The Stone Spheres of Costa Rica are an assortment of over 300 petrospheres located on the Diquis Delta on Isla del Cano. They are sometimes also called the Diquis stones, after their supposed creators, the Diquis culture.
Ranging in size from a few centimeters to over 2 meters in diameter, and weighing up to 15 tons, most of the stones are sculpted from gabbro, a coarse type of basalt. However, some are also made from limestone or sandstone. In any case, the stones were made by hammering naturally formed boulders with other rocks and polishing them with sand.
Believed to have been created around the 600, with most dating between 1000 and anytime prior to the Spanish Conquest, the Stone Spheres of Costa Rica are the best known sculptures of the Isthmo-Colombian area. While it is thought that they were placed in lines along the approaches to the houses of specific chiefs, this theory is difficult to confirm, and the exact significance of the stones still remains unclear.
Local legend has it that the native inhabitants of Costa Rica used a potion that allowed them to soften stone and mould it like clay. Interestingly, limestone can be dissolved by acids obtained from local Costa Rican plants, so there may be some merit to this theory. However, most of the spheres are carved from gabbro, which is acid-resistant. Another legend has it that the stones belonged to the God Tara or Tlatchque, the God of Thunder. Tara would use a giant blowpipe to shoot stone balls at “Serkes” – the gods of wind and hurricane – in order to drive them from the land. The sphere in Costa Rica, then, are balls that struck their targets, and plummeted to the Earth.
