Costa Rica restores pre-Columbian stone spheres with support from Mexico

San José, 24 Mar Specialists from Mexico and Costa Rica are working on the restoration of two pre-Columbian stone spheres made more than 500 years ago by indigenous people from the south of Costa Rica, the National Museum reported this Thursday. The work consists of the conservation and restoration of two spheres of 1.90 and 1.80 meters in diameter located in Finca 6, in the Diquis Delta, Puntarenas province (south), which is part of an archaeological site declared by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 2014. The spheres, estimated to be at least 500 years old, are partially buried and belong to the only two original alignments of pre-Columbian spheres currently preserved in the territory known as the Diquis. The restoration work is carried out by the National Museum of Costa Rica and the National School of Conservation, Restoration and Museography of Mexico, under the framework of a Bilateral Educational-Cultural Cooperation Program between the two countries. After a process of unburial and cleaning of the spheres, the experts carry out work to consolidate sectors with a certain degree of vulnerability, applying piping and protective resins to cracks and gaps in the spheres, explained the National Museum. These interventions are carried out with mortar based on lime and sand, which makes it possible to stop the progress of certain alterations, especially of the crowns, which is the part that will be exposed. In the restoration, materials friendly to the originals of the rock are used and finally the experts rebury the sphere almost entirely to facilitate its preservation. “Our intention is to protect them, always preserving the unique and exceptional values, as well as the integrity and authenticity that make them relevant and meaningful as a pre-Columbian legacy of the ancient populations of Diquis,” said Mexican specialist Isabel Medina González. In 2014, UNESCO declared four pre-Columbian chieftain settlements with stone spheres from the Diquis area as a World Heritage Site: Batambal, Grijalba-2, El Silencio and Finca 6. Between 2015 and 2018, experts from Costa Rica and Mexico carried out diagnostic visits and studies in various fields, and since 2019 they have carried out restoration work. The archaeological site is located on 10 hectares of land, where an important village was established during pre-Columbian times, around 800 AD. According to archaeological research, the village had two artificial mounds of boulders between 20 and 30 meters in diameter, on which large housing works were built for people of socio-political relevance. These dwellings had access ramps and one of them had a sphere at each end with a sphere of 1.10 meters in diameter, as a way of pointing out the importance of space and its occupants. In what could have been a public square, there are two alignments of five spheres that are the only ensembles that have been preserved to date and that remain in their original place. CHIEF dmm/dmt (video)