By Alex Leff
Tico Times Staff | aleff@ticotimes.net

What's gray, round and keeps popping up all over? Stone spheres, hand-crafted by the country's indigenous population.

Archaeologists have found another one of Costa Rica's mysterious spheres in an excavation near the Osa Peninsula, the National Museum reported. The sphere is roughly the same size as one discovered at the same dig in 1993: 1.10 meters in diameter.

Regarded as indigenous monolithic treasures, hundreds of perfectly round balls have been spotted in different parts of the country. Many are no larger than a bowling ball. Some are more like a big boulder, weighing 16 tons. They are usually made of granodiarite, a hard, igneous stone.

This one was found at the Finca 6 site, in canton de Osa, at the foot of an underground entrance ramp to what archaeologists believe was a pre-Colombian chiriquí home, museum Director Francisco Corrales told The Tico Times.

The exact use and origin of the spheres remains a mystery; attempts to explain it have ranged from comic to cosmic.

But according to Corrales, this latest discovery reinforces a more scientific theory.

“The finding leads us to believe that these spheres were symbols of social prestige and hierarchical positions” during the Chiriquí period from 800 to 1500 AD, he said. The Chiriquí people were ancestors of the Brunca, one of Costa Rica's eight indigenous groups.

“This is important because it reinforces the fact that they (the spheres) were created by indigenous people who had a complex society, capable of constructing such things. (The Chiriqui) were experts with stone,” he said.

Ifigenia Quintanilla, the archaeologist who discovered the sister sphere in

1993, was delighted to hear the news. “After more than 50 years of destruction, by people mining for gold and exploiting the land for bananas, it is amazing that it's still possible to find spheres intact in their original place,” said Quintanilla, who will soon publish an illustrated book with explanations in Spanish and English of the sphere phenomenon.

Considering over 90% of the known stone balls are not in their original homes, she added, it is all the more remarkable.