Costa Rica “Rolling” Stones Gather No Moss
It’s not the mysterious stone heads on Easter Island, or the Nazca Drawings, but Costa Rica’s round stones are riddled with puzzles. Who built them? How and why?
Spon the origins and purposes of the huge stones of Costa Rica flow into the legends and prompt scientific analysis. Some have wanted to see the hand of residents from the mystic Atlantis, while others have just viewed in them a simple and wonderful natural geological formation. There’s even been talk of extraterrestrial intervention or a complementary energy axis to the Nazca drawings and the Easter Island statues.
They are also likened to territorial boundaries, commemorative rituals, the representation of the everlasting female, navigation gizmos, tectonic balance, perfect tokens of divinity, sources of energy or welfare, and even gateways to other dimensions. And in the indigenous tradition, the larger-than-life version that those were the cannonballs used by Tara or Tlachque –the god of thunder- to attack the Serkes –the gods of the winds and the hurricanes. A less farfetched hypothesis considers that the rocky spheres are nothing but parts of the astronomical gardens linked to the farming cycle calendars. They are also likened to the social hierarchy established in the past by the local tribes.
“In the pseudoscientific approaches, there’s no such thing as a real interest in contextualized information on the spheres. Those arguments are usually downplayed on the basis of lack of data or necessary ties between them and the archeological ruins found next to them. As the spheres are dismantled from this context, they are also stripped of their history and social ties they were subjected to,” says Ifigenia Quintanilla, a woman with a degree in Anthropology and Archeology, when consulted for this report.
They were discovered circa the 1940s and some of them were even blown up under the suspicion that they contained gold inside. Since 1970, both the stones and their locations are protected by the government. There’s legislation in place that calls for the recovery of those pieces that have been removed from their places of origin. The so-called Bolas de Costa Rica (Costa Rica Balls) are somewhere between 10 centimeters and 2.57 meters in diameter, and they can weigh as many as 16 tons. The perfection of their roundness is a staggering 90 percent. Most of them are made up of such hard stones as granodiorite, limestone and rhinestone.
In 2010, they were assessed by experts for their inclusion on the UNESCO list of World Heritage, thus becoming a token of the Costa Rican national identity. It’s commonplace to find replicas made of stone, bronze, steel, glass and reinforced concrete at the entrance of houses and public institutions.
The spheres have garnered so much cultural hype that today they not only appear in artworks, literature and architecture, but also in the 5,000-colon bills –the national currency.
Under an initiative conducted by the National Museum, a sphere park of approximately 10 hectares and made up of four sectors is in the works. The first sector will showcase five balls on the spot, while the second one will be reserved for the spheres of 25 meters in diameter and other structures linked to these peculiar formations. The third sector will harbor the stone spheres that were once removed from their original locations and then taken back, while the fourth will contain unearthed pottery fragments. A trail will run through the park’s major highlights. This project will allow for the protection of the spherical monoliths and will ease observation for both researchers and curious visitors.
As to the future of these rocks, Ms. Quintanilla says: “they continue changing and generating new forms of value –identity, prestige, personal exhibition, sense of belongingness, among others. They are better appreciated and valued, especially those that remain intact and good-looking. However, each and every one of them has a value that goes beyond the purely esthetical field, while our subjectivity –that lies in their being singular expressions and in our bid to materialize history– remains unchanged to date. They continue to define our eyesight.”
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