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Feature Articles 

Rolling Stones

/Bosnia not only has pyramids: it also has a number of enigmatic stone
spheres, on par with similar balls found in Costa Rica several decades
ago. So far, no-one has been able to explain the Middle American balls;
can the Bosnian discovery assist in revealing their purpose? /

Philip Coppens

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Ancient mysteries sometimes are like London buses: they come in pairs.
Hence, as soon as there was the possibility of a valley in Bosnia that
had pyramids, nearby, another valley was discovered where there were
enigmatic stone spheres. Media-wise, of course, all the attention has
gone to the pyramids ? but the stone spheres are definitely not less
interesting.
Stone spheres are not unique to Bosnia; in fact, the first ?enigmatic?
collection of stone spheres was discovered in the delta of the River
Diquis in Costa Rica in the 1930s, when the area was being cleared by
United Fruit Company. The largest ?stone ball? ? as they are also known
as ? measured 2.5 metres. Since, hundreds of similar spherical stone
spheres have been found. Alas, so far, no-one has been able to find an
explanation for their use or significance.

The highest concentration of stone spheres in Bosnia is near the town of
Zavidovici, northwest of the Valley of the Pyramids (Visoko) and about
100 kilometres from the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo. One stone ball has
actually been moved to the local town square, where it has been
repurposed as a fountain, with an explanatory panel nearby as to where,
in the district, other stone balls can be found in situ.
The greatest concentration of stone spheres is found in Grab, in the
immediate vicinity of Zavidovici. In a shallow valley on the outskirts
of the village, tens of them ? some complete, some broken ? are located
in a now dry creek bed.
So far, fifteen intact and twenty half stone spheres have been found
here. The stones? dimensions vary between fifty centimetres and two
metres. Each is polished and though it is possible they are of natural
origin, it is much more likely that they were cut, shaped, and finally
polished. A nearby stone ? of the same type of stone, though otherwise
unchanged by man ? has broken in two, showing that this type of stone is
very easy to cut, but also with a very homogenous interior, meaning that
any worker starting work on the creation of a sphere would not be
confronted with unpleasant surprises half-way in the job.

/Grab/

Many of the stone spheres in Bosnia are made from the mineral
grandiorite. At Teocak, in north-eastern Bosnia, there are eight stones
made from granite. Whereas some might doubt the artificiality of the
stones of Zavidovici, these granite balls have to be manmade, as nature
does not produce such shapes in granite. And, as such, it is clear that
the spheres of Zavidovici are equally more than likely manmade, an
opinion the Egyptian geologist Dr. Aly Barakat has also arrived at.
As mentioned, Zavidovici is but one site where stone spheres have been
found. Others are located in the settlement Ponikve near Vares, where
there is an irregularly shaped stone sphere that is probably made from
magmatic rock. In Ponikve, one stone sphere weighs about four tons. And
in the village Ziokuce, near the town of Kakanj, a few spheres can be
found with the same mineral composition, located near elongated stone
megaliths, which according to some had magical-medicinal purposes.
The list continues: in the library of the Franciscan monastery in
Kraljeva Sutjeska near Kakanj there is another small stone sphere. Near
Maglaj, in the villages of Jablanica and hill Cikota, stone spheres have
also been located and in Visoko itself ? the town of the pyramids ? a
small stone sphere was equally discovered some years ago and taken home
by workers from the local KTK factory, on whose grounds it was found.

But, it is clear that the ?capital? of the stone spheres is Grab, where
we find some legends associated with these stones ? stories that might
shed further light onto this enigma.
One legend states that in 1936, there was an inundation. The day was
dark like the night and it was pouring rain so that the brooks and
rivers left their beds. It is said that it was this calamity that
brought the spheres to the place where they are now located, suggesting
that in origin, they were higher up the hill. Seeing they are located in
the bed of a small creek, it is at least more than possible that this
legend is based on fact.
However, another ? more imaginative ? legend relates the crash of
wedding guests, saying that the place where the stones are now, is the
place where wedding-guests crushed each other, stoned themselves and
then became stone spheres. It is a somewhat more unlikely explanation,
but it echoes legends elsewhere ? for example in Carnac, France ? that
the megaliths were human beings turned to stone.

If Bosnia is so far unable to offer an explanation as to the purpose or
meaning of these stone spheres, let us look elsewhere in search of their
meaning. The American author David Hatcher-Childress has labelled such
objects ?marbles of the gods?, specifically when discussing the stone
spheres that are located in Costa Rica. The first scientific
investigation of these ?stone balls? was undertaken shortly after their
discovery by Doris Stone, a daughter of a United Fruit Co. executive.
Her report was published in 1943 in ?American Antiquity?. Her report
caught the attention of Dr. And Mrs. Samuel Lothrop of the Peabody
Museum at Harvard University, who in 1948 came to Costa Rica, found more
such spheres, and also attempted to excavate one such site, in an effort
to explain these enigmatic stones. Many of the stones the Lothrops
uncovered were around 2.4 metres in diameter; as at Zavidovici, one
sphere, 2.1 metres high, had been removed and stood outside a commercial
building in San José.
Lothrop's findings were eventually published as ?Archaeology of the
Diquís Delta, Costa Rica? in 1963, but despite being a tremendous
archaeological success story, no purpose or use for these balls has ever
been found. Most authors contend themselves by merely stating the
enigma, unable to provide further insights.

So, despite what some might assume, stone spheres are not an isolated
phenomenon. First: as in Bosnia, the stone balls of Costa Rica are not
limited to one location. They have been uncovered in a number of
locations, including the Isla del Caño, and over 300 kilometres north of
the Diquis Delta in Papagayo on the Nicoya Peninsula.
But apart from Bosnia and Costa Rica, similar stones have been found at
Easter Island, Peru and Mexico.
The stone sphere on Easter Isle is at the northern coastal area of the
island, just north of the statue quarry at the volcanic crater of Rano
Raraku. This single round stone is said to have been used by the
?Masters? of the island to focus their mental powers through, as a sort
of lens to levitate the statues and make them ?walk? around the island.
This is, of course, a highly imaginative conclusion. If we were to apply
it to Bosnia, the explanation would make little sense, as in this case,
it are the balls themselves that had to be moved ? and apparently
nothing else. The same conclusion applies to Costa Rica, where it is
known that the spheres were hewn from a quarry 48 kilometres away. But
it does underline that the stones? creators went through great trouble
to transport these objects, underlining that both their destination site
was important ? most likely sacred ? and that this specific type of rock
was desired, as otherwise, no doubt more local stone would have been
quarried.

The majority of Costa Rican stone balls are sculpted from gabbro, an
intrusive igneous rock similar to granite ? a rock type also used for
some of the Bosnian stone spheres.
Lothrop and others since have speculated that the spheres were probably
roughly shaped as they were hewn from natural blocks and then polished
with smaller stones, with wet sand as an abrasive medium, to give them
their polish. It has also been noted that when granodiorite is heated
and then quickly cooled, a thin layer of stone comes off in flakes, a
technique that might have greatly assisted in rounding the stones. But
the fact that stone spheres in Bosnia and Costa Rica exist, but that
both are furthermore polished, should be of some interest too. The
variety of the material used is equally interesting, but at present,
no-one has ever been able to conclude whether there is any special
significance as to which material was used where ? let alone for what
purpose.

In Costa Rica, the stones were often placed in groups, or in straight or
curved lines ? perhaps not dissimilar to the standing stones of Western
Europe, which are often found in the same formations. Of course, we find
that the same applies to Zavidovici (and some other Bosnian sites),
where the spheres are also found in groups.
So despite some interesting correlations, so far, our exploration into
Costa Rica has revealed few real answers. But the balls of Costa Rica do
tell us that some were found over human graves. Despite this possible
explanation, their specific purpose remains nevertheless unknown. If
there was a funerary connotation, however, we should remember the
stories of the dead wedding guests, which are connected with the stone
spheres of Zavidovici.
Though Bosnia has the Pyramid Valley, the various stone spheres ? apart
from one, small sphere ? are not in its immediate vicinity. They are
found in several towns in Bosnia and the only general conclusion one can
draw, is that they are within the catchment area of the Vinca Culture.
But whether the stone balls are part of that culture, and are hence
thousands of years old, is impossible to conclude, as there are no
techniques to determine the date of when the stones were shaped. Indeed,
the Costa Rican stones are also hard to date and are believed to have
been carved between 200 BC and 1500 AD ? but this doesn?t specifically
narrow things down.
Finally, in Zavidovici, so far, no-one has found any large ruins or lost
cities, and the same applies for the sites of the stone balls in Costa
Rica, which are equally set apart from obvious signs of civilisation.
That, of course, might be revealing in itself: perhaps these stone
spheres somehow were meant to interact with certain features of the
landscape ? the spheres being the only intrusion of Mankind in what
might otherwise have been a sacred location? But that is pure speculation.

/The "stone sphere fountain" in the square of Zavidovici/

The mystery of the stone spheres is not so much who made them or how. It
is known that Stone Age technology was able to carve these balls, though
it is equally clear that many of them ? the Costa Rican examples even
more so than the Bosnians ? required devotion to detail. Some Costa
Rican spheres are known to vary by only five centimetres in diameter,
and others are even more perfect than that.
The true mystery of the stone spheres is therefore what they were used
for, and what they meant. Lying as they often do near rivers, one can
merely wonder whether they were somehow there as ?decoration?, related
to a river cult. But if that were the case, the question is why they
haven?t been found in other civilisations.
One possible explanation relies solely on an interpretation of their
shape: a ball. Did it symbolise an egg? Was it somehow linked with
birth, or rebirth? If so, it might have held a certain meaning in the
connection with the graves that are connected to some spheres, but,
again, there is no universal theme connecting them with a funerary cult
to draw any abiding conclusion. As such, we have no idea what these
balls truly mean; they remain a veritable ancient enigma. Perhaps we
need to have a crystal ball to understand these stone balls?