A Valley in Kazakhstan Home to Countless Massive Stone Spheres Has Researchers Baffled

The Torysh Valley in Kazakhstan is home to a unique landscape. Scattered across the surface are countless stone spheres of different sizes.

It’s as if in the distant past, it rained massive spheres form the heavens.

The unique Kazakhstani spheres are located in the southwestern part of the country, amidst mountains, valleys, deserts, and tundra.

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The spheres are thought to be more than 150 million years old, and they are unusual not only because of their age but by their shape and impressive size. Some of the Spheres are as large as a car, while there are some spheres that are only a few centimeters in diameter.

The reason how they came into existence is also interesting and is the result of science facts mixed with folklore or even legends.

Scientists say the region is home to a geological wonder and that the spheres most likely date back from the Jurassic to the early Cretaceous period, between 180 and 120 million years.

Furthermore, it is thought that the stone spheres are composed of silicate or carbon cement.

Image Credit: https://kazakhstan.orexca.com/mangyshlak_tour4.shtml.

The researchers that traveled to Kazakhstan to study the spheres believe they are the result of massive concretions, although alternative researchers hold that these massive stone spheres are the ‘ancestors’ of more recent spheres discovered in Costa Rica and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Those who believe they are not naturally made, argue the massive stone spheres of Kazakhstan are the result of long-lost civilizations that existed on Earth, before written history.

But the truth is that the valley of spheres is poorly reached.

Nonetheless, there could be various geological explanations ranging megaspherulites – crystalline balls created in volcanic ash and then exposed by weathering – to cannonball concretions – a process where an area’s sediment tends to accumulate around a harder core. Some argue that the speeches are also the result of a process called spherical weathering, where the conditions are perfect for eroding rocks giving them a spherical form.

However, since not all the spheres in the enigmatic valley are of the same size, researchers believe the stone ‘balls’ are most likely the result of megaspherulites