DIQUÍS SPHERES

During a visit to Costa Rica several years ago I was intrigued by huge stone spheres in many lawns of government buildings, homes, and on some beaches. I started to look further into them. It turns out that there is quite a bit more fiction than fact surrounding the mysterious balls. In the recent past, 1970’s, several authors wrote about “their new discovery” and the ambiguity of such spheres. Their writings portrayed stories and myths about the ancient spheres of Costa Rica as fact, and thus they were widely accepted. These theories include everything from landmarks to hidden sacred messages that must be kept hidden from the public.

While these ideas may be much more exciting than the reality, we now know, or can confidently guess, most information on the Diquis Spheres. They were found originally on the bed of the Terraba River, which spurred myths regarding Atlantis as the place of origin. We now know that indigenous people around the current towns of Palmar Sur and Palmar Norte, Costa Rica, were the most likely sculptors.

The spheres range from only several centimeters, to two meters in diameter, weighing up to an incredible 16 tons. The massive size of the spheres also raised several questions. How were they made? And somehow more pressing, how were they moved? Nearly all of the spheres have been moved from their original resting places. Now a days we use heavy machinery and equipment to haul them across the state, but can only guess how they were relocated over a thousand years ago. Early authors fore mentioned offer ideas that the spheres were Tara’s, a god of thunder, cannonballs, and shot throughout the land. They also mentioned that the creators may have obtained potions that softened the rock to be malleable, and rolled them into spheres. Today we can conclude that a variety of grinding, pecking, and other lithic reduction has shaped these boulders.

The function of the Diquis Spheres has largely remained a mystery though. Although we can confidently rule out God’s cannonballs, we aren’t sure the reason for making such enormous statues. Today our best guesses come from the incredibly rare spheres that remain untouched, or unmoved. They were found in large curved and straight lines, pointing to magnetic north, as well as different shapes, most prominently triangles and parallelograms. These formations lead us to believe the rocks were used to navigate or resemble the stars. Few examples found in locations where homes would have stood, suggest otherwise though, that they would have been kept inside and unusable to navigate. The truth remains a mystery, at least for now.