"For at Erech there stands yet a black stone that was brought, it was said, from Númenor by Isildur; and it was set upon a hill, and upon it the King of the Mountains swore allegiance to him in the beginning of the realm of Gondor....For upon the top stood a black stone, round as a great globe, the height of a man, though its half was buried in the ground. Unearthly it looked, as though it had fallen from the sky, as some believed; but those who remembered still the lore of Westernesse told that it had been brought out of the ruin of Númenor and there set by Isildur at his landing."
The Stone of Erech, some believe it was of alien origin, some claim it was man-made in Númenor, but it’s not unlikely that it might have been of natural origin.
In several places on Earth there can be found similar spheric concretions (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concretion) made usually of sandstone or mudstone.
This particular photo is from the region Megoňky in Kysuce in north-west Sovakia. In 1995 there were found several tens of this incredible stoneballs of varying sizes, from 10 cm to almost 3 metres. They are about 30-40 million years old, and can weight up to 30 tons.
Their origin is not clear, some scientists believe they were created as a normal part of the geologic processes in the surrounding sandstone and are the result of the movement of the lithospheric layers. Or they might have been created by process similar to making of pearls, by globe-shaped crystalizing of sediments in a prehistoric sea, then they were covered by layers of mud, the area was later eventually raised to mountains and the covering layers of soil and sandstone were slowly dissolved by erosion, so the balls fell out.
Similar natural stone balls can be found in New Zealand, France, or Russia. Recently, the biggest ball was found in Bosnia
, but that one is more likely to be man-made, just like the stone-balls in Costa Rica.
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