balls were used for. One interesting theory which was rapidly put down as fallacious was Ivar Zapp’s. He suggested that the purpose of the stone balls aligned in such a way that they could point any traveler to Easter Island and Stonehenge. A number of theories say that they’ve had religious implications, which may be as true as others who suggest that the stone balls were arranged by people familiar with the use of magnetic compasses or astronomical alignments.

Written by Vlad Jecan

Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Tags: costa rica, mystery, stone balls