Mad About Science

Unexplained mysteries

By Brenden Bobby
Reader Columnist

No one ever does anything for no reason, but what — exactly — is the driving reason behind doing something can be ambiguous; and, without a written intention left behind, the understanding of why can be lost to history. This week, we’re going to look at a number of examples of things people did or made that may seem weird to us, and which we still don’t completely understand.

Stone spheres of Costa Rica

In the 1930s, the United Fruit Company (Chiquita today, which is one of the most prevalent brands of bananas in any grocery store) was tearing down portions of the Costa Rican rainforest to make room for plantations. In doing so, they unearthed hundreds of nearly perfectly spherical stones. The company demolished several of them, presumably searching for some kind of treasure within. Alas for them, they were solid stone.

The spheres have become a Costa Rican marvel and tourist attraction. Their precise purpose is completely unknown, though speculation holds that they were some kind of waymarkers, status symbols or linked to religious worship, but nobody really knows for sure. They range in size from a few centimeters to more than two meters wide. Each was meticulously carved and polished across several hundred hours of work using stone tools. It’s unknown how this process was completed, especially on the largest spheres that weigh up to 15 tons — three times the weight of a fully grown African elephant.

It’s believed that the spheres were carved over a period of about 2,000 years, ending conspicuously around the invasion of the Spanish beginning in 1502. Costa Rica lacked the mineral resources valuable to conquistadors, leading to its relative abandonment by the Europeans, yet many attempts at colonization in the area were still attempted. It seems that between the 1500s and the 1800s, the knowledge of how to produce the spheres vanished into the annals of history.

Stone Age doodles

I got in trouble a lot for doodling in school. Not to toot my own horn, but I was a smart kid, and I grasped the bulk of a lecture without the need for hours of repetitive drilling (at least in elementary and high school). This led to boredom and, rather than drifting off, I gravitated toward doodling to keep my brain and my body engaged, which for some reason was viewed as disrespectful and I quote: “Stupid behavior.”

In recent years, studies have shown that doodling during note-taking helps with information retention. Humans love patterns, and we love contributing to patterns, so associating a pattern with a memory helps us better grasp the important part of what we’re hearing, such as Craig talking about the break room having a 15% increase in donut consumption, which led to 8% more bathroom breaks on the clock and a 145% decrease in productivity.

Someone was listening to Caveman Craig 74,000 years ago in the Blombos Cave in South Africa, where archaeologists discovered what appeared to be an unassuming rock with red banding. The markings were unusual enough that researchers spent another seven years researching the cave to discover that the banding had actually been made by a red ochre crayon. These marks seemed to have been made with no discernible purpose and may be one of the earliest doodles ever discovered. More excitingly, it shows that our brains have enjoyed this sense of pattern recognition for far longer than we’ve known how to write down information. It’s too bad I didn’t know about that when I was in school.

Zig-zag seashell

Our final example is another piece of prehistoric art. This is perhaps one of the oldest forms of artistic expression in general. This particular seashell was inscribed 485,000 years ago in Indonesia, which lines up with the existence of homo erectus, the first known primate to stand and walk upright like we do today. Homo erectus was known to use tools, but they had only been recorded using them in very low-effort scenarios, similar to how modern primates may pick up a sharp rock to smack a coconut for food. Their inability to technologically adapt was actually why they were driven to extinction as the climate changed faster than they could adjust.

One particular specimen of homo erectus apparently decided to use a tool in an unusual manner one day by carving intentional zig-zags into a seashell. This is believed to have been done using a shark tooth, but beyond that, scientists don’t fully understand why. It’s possible this was a territorial display or some kind of experiment. In all likelihood, though, it just felt good in the moment and the individual decided to sit down and carve fun shapes into something pretty they found. We’ve all done that from time to time, though likely not with shark teeth.

Stay curious, 7B.