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In December 1967, an archaeologist was traveling through the wooded mountains of west
central Mexico when he saw hundreds of stone spheres littered across the arroyos. Some
were as large as eleven feet in diameter, making the valley look like a giant bowling
alley.
Found in Mexico’s Sierra de Ameca, these stones had rough surfaces and were made of soft
volcanic stone. Scientists have since concluded that they were formed 40 million years
ago, when the area was flooded by an avalanche of hot volcanic ash. As it cooled, the
ash crystallized around nuclei of glass, much the way mother-of-pearl forms around a
grain of sand. The glass emitted gases radially outward, causing more material to
crystallize and gradually accumulating into a globe of stone. Later, the leftover ash
was blown away by wind, leaving the balls of rock behind.
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