In the near Caspian region of Kazakhstan, in the vast desert of the remote Turysh province, thousands of round stones resembling giant marbles have been discovered scattered over a large area, dating back approximately 8-9 million years. No one knows why they appeared there.
A Playground of Giants?
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Sun, wind, and temperature fluctuations have created cracks in these giant “marbles” |
Anyone who visits this colossal stone site for the first time feels as if they have stepped into an unreal landscape. Thousands of round stones, the largest over 2 meters in diameter and the smallest the size of cannonballs, seem to have been scattered across an area of about several square kilometers by some giant hand. Locals have known about this strange stone field for centuries, referring to it as the “playground of giants” and considering it a sacred place, thus no one dares to farm or live there. During the Soviet era, Kazakhstan was the center of the agricultural collectivization movement, but the peculiar stone area was so remote that it was not included in planned territories. Consequently, apart from the local population, no one was aware of this unique region. Only recently, thanks to a local newspaper, the outside world has come to learn about the “playground of giants“.
Not Crafted by Humans
First, it is essential to note that spherical stones are rare phenomena but can also be found in other parts of the world such as Costa Rica, Mexico, Brazil, and Romania. Who scattered them in those places? Many theories have been proposed regarding this phenomenon, but none have been sufficiently convincing. During the Soviet era, scientists had “covertly” informed locals that around these round stones existed an “anomalous field” that could distort machinery and cause all living beings to function abnormally, which made people even more hesitant to approach the area. In both pre-Soviet and post-Soviet times, various sensational explanations emerged, suggesting that these round stones were cosmic eyes, capable of determining, transmitting signals, and sending information to the “supreme deity“…
Regardless of the interpretation, it is clear that these giant marbles cannot be the “works of humans“. Millions of years ago, when the number of humans (or hominids) on the planet was still very small and labor tools were rudimentary, no one could have crafted and transported such a massive quantity of stone from elsewhere to scatter it aimlessly.
Children of the Volcano?
Spherical stones can only be formed from lava, volcanic ash, or from sand layers that have been melted by magma or “softened” by some inorganic solution. Imagine rolling a handful of snow into a small ball the size of a tennis ball and then rolling it on the snow surface; it will pick up snowflakes and gradually form a larger spherical snow mass. “Soft” sand (from a solution with adhesive properties rather than water) has this characteristic too. It is very likely that these sand spheres, over millions of years, due to chemical and physical effects and radioactivity, have transformed into the round stones we see today.
The hypothesis of volcanic origin seems even more plausible. Again, imagine: under the impact of an explosion in a volcano, molten magma splashes out, and as we know, the surface tension of the liquid causes the droplets of magma to take on a spherical shape as they float in space. Suppose that during the eruption, it was a freezing period; these droplets quickly solidified into round stones that have existed to this day.
Did the Ocean Bring Them Here?
However, unlike the spherical stones found in other parts of the world, some of the stone masses in Kazakhstan bear traces of marine organisms such as shells and snails. Based on this, some scientists have proposed the hypothesis that these stones originated from the seabed. Explosions within underwater volcanoes could also send “droplets” of magma that naturally form into spheres in the water environment. If they were initially rough rather than round, over time, currents would have worn down their sharp edges and rolled them along the seabed, gradually giving them a spherical shape. Over millions of years, the seabed may have risen to become grasslands or deserts, leaving the stones exposed on the surface.
This theory is supported by scientific evidence indicating that the region of Kazakhstan was once underwater in the ancient Tethys Ocean. Nearly 10 million years ago, due to geographical tectonic activities, the Tethys Ocean disappeared, exposing the seabed with stones that had rolled in water. It is possible that when these stones first “came to light,” some still retained rough edges. But after millions of years, wind completed the final process, giving them the ideal round shape we see today. It is important to note that the action of wind, along with climate changes over many stages, including two glacial and hot-dry cycles, and even the significant temperature fluctuations between day and night (as seen in the desert of Kazakhstan) have caused many round stones in Kazakhstan to develop cracks. These cracks are the beginning of peeling. Over millions of years, these stones may have shed many layers.
However, a question arises: most of the exposed stones on Earth formed from magma, but peeling does not occur with all of them. This can be relatively explained as follows: stones that have been “immersed” in seawater for millions of years and then rise to directly contact the atmosphere behave differently under environmental (weather, climate) physical and chemical impacts compared to rocks that have never been “immersed.” Indeed, many round stones in Kazakhstan still exhibit peeling phenomena, similar to peeling an onion. Additionally, there are many smaller stones that can no longer “peel” any further. Scientists believe these are the “nuclei” from which the larger stones formed, similar to how a small snowball eventually becomes a massive snowball.
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Some stones only partially protrude |
But the mystery doesn’t end there.
Many large stones in the stone field have also been split in half with precision, as if cut by a saw, with the cut line always aligned north-south. This leads to associations with the Earth being cleaved in two by a plane coinciding with the lines of the geomagnetic field. It is also worth noting that the number of “marbles” in the stone field is not limited to just a few thousand, as in some areas, there are still stone peaks that rise not very high, suggesting that there may be many more buried beneath the ground.
Furthermore, while the marbles in Kazakhstan are scattered unevenly, in Costa Rica, they are arranged very deliberately, forming geometric shapes such as circles, squares, rectangles, triangles, regular hexagons, and isosceles trapezoids… The same phenomenon, but with vastly different explanations. In such cases, what is currently called truth may one day be regarded as legend.
According to VnExpress/Thế Giới Mới (Itogi)
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Article submitted by Le Thuy KhuongKhoa Học
Email: [email protected]
