Stone balls from Costa Rica

Stone balls from Costa Rica
UNESCO world heritage
Stone ball in the courtyard of the National Museum of Costa Rica
National territory:	Costa Rica
Type:	Culture
Criteria :	(iii)
Surface:	24.73 ha
Reference No .:	1453
UNESCO region :	Latin America and the Caribbean
History of enrollment
Enrollment:	2014  (session 38)

Stone balls in the valley of the Río Térraba

The more than 350 stone balls of Costa Rica are pre-Columbian artifacts . They are among the most impressive archaeological relics on the American continent. They were in the list of the 2014 UNESCO - World Heritage added.

description

Most of the spheres are made of gabbro , a deep rock similar to granite , while about a dozen each are made of shell limestone and sandstone . With a diameter between a few centimeters and more than two meters, the heaviest weigh around 15 tons.

Locations

There are many sites, most of them in the Diquis Delta and on the island of Isla del Caño , others on the Río Térraba and near Golfito ; all mentioned in the province of Puntarenas , which occupies the southern and central part of the Pacific side of Costa Rica . But there were also isolated finds 300 km further north in Papagayo on the Nicoya Peninsula in the Guanacaste province .

Manufacture and age

As processing marks show, the balls were probably made by misting and grinding with stones. Evidence from pre-Columbian times has been found near the spheres : some ceramics from the Aguas Buenas culture (200 BC - 600 AD), others sculptures of the "Buenos Aires polychrome type" from the Time around 1000–1500 AD (meaning Buenos Aires in the province of Puntarenas ). The ancestors of the Boruca Indians are believed to be the manufacturers of the balls .

Determining the age of stone workings is generally difficult; Added to this is the fact that the vast majority of spheres have been removed from their place of discovery and now, for example, adorn private gardens. The only method of identification is the indirect method of stratigraphy , i.e. the examination of excavated layers for human-made traces. However, you can only use them to estimate the “last use” of the balls, but not their time of creation - unless you can find processing tools to assign their age. A chronological classification of the balls in the time between 600 and 1200 AD is however now considered likely.

Research history

The stone balls were certainly discovered several times; There are surviving reports from the 19th century. Research today began in the 1930s when the United Fruit Company cleared the jungle to plant banana plantations. Workers bulldozed the bullets aside and damaged them. When rumors emerged that there was gold inside, some were even blown up with dynamite. After the authorities stepped in, a few were put back together and taken to the National Museum of Costa Rica .

The first scientific investigation was carried out shortly afterwards by Doris Stone, the daughter of a United Fruit employee. Its 1943 publication in American Antiquity magazine brought the subject's attention to Samuel Lothrop of the Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology at Harvard University . In 1948 the Lothrop couple met Doris Stone on a research trip to Costa Rica, who arranged personal contacts and showed worthwhile excavation sites in the Diquis Delta . Lothrop's research was published in 1963 in Archeology of the Diquís Delta, Costa Rica .

gallery

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  Stone balls still under the surface

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  Arrangement of stone balls in the garden of the National Museum of Costa Rica

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  Stone ball in the National Museum of Costa Rica

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  Stone ball from the Diquis Delta on the grounds of Harvard University

See also

• List of the largest stone balls
• Olmecs

literature

• Patricia Fernández and Ifigenia Quintanilla: Metallurgy, Balls, and Stone Statuary in the Diquís Delta, Costa Rica: Local Production of Power Symbols. In: Jeffrey Quilter and John W. Hoopes (Eds.): Gold and Power in Ancient Costa Rica, Panama, and Colombia. Harvard University, Dumbarton Oaks 2003, pp. 204ff. (engl.)

Web links

Commons : Stone Balls of Costa Rica  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Diquis Spheres - stone balls of Costa Rica (photos and information)
• Terra X : Unsolved Cases of Archeology - Part 1 , ZDF , March 25, 2018 ( Online )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Javier Martin: Costa Rica's Pre-Columbian Spheres . costaricainfotravel.com. Archived from the original on May 9, 2011. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved April 6, 2010. - English interview with archaeologist Ifigenia Quintanilla, who, under the auspices of the National Museum of Costa Rica , undertook the most comprehensive field research since Samuel Lothrop, according to John Hoopes , from 1990-1995 ; a photo of her can be found on his website ( memento of the original from April 2, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .  
2. ^ National Academy of Sciences : Samuel Kirkland Lothrup . In: Biographical memoirs, Volume 48 . National Academies Press, 1877, pp. 253, p. 399 (Retrieved March 31, 2010). - on books.google.com, English
3. ↑ Tim McGuinness: Costa Rican Diquis Spheres: Sphere history . mysteryspheres.com. Archived from the original on March 29, 2010. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved March 31, 2010. - English edutainment site from an American publisher 
4. ^ Eleanor Lothrop: Prehistoric Stone Balls - a Mystery . In: Picks from the Past . Natural History (magazine). September 1955. Retrieved March 31, 2010. - English travelogue of Lothrop's wife with black and white photos in Natural History Magazine, a popular magazine similar to Geo or National Geographic .