Who Made the Giant Stone Spheres of Costa Rica?

Bright Side

Alright, so here’s the mystery: in Costa Rica, there are these giant stone spheres scattered around, and no one knows for sure who made them. They’re perfectly round and date back to ancient times, likely created by the Diquís people, an indigenous culture that lived there long before Europeans arrived. These spheres were carved out of stone, possibly using tools made of other rocks, which is wild when you think about how smooth and precise they are. Some people think they were used as symbols of power or markers for important places, like villages or sacred sites. Others let their imaginations run wild, suggesting they’re connected to aliens or ancient maps of the stars. While archaeologists are still piecing it together, the spheres remain one of Costa Rica’s coolest and most mysterious treasures!  Credit: Farm 6 archaeological site: By Archaeochica, CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37074956 CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0: Cannonball concretion: By James St. John - https://flic.kr/p/2n2fRLs, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=115326401 Inside the Moqui Marbles: By Steve Jurvetson - https://flic.kr/p/2p7anhU, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=138492007 CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/: Guayabo: By Lutz Maertens, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5708192 Parque de las Esferas: By Axxis10, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22643080 Stone spheres of Costa Rica: By Rodtico21, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28154817 Stone spheres of Costa Rica 2: By Rodtico21, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30990999 Bowling Balls Beach 2: By Brocken Inaglory, Noodle snacks, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8099929 CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0: Diquis Stone Spheres: By Mariordo (Mario Roberto Durán Ortiz), https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=86067629 model of a Diquís village: By Mariordo (Mario Roberto Durán Ortiz), https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=89779222 Diquis Stone Spheres 2: By Diego Padilla Durán y Mariordo (Mario Roberto Durán Ortiz), https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=98507791 Split Diquis Stone Sphere: By Mariordo (Mario Roberto Durán Ortiz), https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=86067611 Jardin con alineacion: By Rodrigo Fernández, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39137534 Diquis Stone Spheres Museo Nacional: By Mariordo (Mario Roberto Durán Ortiz), https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=86067624 Diquis Stone Spheres 3: By Mariordo (Mario Roberto Durán Ortiz), https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=86067630 Museo Nacional de Costa Rica: By Mariordo (Mario Roberto Durán Ortiz), https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=89834951 Museo de Jade Diquis Stone Spheres: By Mariordo (Mario Roberto Durán Ortiz), https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=86065789 Cannonballs Theodore Roosevelt: By Acroterion, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=73594427 Ironstone concretion: By James St. John, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=75394817 MoerakiBouldersSunrise: By Karsten Sperling, http://spiff.de/photo - Sperling, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=109412 Stone Spheres: By John W. Hoopes - http://www.world-mysteries.com/sar_12.htm, CC BY 2.5 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2182600 Alluvial plain-2: By Eurico Zimbres, CC BY-SA 2.5 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1326054 Animation is created by Bright Side.  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Music by Epidemic Sound https://www.epidemicsound.com   Check our Bright Side podcast on Spotify and leave a positive review! https://open.spotify.com/show/0hUkPxD34jRLrMrJux4VxV   Subscribe to Bright Side: https://goo.gl/rQTJZz  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Our Social Media: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brightside  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brightside.official TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@brightside.official?lang=en   Stock materials (photos, footages and other): https://www.depositphotos.com https://www.shutterstock.com https://www.eastnews.ru ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  For more videos and articles visit: http://www.brightside.me

Transcript

00:00Imagine you've booked a tour through the jungles of Costa Rica.

00:04All of a sudden, you stumble upon a huge stone sphere,

00:08nearly the length of a king-sized bed in diameter.

00:11How on earth did it end up there?

00:14And what does it symbolize?

00:15You immediately ask your guide.

00:17He's not as amazed as you are,

00:19and tells you that there are actually several hundreds of them

00:23scattered across the south of the country.

00:27The mysterious stone spheres don't have an official name.

00:31The locals simply call them Las Bolas,

00:34which means balls in Spanish,

00:36while historians refer to them as Diquis spheres

00:39after the culture that produced them.

00:41Scientists have studied the sediment layers of the earth around them

00:45and estimate that the earliest were made around the year 600 CE,

00:50and the newest ones date to the year 1000 CE.

00:53Many of the spheres were relocated after their initial discovery,

00:57and that's why archaeologists can't date them precisely.

01:02The Diquis culture completely disappeared

01:05shortly after they were discovered by the Spanish in the 16th century.

01:10Unlike the Mayas and the Aztecs,

01:12the myths or legends of these peoples didn't survive,

01:16so they cannot explain the existence of the mysterious orbs.

01:20More than 300 of these objects have been discovered so far,

01:24with some being smaller than 1 inch in diameter,

01:27and the largest measure 6.6 feet in diameter,

01:31standing taller than most humans.

01:33Although there are ones made from limestone,

01:36most spheres were carved out of a coarse version of basalt,

01:40a type of rock that forms when lava cools rapidly.

01:44Some orbs weigh up to 15 tons,

01:47and in most cases, their surface is smooth to the touch,

01:52although there are coarse, mostly unfinished pieces.

01:57If we throw away the theory

01:58that river erosion naturally sculpted the spheres,

02:01the ancient people seem to have created them

02:04by hammering boulders with other rocks.

02:07Once they got the rough shape they were aiming for,

02:09they would polish the rock to perfection

02:12using techniques such as controlled fracture and grinding.

02:15The mysterious spheres are located in the Diquis Delta

02:19on the coast of the Pacific Ocean.

02:21Most of them can be found in a place called Farm 6,

02:25which, alongside three other sites,

02:27was proclaimed a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2014.

02:32The area contains other finds from the pre-Columbian era,

02:36such as paved areas, burial sites, and mounds.

02:41For centuries, the stone balls were hidden

02:44under a thick layer of sediment

02:46that protected them against the elements and looters

02:49until they were unearthed during the 1930s.

02:52The company that owned the land

02:54was clearing the rainforest for banana plantations

02:57when they stumbled upon these unusual stone constructions.

03:01Some were damaged by bulldozers

03:03and some by workers trying to pry them open,

03:06as they believed there was gold hidden inside.

03:09It took a while before the authorities intervened

03:11to stop further damage to the finds.

03:14Doris Stone, the daughter of an executive

03:16of the company that owned the land,

03:18was the first to study the spheres.

03:20In 1943, she published an article

03:23in a leading American archaeological journal

03:26turning the world's attention to the orbs.

03:30Expeditions soon followed,

03:32and archaeologists were immediately able to determine

03:35that the stone formations were human-made,

03:38probably created by the ancient indigenous population

03:41of Costa Rica.

03:42To this day, no one has been able

03:44to fully explain their function in a scientific way.

03:48It means there's still room for some wild theories

03:51about the spheres' origins and true purpose.

03:56The most popular theory in the scientific community

03:59is that the stone spheres served as decorations

04:02and status symbols,

04:03as many of them were found near the houses of chieftains.

04:07Local tribal leaders were also laid to rest

04:10with some of the smaller balls,

04:12so these stone formations were definitely associated

04:15with power in some way.

04:17Chiseling a boulder to perfection

04:19involved a lot of labor and planning,

04:22and only powerful individuals could afford it at the time.

04:27The other popular theory is that the boulders

04:29were used for astronomical observations.

04:32Individual spheres represented stars or planets,

04:35like a primitive map of the night sky.

04:38Since they were perfectly round,

04:40it was easy to roll them around.

04:42Before the jungle engulfed them,

04:44the area where they were found was a flat alluvial plain,

04:48ideal for rolling large boulders around.

04:51Another version of this theory suggests

04:53that the stones were used as boundary markers,

04:56much like modern border stones,

04:59which are also mostly made from stone.

05:03Finally, legends from other tribes that lived in the area

05:06tell of how the spheres were cannonballs

05:09that the deity of thunder used

05:11to drive away the deity of winds and hurricanes.

05:15We still don't know the original purpose

05:17of the Costa Rican spheres,

05:19but they remain an important part

05:21of the country's national identity.

05:23The National Museum in the Costa Rican capital, San Jose,

05:27has six of them in its courtyard.

05:29Many other spheres have become prized garden decorations

05:33for wealthy Costa Ricans.

05:35There's even one at Harvard University.

05:37More than a millennium after they were created,

05:40the mysterious stone spheres of Costa Rica

05:43are still associated with power and wealth.

05:47In terms of numbers,

05:49the stone orbs are not perfectly round.

05:52They are rated as nearly perfect at 96% spherical in shape.

05:57And while even that is pretty impressive,

05:59the spheres of Costa Rica are not the only ones of their kind.

06:05Nearly a decade ago,

06:07workers came across mysterious giant stone spheres

06:10deep underground in a coal mine in northern Asia.

06:14The surface of the spheres,

06:15which measured a little over the length

06:17of a human footstep in diameter,

06:19was unusually smooth,

06:21and people tried to explain it somehow.

06:23Some were certain they were out of this world,

06:26and others suggested the spheres

06:28were actually petrified dinosaur eggs.

06:32Scientists quickly put an end to further discussion

06:36as it turned out that the mysterious spheres were concretions.

06:40Those are rock formations

06:41that take millions of years to form deep underground.

06:45Think of a pebble that picks up snow

06:47as it rolls down a hill.

06:49That's how concretions are made.

06:52Groundwater, rich in sediment and minerals,

06:54flows around the sediment,

06:56slowly shaping it into a perfect orb.

06:59The process is quite common in nature,

07:02but most concretions are fairly small.

07:05The spheres found in the coal mine

07:07grew to their size in the mineral-rich ground,

07:10and they were big enough to get the press

07:12and the general public interested.

07:15Another possible case of concretions

07:18is the massive stone spheres

07:20found in the Visoko Valley in Bosnia.

07:23Samir Osmanagish,

07:25better known as the Bosnian Indiana Jones,

07:28was the first to explore those objects

07:30about as wide as the length of a London bus.

07:34He believes the stone spheres

07:35were carved by a lost civilization

07:38that lived in the area a thousand years ago.

07:41The reddish color of the orbs, though,

07:43is proof to geologists

07:44that they are indeed concretions,

07:47rich in iron content.

07:50The Moki marbles, found in rural Utah,

07:54are similar in color to the Bosnian spheres.

07:57These tiny concretions are the size of toy marbles

08:00and consist of a sandstone core

08:02and a shell made out of hematite, an iron ore.

08:06In South Africa,

08:07miners have come across Klerksdorp spheres,

08:11which are similar in shape and size to Moki marbles.

08:15The only difference is that these ones

08:17formed inside volcanic sediments and ash.

08:22The most intriguing among human-made tiny spheres

08:25are probably the orbs found on several Greek islands.

08:29Scientists discovered 700 stones smaller than golf balls

08:33near the Bronze Age site of Akrotiri

08:36on the island of Santorini.

08:38They believe that the finds

08:40were between 3,600 and 4,500 years old.

08:46When they compared all the stones' variations

08:49in size and color,

08:50the archaeologists concluded

08:52that these enigmatic stones

08:54could have easily been

08:56the oldest board game ever made.

08:59With the help of artificial intelligence,

09:01scientists are now trying to work out

09:03the rules of this game.

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