Explore Orkney with Megalithomania in August 2020 and see some of the stone spheres for yourself: www.megalithomania.co.uk/orkneytour2020.html.

We had these balls in our family inheritance. Each ball represented a different group of people, tribe or clan whichever you liked to call them. When a person married outside their clan, they would bring the ball that represented their people. When a child was born to this couple, a new ball would be made to represent that child of both clans. Kind of like a new family crest.

Thank You Kindly for this excellent report on these amazing stones. I am a craftsman/artisan and have carved stone before. But this stone is very hard. I was in the Museum of the American Indians in NYC years back. There was a huge display of baskets. Through the view of a magnifying glass there were what I thought were matching beads. A Native Elder woman was standing next to me and I commented on the beads, with the same intricate detail the much larger baskets had. She said to me, oh honey, they aren't beads, they are baskets woven from hair. One the size of a pea and one the size of a BB. I said how can a person weave such a tiny thing. She said, honey there is only one way to weave something so tiny and that's with pure spirit. I believe these stones were done in the same way, with pure spirit. Many Thanks again. I have shared this video with lots of friends. DaveyJO In Pennsylvania

In my birthplace Russia they found huge stone spheres size of a whole human if not larger. Russia & Siberia are full of them. Siberian megaliths are so far the largest known megaliths discovered

What an absolutely bewitching mystery. I think it’s hard for us to imagine the importance of every material surrounding ancient people; the trees and their wood, the animals and their bones, the different shells and of course the many type of rock. The subtlety of potential use must have been vast. Again it’s hard to inhabit the life or death importance of successful hunting and I can absolutely see people attaching colossally valuable totemic items to the nets - it meant so much. I can also see them playing a part in “activating” and being “activated “ by the standing stones during rituals. Being used as cooking stones perhaps and giving the food the necessary energy. They could have had different purposes depending on the type of stone and the patterning. I can easily imagine them being multi generational projects slowly completed generation after generation and being seen as holding the spirit or soul of the tribe. Such important items could perhaps be used as offering to merge tribes or some other situation where the soul of the tribe was involved. The fact that they so closely resemble pollen shows the astounding degree we humans were once so much part of nature. Great work and thank you 👍🌹🙏💖💫

It would be interesting to find out how the whirls and grids were carved into hard rock before the age of iron and steel or any other metal The designs are too intricate and close together to have someone hammering away for days at them with another bit of stone without damaging the pattern

The interesting thing is that to scribe multiple circles on each side of a sphere requires both a compass, and a way of finding a centre point on each side, so that when the circles are scribed they don't overlap those on the other sides. Whoever did these had an understanding of geometry, and some accurate tools.

If one took rawhide and wrapped around and dried it a single length you could use them as weapons or to hunt. Attaching 2 at opposing ends would make a type of bola. The knobs keep the rawhide from slipping and the protrusions would be the striking surface. I think they are throwing ballistics.

great video - I subscribed. It's really Important that artifacts from different sites are compared like this.

They would be useful to wrap ropes and secure them, the grooves holding tight. Anchor weights were made of stone. This we'd know as it'd be easy to see if they have evidence of salt in them. It's also very windy in Scotland and they would be invaluable to hold down a flexible shelter, which may explain why they are found on the outside of standing stone circles. They would also be handy for securing animals on a rope. Also a formidable weapon if swung and released. I do think they are functional.

I find this artifact incredible and a wonder . I also think they are important , absolutely fascinating mystery . Thank you for the video .

Thank you Hugh for recording and sharing these videos. That stone sphere at 08:20 is so fascinating, to consider the skill needed to carve such integral detail is mind boggling , the time taken to produce these sculptures must have been phenomenon - definitely not weapons to be weapons to be cast away or tied to a string like some medieval mace - more likely some Clan symbol or family marker - like a 'seal' of some sort ! these were treasured items

Some spheres consist of granite or diorite - which tool has been used at that time to carve them?

At the Hunterian Museum notice that the collection of stone spheres is placed right next to a collection of beetles. I've just watched a video about Mr. Grebennikov and his experiments with beetle wings, which are said to levitate under the right circumstances because of the wings´ nano-structure. Coincidence?Think about Harry Potter and the flying ball in Quidditch. A ball with beetle vings.Just a thought.

Thank you. I am here because of a lecture by the mathematician Ralph Abraham (Out of the blue: the coevolution of math and art). As i am also a biologist, i see the divisions of a fertilized egg. Not a theory, just an observation.

Watching this it feels like the security guard is going to come in and ask what he is doing , then you'll run off giggling like a school kid

I really enjoyed this, so very interesting. I believe there's a very deep meaning to these stones which we'll most likely never know.

14:50 "I believe its because they were working with sacred geometry, they were working with the Archimedean and Plutonic solids, to work with surveying and working out astronomy". I also believe this to be the case. Thankyou for this video Hugh Newman.

another mystery ...another great research trip...well done

Great to see them 'collected together by video'. I've been collecting and studying lithics for more than 30 years. It is my total obsession (well along with congas, amber, racing quadcopters and audiophilia) and I can't see what stone tool could make those accurate, tiny and sharp markings on some of the balls. Only a metal tool seems to work...

The stone balls look like cells dividing or possibly formed by frequency/ vibration.

Not sure if it's the fact I'm Scottish? But everytime I see these Stone spheres I get big major tingles up my spine! Fantastic video once again. Megalithomania thanks!!

Ok... for one thing... Quit saying that some of these are "perfectly spherical." They aren't. Not even close. They are 'rounded'.

They look like 3D representations of 4 dimensional shapes. They probably also relate to particular frequencies. You can very literally write music using geometric shapes.

I’m amazed at the skill of the ball makers- and that, I think, is the intended effect. In an age when making crude items from stone, axes etc, many would give up and look for someone more skilled to do it for them. It happens still today in almost ALL trades. Therefore these balls are what an ‘axe maker’ or other maker, would show to a prospective trader, to show the person how skilled they were. ‘Look, I made this’!! Okay, you can make me my stone axe and I’ll give you five chickens’. Deal done. Mystery solved!

Fossilized wild Haggis droppings.

I really enjoyed watching this video and ponder their purpose and also the hands and minds behind their creation. Thank you!

I wonder if they could be weapons, thrown with leather or rope slings?

I live in Canada so I am not familiar with these intriguing carved balls. My questions are : how hard are these examples? What type of tools could they have used considering the detailed fine groves. What were tools made of for that time period, what type of metal or implements could even carve into such hard surfaces?

Thank you Hugh for a great vid. The Ancients most definitely left their messages to all in stone. I've been to Orkney, Fantastic place, great people, apparently the temperature was a few degrees warmer around 5,000 years ago and previous. So plenty time to sit outside in the sun and create interesting and meaningful objects by master crafst people. It was a beautiful day when I visited Scara Brae, so I can vouch for the place in a friendly climate. I Recommend a visit, even the journey to the Island was a great adventure.

The stone balls were possibly slingshot. Like the seams on stone "baseballs", the knobs, when spinning through the air, would be aerodynamic enough to be slung straight, yet catch flesh or armor when hitting an enemy and do more damage than a simple sphere. The small jagged ones were possibly for small game such as rabbits. This reminds me of the story of David and Goliath from the Bible, yet in Scotland it seems the giants were using the slingshots!

Looks similar to Poverty Point Objects which are thought to be clay cooking balls. Makes one wonder if it is somehow related to ancient copper smelting tradition, possibly amplifying heat in kilns that later evolved into clay/wax casting (cire perdue) that looks similar to the Roman dodecahedron especially since wax was found inside an artifact. Very interesting! Similar stones also found during the Waring Period of China and apparently gold cast objects similar to the Roman spheres along the old Silk Road seems to point to a very ancient smelting tradition.

you breezed by the big sword pretty fast!,...that was the most interesting thing there., the user must have been at least twice as tall.

fantastic video ! thank you hugh newman .

Some of these balls look like similar stone balls used by Mages when teaching apprentices about the Platonic solids.

Heat spheres. They where heated and kept folks warm in winter. Various design differentiates families.

Wow! Thank you for the summary Hugh. FYI - I've seen those spiral galaxies on rocks in Ecuador-western slopes in the Chocos cloud forests.

id like to see the situ reports on these. being found near ceremonial (supposedly) sites could indicate a similar function. there seem to be 4 or 5 distinctive styles - so that gives them individual meaning. combined with the intricacy of some, it seems unlikely they were utilitarian. they are also large enough to be cumbersome - so not something carried around for long. they were meant to be seen by another person or being and since they were left in fields probably not another person. they dont seem to be a teaching item or they would have been kept. we know the stones were at many sites which implies cultural agreement or longstanding practice by one group. discrepencies in placement imply personal interpretation of ritual. possibly carving them was a rite of passage or ritual offering. again a lot being found near perceived ritual sites seems to support that. the real mystery i think is the significance of the particular 4 or 5 patterns.

Weapons, whether maces or hammers, slung or thrown... there is a lack of forensic evidence suggesting such patterned weaponry was ever used. As soon a s skull or seven turn up with matching indentations, I'll accept the theory. Fishing nets weights, as any fisherman knows, are definitely a high loss item. Not something you spend hundreds of hours fashioning, when natural shapes present a one stop solution.

They look bools ( if yer Scottish like me, then yeez'll know whit am oan aboot).Sorry man, bools in Scotland is a game unlike the French boules,but intsead of throwing the ball you have to roll it , they do look really similar right to the machined? circles. I don't think they're bools though.

We always look for the main reasons these could have been used for… then there’s the bizarre ideas that could ring truth as well. Maybe they levitated in part of a ritual? They look like the things you use in the laundry. I wonder if they used these for washing in a huge basin spun by hand??? Or different game balls or maybe they used them to heat up water?

They look like sling stones (David vs Goliath), they're about the right size and would explain why they're found in the fields surrounding the monuments instead of inside. Similar stones have also been found in China, Peru, Bolivia, and probably other places too. The Romans cast them out of lead and carved insults on them like the decorations troops sometimes write on bombs. "Eat this Saddam". Illiterate people carve intricate designs to illustrate their commitment and technical superiority. A few un-decorated ones could be early stone cannon balls of the type used around the time of the English Civil War and the Spanish Armada.

The balls just like the axes had a common trait of blunt force tools. In my humble opinion both served pretty much the same purpose

They're essentially ball bearings so they could roll the heavy megalithic stones to the quarry to the final resting site. Clearly only the perfect spheres.

great vid Hugh ! good to see all these connexions coming to the light now ..keep up the grad work !!

Great video. I ponder if they are toys, in the true root sense of the word, aka Toymu in Dogon language. Like a spinning top/Dreidel, material aids and examples when discussing acceding or descending stages of the creation of matter.

Could it be that the stones represent sound frequencies?

I saw via u tube some VERY large oval balls in New Zealand. They we're 10 feet or .more in heigbt & were fairly spherical. Apparently the balls are made at the seashore where the cunstsnt tides continue telling them. Here"s the interesting point! The balls were found along the tallest ridge of land. Means someone made a lot of work to get the. From the sea to the hills . They theorized that the stone spheres were set up as a map to be able to look out to see to know who or what was coming so to be prepared. None were not carved as beautifully as yours but they did have many pictures topraphs as well as some Christian markings

The stone balls were found in fields Hugh...hmmm. Wasn't Golf invented in Scotland? Maybe as you've mentioned the giants , they were The Giants Golf balls or a type of hockey?

look more into the acoustics ....

I'm not a math professor by any means, but I definitely have a strong mathematics background. Some, not all, but some of those stones have mathematical messages embedded in them. I'm willing to bet if you were to apply some of the theorems Carl Munck has used to show relationships between ancient pyramids you will learn more than is currently believed about them.

on a stonehedge documentary there was discussion that stone spheres were used as bearings to move the large stones. could it be that participating villagers would have been tasked to bring a quantity of bearings with them to aid in the megalith construction? they might have been ornamented for various reasons.

They are bearings used to move the standing stones on wooden planks. It makes sense.

It seems probable that there was a game in Stone Age times and these balls were for ‘heading’ back and forth to each other. First one to give up loses. Joking!😂😁

I really enjoy your work! This is the first video of your's I've seen which I just subbed and liked, a very rare occasion indeed! Cheers from California!

The spirals at twelve minutes look like the "Sun Dagger" stone formation in New Mexico which accurately predict Earth's precession. Extremely advanced technology documented in precise megalithic stone placements. Spheres look like good tools for in a ball mill, outer surfaces different grades of grinding.

Methinks they're probably gaming pieces. They're different so each player knows his own piece. Some sort of a game that was a combination of croquet and golf. Played on a flat, grass-covered ground. The size of an American football field. This was before Scots figured out how to hit balls with the end of a shepherd's stave and call it "golf". Golf is a game well suited to Scottish men because it can be played while wearing a skirt. Which is why football was never popular north of Hadrian's Wall. You can't tackle a guy wearing a dress while going commando. That will get you a sock in the nose or a marriage proposal. In the case of the Scots, more than likely, the latter...(not that there's anything wrong with that...)

Very nice spheres, from my point of view most of them look like that they were melted stones. Very difficult carvings to be done with primitive tools.. Thanks for the video.. I'm enjoying a lot your channel

Great video

I think those Ness balls are fishing weights, the rope is tied around the ball....

I think these balls had multi uses. They certainly look useful for cooking and possibly tenderising meat as some have suggested here but I think they could be ornamental too, each ball could be related to an individual family or clan, each ball could have its own story to tell and could represent the owners knowledge of stone work and geometry; they could even have celestial values. They have that play doe look about them, ancient polymer???? Ideas?

“But we have the biggest balls of them all.”

Could they be the final test of an apprentice stonemason ?

They look very much like three dimensional cymatic patterns.

Tiwanaku part 16:00 - British Museum 28:48

One could roll them on dough before baking and make patterns in bread! Or perhaps roll them on clay, each ball was sort of a master pattern...

Seeing as it has been shown by a retired American builder on KZfaq that he could move massive stones by putting round pebbles underneath, then maybe that was there use. I see that some of the megaliths have holes that look about the same size, and seeing as they were found in the surrounding fields it maybe that was there use. The decorative nature of the stones could have been a means of identification of who's stone they belonged to

Thank you; much appreciated. Excellent content & presentation as usual. The stones at 11:00 are reminiscent of a seed pod opening with the shoots visible inside. I once held a very heavy stone (basalt or black granite? Perhaps with metallic content, perhaps meteorite?) around the size of a large orange; it was discovered floating in a Scottish whirlpool.

Great video Hugh. Stone balls are amazing.

I can’t see it well but, The 15 point ball from Charles Patterson. {1940s, Orkney, igneous} Is it a sequence for a spiral? It’s not a Fibonacci sequence, but maybe another. Also, They are reminiscent of pollens. Beautiful! Thank you for sharing.

Wow, fantastic, thank you, do hope you get to examine them, so many ideas popped into my head, thank you as ever 👍

Tks!

Bocce balls for sure. Textures to grip the grass allowing curved trajectory to get around opponents previous thrown ball.

Look like different pollens under a microscope

Just slingshot balls decorated as per the culture of the day. Perhaps used in games as well. As a descendant of these people I recognize their balls immediately. These were not "cavemen" but highly developed and artistic humans who had to fight to stay alive. This is no different from decorating a fighter plane with teeth etc. It makes it easier to recover "your" ball as well.

These represent the same thing as the cup and ring marks. There also a few swords that have the same design for a pommel. They all represent the same thing even though they look different.

Bocce type game perhaps?

Keep up the good work. Fascinating!

Stone spheres are excellent ammo for the stone age sling - with practice a stone sphere will strike the target. An irregular shaped stone flies in an unpredictable manner (guaranteed). If you miss the enemy, you may have failed your last test! Refer to the biblical text concerning David and Goliath. David went to a brook and selected 5 smooth stones.

Mace/war hammer heads or Slingers ammunition? very cool. Also many of the Aberdeenshire stones are found around Fyvie Castle, with the strange legends regarding stones in that place, I've always wondered if the local Granite contains something radioactive

Perhaps the stone circles were used for a forgotten sport or game involving these carved balls ? An early type of croquet ? Could they have been used for ritual sacrifices of animals ? Maybe they were used to plot the positions of planets in relation to the standing stones and marked positions throughout the year ? Perhaps they had a netting around them and were used as a hunting tool like the Bolas or simply tossed at their prey ? Maybe they were used as a trading thing like coins ? Perhaps they were weights for measuring ammounts for trading ? One can only conjecture as to their purpose or function...

That one with the line markings reminds me of a flat carving in a cave in Spain that was found in the Neanderthal layer.

Resonance floatation indicators for tuning round towers.

Thankyou! Very interesting. I was kind of clueless about their uses...unless they were just for decor...but I see several comments that explain some possibilities.😍🌑

I think theyre obviously weights for spinning. Not necessarily loom weights but spinning from a distaff and making cordage.

The lost civilisation has a lot to answer for... great video. 👍🏼😊

Joshua Tree, CA has the same spiral art/petraglyphs. Amazing.

They look like game balls. Carved ones are probably ornaments done by the ball carvers when they didn't need round balls.

They rolled the large blocks on them? Some were later decorated after the building was done?

The best explanation for the large stone spheres seems to be hammer mill balls. Mining was extensive in Hyperborea so it stands to reason. The small ones? Maybe backyard games.

A Neolithic person wouldn't have put so much effort into something that wasn't important, but, they're not as polished as their axes, which tells me, they're important, but not incredibly so. They seem to be around a certain type of stone circle, so, could it just be a tool that that particular culture used, say for leather work, or for bludgeoning their sacrifices to death?

Stone spheroids may be art for art's sake, but should one attempt to fling an irregular shaped stone with the sling (as David v. Goliath did NOT) it becomes obvious that only a perfect sphere may arrive where it is aimed, except those that may by sheer chance succeed.

I bet those stone spheres we're used in games where they get a big rock and one guy throws it, it's marked and the next and whichever is farthest wins!.. possibly out of the center of a stone circle, maybe, "pure speculation" the lumps and spiral I assume where for a better grip, possibly different ones from each family "unique" the more elaborate higher the status maybe?.

it is such a shame that the keepers of these objects are not helping people to do the research on these. we have the technology to take pictures with a mobile phone upload to 3D software imaging and this can then be sent to 3d printers. we could be really working on these items to gain a much better understanding

Odd thing to try and ooga booga. I'd guess some are munitions for catapults. Game pieces and weights work too

If you look at many ancient sites you will see the same patterns and design of many of their implements. Could be basically a one worldwide culture with local tweeks. Good video, gave me much to think about.

High water pants! Wow.

One of the stone spheres looks like two pyramids intersecting to make the geometry of many baubles.

Used in pairs, for hunting. One on each end of a strip of hide, twirling around the head. Thrown to trip running prey. Rabbits and whatnot. The limestone ones are carved, but the hard stone ones are soft clay like texture when shaped, before exposing them to the winter elements, collection in the spring. Then they are hard as granite. Just like all the other so called granite blocks and blah, blah, blah.

Fascinating! Love this!