In Costa Rica’s Diquís Delta, banana plantation drainage and land clearing in the 1930s and 1940s accidentally unearthed giant, highly polished stone spheres buried for centuries. UNESCO says the finds were not isolated sculptures but part of a larger chiefdom settlement network, including paved areas, mounds, burials and habitation zones. Many spheres are strikingly mathematically accurate, yet their exact purpose remains unknown. The same landscape reshaping that revealed them also led to plundering and damage to nearby archaeological sites.
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