Mysterious Stone Balls

We’ve now seen perfectly round stone balls at least a meter in diameter at four locations – at the National Museum in San Jose, in front of a church in a nearby village, near the cathedral on the main square of San Isidro de El General, and at the remote indigenous village of Boruca.

These stone spheres are a mystery of Costa Rica. More than 300 have been found to date, ranging in size from a few centimeters to over two meters in diameter, and weighing up to 16 tons. The stones are believed to have been hand-carved between 200 BC and 1500 AD and are shaped as geometrically-perfect spheres.

I read that the stones are formed from a unique type of granite found in one specific area here in the Talamanca Mountains. They were first discovered in the southwest corner of Costa Rica, more than 50 miles away from the quarry, in the 1930s when the United Fruit Company began clearing the dense jungle for banana plantations. Workmen bulldozed many and blew others apart with dynamite to see if gold or other treasures were hidden inside, before authorities intervened. Archaeological excavations undertaken at sites with stone balls in the 1950s found them to be associated with pottery and other materials typical of the Pre-Columbian cultures of southern Costa Rica.

The stone balls were moved distances of over 300 kilometers north in ancient times, as well as being relocated in recent decades for display throughout the country. Stratigraphy is used for dating but since the carved stones are no longer in their original locations, exact dating has been impossible. Similar stone balls have been found on an island off the coast of Chile.
Numerous myths surround the stones, such as they came from Atlantis. Erich Von Daniken wrote about them in Chariots of the Gods and presumed that they were extraterrestrial. Some local legends state that the native inhabitants had access to a potion able to soften the rock. Another claim is that at the center of each sphere is a single coffee bean or nugget of gold. Interesting, especially since coffee beans are known here as los oros de grano, or grains of gold. 