Costa Rica Spheres: Who Made Them and How?

These spheres, numbering over three hundred, are perfectly round and weigh sixteen tons. They range from several centimeters to several meters. I believe they were made by either a very advanced civilization or aliens. Here are a few pics and links.

Costa Rica Spheres




Spheres of Costa Rica

very interesting TC.
even if this is man made (which i doubt), you have to wonder what's the reason and motive behind these ballz.

Yea I agree. At first I thought they contained something but when people blew them open there was nothing.

Could they be something related to Stonehenge? Some advanced civilization? The most puzzling thing however is the purpose for them, as you said. Thanks for the post.

TC

so thats where ubuntu left his marble collection....

lol

ive heard of this before and was always curious...i heard the smaller ones used to be sold to tourists.

The Wikipedia article that you cite actually tells who made them. At the bottom there are web pages linked to two of the many scientists who did a lot of study on them:

web.ku.edu...
The balls were most likely made by the ancestors of native peoples who lived in the region at the time of the Spanish conquest. These people spoke Chibchan languages, related to those of indigenous peoples from eastern Honduras to northern Colombia. Their modern descendants include the Boruca, Téribe, and Guaymí. These cultures lived in dispersed settlements, few of which were larger than about 2000 people. These people lived off of fishing and hunting, as well as agriculture. They cultivated maize, manioc, beans, squash, pejibaye palm, papaya, pineapple, avocado, chile peppers, cacao, and many other fruits, root crops, and medicinal plants. They lived in houses that were typically round in shape, with foundations made of rounded river cobbles.

The "Out Of Place Artifacts" people have made a number of claims (some published in books) that aren't correct, and he points them out and gives the real scoop here: web.ku.edu...

Here's another good page on them:
www.atoda.com...

We visited a number of them when we were in Costa Rica some 10 years ago.

[edit on 2-4-2008 by Byrd]

to address your question : Who Made Them... and How.


i'd suggest that a person that had a status like a priest or shaman
were the one's that initiated the practice.

perhaps the spheres had a significance related to the cosmos
as they may have represented the bright star in the sky 'Venus'
& the bigger and more perfect spheres was a prestige thing
that reflected on its' creater...

of course the aged & regal priests/ or the busy shaman did not
labor by themselves... the real work of crafting the stone was done by the apprentices or novices of the priestly class.


this is not based on anything but my opinion & deduction...food for thought or just bunk, the balls in your court

Originally posted by beastamerica
very interesting TC.
even if this is man made (which i doubt), you have to wonder what's the reason and motive behind these ballz.

What motivates anyone to create art? God, nature, ego, love? These artifacts are awesome, and the impetus for there creation may never be known, but just because we might never know how they were made doesn't mean they weren't made by men. I think our modern minds give far too little credit to the ingenuity and creativity of our ancestors.

Maybe they are ball bearings for giant pyramid making machines. Maybe there is a function that we havent discovered yet.

These spheres, numbering over three hundred, are perfectly round and weigh sixteen tons.

From your linked to source:

The spheres range in size from a few centimetres to over two metres in diameter, and weigh up to 16 tons. has been claimed that the spheres are perfect, or very near perfect in roundness. However some spheres are known to vary by 5 cm (2 in) in diameter.

In addition

The diameter of the majority of the balls ranges from 60 to 120 centimeters, but there are some examples with diameters greater than 150 centimeters that weigh several tons.

Stone spheres

Starts on page 12

A few years ago I saw a cable program where people investigated these and had an artist recreate one within a week.

Originally posted by stikkinikki
Maybe they are ball bearings for giant pyramid making machines. Maybe there is a function that we havent discovered yet.

I don't think that ball bearings made of rock would work well at all....chip, chip, crack, crumble, etc.

A few years ago I saw a cable program where people investigated these and had an artist recreate one within a week.

What about a stone age man creating one in a week? I think there is enough evidence that these balls were made a long time ago by some advanced civilization.

Originally posted by Trash can
What about a stone age man creating one in a week? I think there is enough evidence that these balls were made a long time ago by some advanced civilization.

One of the above sources said that the balls were made by teams of people (in the case of the large ones) and that you could tell the difference in the techniques if you looked closely. It's amazing what can be done if you have patience!

Didn't the Olmec of Central America also make such stone spheres? If so then it would show a cultural connection.

Originally posted by Trash can
I believe they were made by either a very advanced civilization or aliens.

I believe they were made by some people with a whole lot of time on their hands. As for "aliens," I guess it's too bad they decided to use ordinary stone, rather than some kind of super fantastic plastic or something we'd instantly recognize as alien.

Stone = Stone Age.

The stone spheres could have been created for crushing things like dried corn. Now where's the large flat stone for the sphere to roll on?

Cultures new and old create oddities in art. One Polynesian group made large stone wheels-to use as a type of money. The Easter Islander made Moai, Europeans slapped up huge cathederals, over a hundred. Islamic cultures put up Mosques about every 600 meters in populated areas, etc etc

Crazy people humans!

Round stone things? Until the 17th century the Portuguese and Spanish used stone balls as cannon balls - something the Turkish continued into the 18th century. They made tens of thousands of them.

The stone balls are made of fairly easy materials to carve.

Evidence for an advanced human civilization making large soft stone balls that are not within in any type of tolerance? Near zero, chance these are cultural artifacts - fairly high.

Remember, these sites appear to be associated with ceramic material dating to the late Aguas Buenas Phase (A.D. 400–800). On the basis of published archaeological data, the total number of balls known for the
region appears to be 176. Of this number, ninety-eight are found in Palmar Sur–Sierpe on former banana plantations.

In the same area "stone barrels" have also been found usually a little smaller.

I would like to ask you something. How long do you think it would take to make one of those balls, one of the larger ones? How much time do these people have to make over three hundred of them?

I'm simply asking questions as opposed to jumping to conclusions. It has been established that people made them.

Howdy TC

They probably came from a group or clan of people who developed the art. They may have worked in teams (like on Rapa Nui) and this development may have gone on for centuries.

Not being a stone craver I don't have the expertise to comment on this in detail. I would think that modern artists/masons would know the answer.

A list of sources of information on the spheres

www.hartford-hwp.com...

One note from the list above

The vast majority the balls are made of a granodiorite that outcrops in the lower Terraba River. Quintanilla has located the raw material source and some boulders that may be unfinished balls. In her excavations, she also found flakes from the balls that suggested a method of manufacture. The stone from which they are made, when heated and then rapidly cooled (as with fire and cold water), exfoliates in thin, onion-like layers. Done repeatedly, this technique could have been used to shape boulders into their near-perfect sphericity. After this, they were polished to a high luster with ground stone tools.

[edit on 3/4/08 by Hanslune]

We have some round boulders down here in New Zealand at Moeraki in South Island. Various myths and legends surround these, but have since been deemed to have formed naturally. Nature does have a sense of homour sometimes!!



Link: en.wikipedia.org...
H

I just saw a documentary on these spheres less then 2 months ago, and in it, the people researching them tried to duplicate them with whatever crude tools were available at the time they were made...

And they got pretty darn close to creating perfectly round spheres like these...I will search to see if I can find it on youtube ...if I remember correctly it was shown on National Geographic.

If I find it it I will post it...


Wow and cool picture Havalon!


[edit on 3-4-2008 by LateApexer313]

[edit on 3-4-2008 by LateApexer313]