What are the stone spheres of Costa Rica used for?
They became popular as lawn ornaments, they adorn the town parks of Palmar Sur and Sierpe, and several are housed in the National Museum in San José. There is one at the National Geographic Society Museum in Washington and another in a museum at Harvard.
What are the giant stones of Costa Rica?
The stone spheres of Costa Rica are an assortment of over 300 petrospheres in Costa Rica, on the Diquís Delta and on Isla del Caño. Locally, they are also known as bolas de piedra (literally stone balls).
Are an assortment of over three hundred Petro spheres in Costa Rica?
Archeology Costa Rica. The stone spheres (or stone balls) of Costa Rica are an assortment of over three hundred petrospheres in Costa Rica, located on the Diquís Delta and on Isla del Caño. Locally, they are known as Las Bolas.
Where in Costa Rica are the stone spheres?
Isla del Caño
On the small island of Isla del Caño and the Diquís Delta in Costa Rica are over 300 stone Petrospheres often referred to as the Diquís Spheres, that have been attributed to the now extinct Diquís culture.
How many stone balls were discovered in the grave?
Of the 387 carved stone balls known in 1976 (now about 425), 375 are about 70 mm in diameter, but twelve are known with diameters of 90 to 114 mm. Only 7 are oval. They are therefore about the size of tennis balls or oranges. Nearly half have 6 knobs.
How big are the stone balls in Costa Rica?
The spheres number over 300. The large ones weigh many tons. Today, they decorate official buildings such as the Asamblea Legislativa, hospitals and schools. You can find them in museums.
What are the stone spheres in Costa Rica called?
Locally, the stone spheres are called as Las Bolas and are well-known stone carvings from the Isthmo-Colombia era. They are thought to have been built in lines leading to the house of chiefs, but their certain purpose remains unclear.
What kind of rock is the Coasta Rica stone made of?
Even if the stones are neither perfectly round or smooth, creating them was still a huge effort. Most of them are composed of granodiorite, a hard, igneous rock that comes from outcroping in the foothills of the nearby Talamanca mountains. Most likely the carvers carefully chose boulders that were somewhat round in the first place.
Who was the first person to see the spheres in Costa Rica?
The first archeological investigation of the spheres was done by Doris Stone, a daughter of a United Fruit executive and later the director of Costa Rica’s National Museum. Her observations were published in 1943 in the magazine American Antiquity.