Costa Rica finds first stone sphere in 14 years
Costa Rica finds first stone sphere in 14 years
The pre-Columbian artifact is located in the Southern Zone.
The National Museum of Costa Rica has confirmed the discovery of a pre-Columbian stone sphere. Located in the Finca 12 sector of Palmar Sur de Osa, the sphere is the first since 2007 to be found in its original site.
The bola de piedra measures 1.23 meters in diameter and is in “perfect condition,” the National Museum says. It was identified by farm workers who were preparing to build an internal road through private property.
“In the surroundings, a lot of fragmented ceramic material and some remains of stone tools were also found,” said archaeologist Francisco Corrales. “All of the above reflects the presence of an ancient indigenous settlement.”
Hundreds of stone spheres have been discovered in Costa Rica’s Southern Zone and on Caño Island. The vast majority were removed from their original locations, impacting further research1.
The National Museum has proposed that the new sphere be protected in situ — in its original place.
“The discovery of this sphere and the study of its context will offer information on the settlement and the role that the artifact may have had for the community,” Corrales said.
The stone spheres of Costa Rica are attributed to the Diquís indigenous culture. They predate Spanish colonialization, were typically made from large blocks of igneous rock, and demonstrate the complexity of pre-Columbian societies in Costa Rica.
Finca 6, the best-preserved archaeological site with stone spheres, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
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The spheres were “discovered” in the 1930s when the United Fruit Company was clearing the jungle for banana plantations. United Fruit valued the dollar more than any cultural riches, so you can guess how that turned out for most of the spheres.
In case you can’t guess: They were bulldozed, taken home as souvenirs, or blown up in a fruitless (ha) attempt to find treasure hidden within.
check out the bolas de piedra they're not just 1000 years old by about 65m years old!
SHOTGUN SHOT
SCRIPTURE REFERENCE: Jeremiah 32:2
Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh. Is there anything too hard for Me?
Not long ago I was visiting with a brother-in-law and he explained to me how they make lead shot for shotgun shells. They use what is called a shot tower 160 ft high. A mixture of lead and antimony is heated to melting and then dropped through a sieve to determine the size. It falls 160 feet into a pool of water to cool. The result is little spheres of lead shot to be used in shotgun shells. Like the raindrops that become spherical as they fall, so too does the molten lead as if falls and cools to a solid.
Well 65,000,000 years ago a similar thing happened just off the coast of Yucatan. It was the impact of an asteroid six miles in diameter. At that time several cubic miles of deeper crust we're liquified and ejected high into the atmosphere. As it fell back to the earth it formed spheres of various sizes - there was no sieve to fix the size. The result can still be seen today in places like Costa Rica:
Today these stone spheres are a mystery. They struggle to find an explanation for these thousands upon thousands of these various sizes stone spheres. Perhaps they were formed in God's shot tower.
Most of what God has done remains a mystery to us. Our logical minds cannot figure out how He parted the Red Sea or the Jordan River. Or how He formed the stars with His hands. But we do know that when He created all things He also made the laws by which His creation would continue to exist. One of those laws is gravity by which rain and shot lead form spherical shapes as they cool, just as the planets, including earth have done.
So nothing is impossible with God. after all, He made all the rules and He can do whatever He wants in order to let us know Who He is that we might be rescued by Him from our stubborn ignorance. Ask Him to show you what you are really seeing when you look up and see all those billions of big round stars at night.