Costa Rica News – If you have spent any time at all in Costa Rica or you are going to travel to Costa Rica, I’m sure you have wondered “What’s with all the stone spheres everywhere?” If you haven’t seen them, think of the ball of stone that almost crushed Indiana Jones in the movie.
Recently a man named John Hoopes made a trip to Costa Rica to study these stones for the United Nations cultural organization (UNESCO). This organization might place World Heritage Status on the strange spheres. His work here will determine whether the sites where these are found will be protected because of their value to mankind.
Hoopes is an expert on these Costa Rican spheres. Their history is old but the international interest seems to be just beginning! He tells us that they were found as land was cleared for banana plantations. 300 of them are known to exist. Some even weigh 16 tons and take up 8 feet! While a few remain in their original location in the Diquis Delta region, most have been moved to be displayed or damaged due to weather and natural disasters.
The stones are dated to 600 A.D. by radiocarbon dating and comparison to pottery styles of the time. Some argue that they were last used around that year but were actually created possibly centuries earlier.
The guesses as to what they were used for are numerous. Some say they are from the lost continent of Atlantis while others associate them with extraterrestrials. They also may have been used to help mark direction or used in association with making pottery. Some of them show marks of being hammered. There are no written records from that time period. The culture that used them died out after the Spanish conquest. For one reason or another, a group of people sculpted large rocks into spheres.
Which myth do you believe is the truth behind this mystery?
1 comment
So, 600 AD…Hmmmm
I take it that even though, circa 600 AD, there have been structures in other parts of the Americas for which an argument can be made that they were built based on some astronomical obervations, that no such structures have been discovered in or near the Diquis Delta region.
The human mind must experience some physical observation that causes a thought to occur that results in the manufacture of something.
Around the time of 600 AD the only two naturally occuring spheres that could be observed by humans were the sun and the full moon. Therefore, the rock spheres were made to look like one or the other, or maybe both. Usually when ancient humans invested so much labor as must have been necessary to manufacture even the smaller rock spheres, the justification for all the time and effort would be that they were making their living condition better by providing proof to some perceived god that they paid homage to the god. So, the spheres must have been created to pay homage to a sun god or a moon god or to both.