7 ms·
Mysterious Stone Orbs Stashed All over Neolithic Britain
- tyleo 5y agoBe careful. Not all of them are accounted for.
- generalizations 5y agoI see what you did there.
- spython 5y agoReminds me of Dorodango, the Japanese art of making mud balls. https://www.laurenceking.com/blog/2019/09/26/dorodango-blog/ https://www.laurenceking.com/blog/2019/09/26/dorodango-blog/
- sherr 5y agoThere are a lot of these carved stone balls around but mainly in Scotland. They are very mysterious: no one really knows what they are or why they were created. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carved_stone_balls https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carved_stone_balls
- Zuider 5y agoIn paleolithic Ireland, such stones were used for cooking. They would be heated to a high temperature in a fire, and then rolled into a pit containing water to boil food.
- Madhouse61 5y agoI've yet to read one mention of sport or the possibility of use in some kind of game. Given the Ubiquity of games that involve round objects - especially in the British Isles, something like would seem like a natural progression of sorts.
- h2odragon 5y agoEven when the only possible "consumer goods" was a rock, there were luxury rocks. "What were they used for?" is asked like there's only one answer. They were probably used for anything else a rock is useful for, but being nicely sized for a hand, pretty, etc made them easier to use, more effective, or just flashier. AFAIK the class of objects referred to here don't share a lot of qualities that would make them a class in other contexts; there's no single shape, some have wear that may indicate original uses, etc etc. It just appears to be some of the early personal artifacts that people valued that are durable enough to see today.
- cloudking 5y agoNow we have valuable digital rocks https://etherrock.com/ https://etherrock.com/ Full circle?
- edoceo 5y agoOh, that's not a joke.
- taylorfinley 5y agoNo, some of the rarest rocks in the world, several of which have sold for over $2.5 million. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EtherRock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EtherRock
- progre 5y agoAll my kids have brought home rocks that were deemed special in some way when they where about 5 years old . I guess at that age we somehow start to get around the idea of "owning" things in a more involved way, and it feels nice to have something special, like a nice round rock. Maybe stonage kids felt that way too.
- h2odragon 5y agoMy child is a teen now. The last time I said to her, "hey i found this cool rock, you want it?" was last week :)
- dreyfan 5y agoThe original NFT
- drewcoo 5y agoNo mention of lawn bowls in the article? https://www.jackhighbowls.com/help/history-of-lawn-bowls https://www.jackhighbowls.com/help/history-of-lawn-bowls
- rawoke083600 5y agoanunaki-mass-storage devices !!
- yosito 5y agoOrbs, plural, but the linked article only has a photo of one of them.
- progre 5y agoAlso, that one photo makes it look like it's not a deliberately polished stone, more like a regular wave polished beach rock.
- gennarro 5y agoCame here to say the same. Really disappointing - I wanted to see the cache and instead I got one rock that sort of looked like what I was expecting.
- anadem 5y agoThere are many photos in the linked articles Edit to add: the 'Towie ball' [0] even has a lovely 3D viewer 0 - https://www.nms.ac.uk/explore-our-collections/stories/scottish-history-and-archaeology/towie-ball/ https://www.nms.ac.uk/explore-our-collections/stories/scotti...
- mikewarot 5y agoMy first thought was they were found glacial erratic spheres, which could have been traded, or used as a talisman of luck. Alternatively, they were shaped by hand, though I'd expect them to be smoother if that were the case. The question is, how closely do the sizes of the two objects match? If it's within a few percent, they are unlikely to be found objects.
- blincoln 5y ago> Alternatively, they were shaped by hand, though I'd expect them to be smoother if that were the case. Maybe they were a way of marking the passage of time in one's life? If the owners made a tiny amount of progress toward a sphere shape every day (or week/month/etc.), only the oldest folks would end up buried with one that looked like a sphere. All of the others would look more like normal rocks, and probably be ignored if they were found while digging. Two of them together, with roughly the same amount of smoothing, might mean a couple was originally buried there. The second one could also have belonged to a grieving spouse or relative, or even be a trophy taken from an enemy.
- Maursault 5y ago> The question is, how closely do the sizes of the two objects match? My initial guess was they were used as a retrievable projectile for hunting and eventually evolved into symbolic items, because they are just the right size for throwing; any larger would make them unwieldy, any smaller less effective. But a lot of them are exactly the same size. So there must be a reason for this precision. "Many of the late Neolithic stone balls have diameters differing by only a millimetre. The discovery of this led to the suggestion that they might have been meant to be used together. By plotting the find sites on a map it can be demonstrated that often these petrospheres were located in the vicinity of Neolithic recumbent stone circles. Models using small wooden balls placed in a groove in parallel longitudinal pieces of wood 'sleepers' with a carrying board above have shown such megalith transport to be practical in some situations."[1] Following that wiki section's footnote reveals this is Andrew Young's theory [2], which does, at least, explain the need for such close precision, at least for the ones that have nearly identical diameters. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carved_stone_balls#Megalith_construction_aid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carved_stone_balls#Megalith_co... [2] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101130010931.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101130010931.h...
- Gravityloss 5y agoCarving stone from a giant's kettle? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant%27s_kettle#/media/File:Galets_marmites-01782.JPG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant%27s_kettle#/media/File:G...
- mtw 5y agoWhy not used as currency
- 34679 5y agoStone Spheres of Costa Rica: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_spheres_of_Costa_Rica https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_spheres_of_Costa_Rica
- pixel_tracing 5y agoReminds me of shotput maybe it was used in a sport?
- detritus 5y agoGiven how popular lawn bowls is in Scotland, I'm surprised no one appears to have considered these objects might be part of some game or sport. To this day, people take their fandom to their grave, why not then too?
- King-Aaron 5y agoThis was my first thought to be honest.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- c3534l 5y agoDescribing a few round rocks as a "mysterious stone orb" seems a bit dramatic.
- memorylane 5y agoI listened to a Sean Carrol Mindscape podcast recently concerning Memory Palaces that have been used ubiquitously by ancient peoples. The theory goes that when people started settling down, the did not travel extensively and could no longer effectively use country for the palace in their mind. They therefore made physical objects with distinctive surfaces to serve as the physical part of a memory palace. This is well documented for Australian aborigines and native Anerican peoples who you can just ask. There are no equivalent populations in Europe to ask directly. Once writing/printing became commonplace these practices were abandoned. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fYhVkbzr60E https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fYhVkbzr60E Edit: add YouTube link.
- staplung 5y agoCome on _scientists_...they're obviously petrified Pokéballs.
- rhplus 5y agoWhy does it have to be “mysterious”? Making balls is one of the most innate and pleasant artistic things humans can do with their hands. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorodango https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorodango
- swayvil 5y agoThey're astral teleportation anchors. You meditate (samatha) on one of these until you can visualize it pretty good (each is unique). Then you can "teleport" to wherever the stone orb is (astrally speaking). You might want to think twice before you take one home.
- theaussiestew 5y agoI know you've been downvoted by some ignorant skeptics, but can you go into more detail? Would love some sources that I can read more into.
- swayvil 5y agoSamatha is what the Buddhists call concentration meditation. It can show you a lot. Here is a description of that http://fleen.org/concentration http://fleen.org/concentration
- theaussiestew 5y agoOh I'm familiar with Samantha, what I wasn't so over is all the stuff to do with the stones. Do you have any sources for that that I can read into?
- swayvil 5y agoIt's meditation science fiction that I pulled from my butt. But my experience suggests that such might be possible.
- adolph 5y agoPet Rock is a collectible toy made in 1975 by advertising executive Gary Dahl. Pet Rocks are smooth stones from Mexico's Rosarito Beach. They were marketed like live pets, in custom cardboard boxes, complete with straw and breathing holes. The fad lasted about six months, ending after a short increase in sales during the Christmas season of December 1975. Although by February 1976 they were discounted due to lower sales, Dahl sold over 1 million Pet Rocks for $4 each, and became a millionaire. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet_Rock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet_Rock
- MerelyMortal 5y agoWhat could we make today, that would puzzle people 1,000 years from now?
- scop 5y ago:wq
- MerelyMortal 5y agoI don't know what you meant by that. A quick search shows that it might be "force-write a file without write permissions." Are you trying to say you wish you could edit my comment? If so, why?
- smallbizdev420 5y agoMy guess is that they were club heads, tied to wooden sticks; we are talking about a stone age culture who didn't have too much spare time/resources. They may have started out as utilitarian weaponry, but gradually morphed into status indicators. Knobs make it easier to lash them onto a stick with rope/leather thongs. Weapons/badges of office were often buried along with the owners. Leather/Wood rots so may not have been found along with them, though there may have been traces left behind.
- mathrall 5y agoSooner or later, it would be great to identify the main purpose of the stone orbs. It looks quite fascinating considering that it lasted over the years and is still recognizable.