stone balls – Queer Sci Fi

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Two Old Stone Balls Found in Scotland – And The Jokes Practically Write Themselves – Live Science

September 17, 2021 by scott

Two polished stone balls shaped about 5,500 years ago — linked to a mysterious practice almost unique to Neolithic Britain — have been discovered in an ancient tomb on the island of Sanday, in the Orkney Islands north of mainland Scotland. Hundreds of similar stone balls, each about the size of a baseball, have been found at Neolithic sites mainly in Scotland and the Orkney Islands, but also in England, Ireland and Norway, Live Science previously reported. Some are ornately carved — such as the famous Towie ball discovered in northeast Scotland in 1860 — but others are studded with … Read more

Mystery of the Stone Balls Solved

April 18, 2020 by scott

For nearly 2 million years, ancient humans crafted stones into hand-size balls, but archaeologists were unsure why. Now they know: Ancient people used them as tools to get at the tasty marrow within animal bones, a new study finds. In other words, if a bone were a can of soup, these ancient stone balls were like ancient can openers. The finding is a remarkable one; archaeologists have wondered for decades exactly how ancient humans used these stone balls. “Our study provided evidence, for the first time, regarding the function of these enigmatic-shaped stone balls that were produced by humans for … Read more

ARCHEOLOGY: Ancient Europeans had a Thing for Balls

July 9, 2018 by scott

Some of the most enigmatic human-made objects from Europe’s late Stone Age — intricately carved balls of stone, each about the size of a baseball — continue to baffle archaeologists more than 200 years after they were first discovered. More than 500 of the enigmatic objects have now been found, most of them in northeast Scotland, but also in the Orkney Islands, England, Ireland and one in Norway. Archaeologists still don’t know the original purpose or meaning of the Neolithic stone balls, which are recognized as some of the finest examples of Neolithic art found anywhere in the world. But … Read more