Stones Spheres

As modest Gaia circles Great Sun, revolving on her tilted axis — Winter Solstice in the northern hemisphere of our Earth ball —  consider stone spheres. Stone spheres —  ancient artifacts of ceremonial or ritual purposes. Perhaps so, this and more. For this Solar-Lunar-Earthling journey, three examples:  Costa Rica, Scotland, Oregon’s Fort Rock basin.

In Alajuela, a few miles northwest of Costa Rica’s capital San José, this massive stone sphere relocated from from SW Costa Rica’s Diquís region. Photo D. Beauchamp, 2003. Two colonial ironies (per wiki):  “The culture of the people who made them disappeared after the Spanish conquest.”  “The spheres were discovered in the 1930s as the United Fruit Company was clearing the jungle for banana plantations.”  Many have been relocated over the past decade for decor or for preservation. Now, Stone Spheres are one of Costa Rica's National Symbols. 

Basalt balls, Fort Rock basin, southeastern Oregon, 2.5-3.5", est. more than 3000 ybp. Photo in Jenkins (2004), see Notes.

Basalt spheres, about 2.4-6”, from Christmas Valley, southeastern Oregon, now in a private collection, photo Henry C. Koerper, in Sutton and Koerper (2005), see Notes.

Carved stone ball, Scotland. Neolithic, about 3000 ybp. Displayed at Kilmartin Museum, Argyll, western Scotland. photo D. Beauchamp, 2019.

Carved stone balls in the British museum, from Aberdeenshire, NE Scotland. In British Museum, photos D. Beauchamp, 2014.

NOTES

Costa Rica

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_spheres_of_Costa_Rica

https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1453

Oregon

— Dennis L. Jenkins, The Grasshopper and the Ant: Middle Holocene Occupations and Storage Behavior at the Bowling Dune Site in the Fort Rock Basin, Oregon in Early and Middle Holocene Archaeology of the Northern Great Basin, Edited by Dennis L. Jenkins, Thomas J. Connolly, and C. Melvin Aikens, 2004 

— Mark Q. Sutton and Henry C. Koerper, The Middle Holocene Western Nexus: An Interaction Sphere between Southern California and the Northwestern Great Basin (2005), pp 5-10. https://pcas.org/v41n23.htm

Scotland

— Carved stone balls, British Museum https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_1930-0412-2

TWO POEMS

10.

Objects 

They live beside us. 

We don't know them, they don't know us.

Sometimes they talk with us. 

—Octavio Paz, from the poem Object Lesson in Loose Stones (1955), trans. Eliot Weinberger 

xi

These bones brilliant in the night, 

these words like precious stones

In the living throat of a petrified bird,

this beloved green,

this hot lilac,

this heart alone mysterious.

—Alejandra Pizarnik, from Diana’s Tree (Árbol de Diana) (1962), trans Anna Deeny

Big Island Hawaii

As Mauna Loa opens rifts and flows molten lava, and with a bow to Pele, petroglyphs from the Ka'u district, near South Point, Big Island

Ancient figures near grinding slick

 Papamū, a stone board for the game kōnane; located in shelter protected by a bouldered wall

Above, petroglyph figure facing the sea; detail below, note small head and waving? hands

Appearance as power figure.

Above, two figures looking to the sea; detail below.

This style more recent than the rectilinear-style figures; style may determine a general chronology.

NOTES
— Ka’u, Big Island Hawaii, 2009, photos and notes, Douglas Beauchamp
— Recommended:  Spirit of Place: Petroglyphs of Hawai'i (1999) by Georgia Lee and Edward Stasack
 

Addendum:  Configuration of Stone
Configuration a word. Description founded on a quest for understanding. As all words.
Stone an image of stone, an appearance of fundament beyond language.
Configuration as word seeks to grasp appearance beyond the boundaries of duration.
 

Consider figures in place. Consider a stone game board played with white shells smoothed by the sea.
 

Consider variations on “Configuration” per Wiktionary:
— Form, as depending on the relative disposition of the parts of a thing's shape; figure; form factor.
— Relative position or aspect of the planets; the face of the horoscope, according to the relative positions of the planets at any time.
— The way things are arranged or put together in order to achieve a result.
— The arrangement of electrons in an atom, molecule, or other physical structure like a crystal.
— A finite set of points and lines (and sometimes planes), generally with equal numbers of points per line and equal numbers of lines per point.