Brief Comments on Bosnian Stone Balls
Posted by: Paul H. (IP Logged)
Date: May 4, 2008 05:34PM
In an article "The scientists against the common sense and healthy
minds" ( [
www.bosnian-pyramid.net] ) Semir Osmanagic stated:
"Dr. Heinrich’s evaluation about the stone spheres
in Bosnia and Herzegovina was especially interesting:
“Natural spherical rocks, not man made, as Osmanagic
claims” If Dr. Dr. Heinrich could go back to his
school days, and read the books again, he would
probably learn that certain materials in nature never
come in spherical shape. Such case is with Granite,
which never comes in nature as the stone ball."
Since that comment was written, I have obtained samples of some of the
meter-scale Bosnian stone balls and examined the hand specimens and thin
sections made from them. What I discovered, i.e. Heinrich (2007a, 2007b),
is that Mr. Osmanagic and his so-called expert geologists are the people,
who need to go back to their school days, and read their books again. I
say this because it is quite clear from the examination of the hand
specimens and confirmed by petrographic thin sections that the Bosnian
stone balls, from which my samples came and which have been argued to be
manmade by the proponents of the Bosnian pyramids web site, are not
composed of granite as is claimed in this article. Instead, the petrographic
analysis clearly shows that they are composed of calcite-cemented fine-
grained sandstone called a "litharenite", which can be also classified
as a graywacke.
In terms of these specific Bosnian stone balls, Mr. Osmanagic and his
"experts" clearly do not understand understand the difference between
a fine-grained sedimentary rock (litharenite / graywacke) and a coarse-
grained igneous rock (granite) that are completely different from each
other as night and day. This distinction is something, which freshmen
undergraduate students in a beginning physical geology course learn to
do. From what I found, it is Mr. Osmanagic and his "experts", who appear
to need to retake physical geology and reread their geology text books.
A person can see the drastic difference between a granite and a
ltharenite / graywacke in the below pictures.
I. graywacke - 1. [
www.uwm.edu], 2. [geology.about.com] and
3. [
www.nps.gov] .
II. litharenite / graywacke thin section - [sorrel.humboldt.edu]
III. granite- 1. [
www.flickr.com], 2. [
www.beg.utexas.edu],
3. [
www.geo.lsa.umich.edu] ( [
www.geo.lsa.umich.edu] ) and
4. [
www.windows.ucar.edu]
IIII. granite thin section - 1. [
www.cedd.gov.hk], 2. [
www.union.edu],
and 3. [
www.microscopy-uk.org.uk].
It is possible that some of the smaller decimeter-scale stone balls
might be either stone round shot (cannonballs) or spherical stone shot
for trebuchets made from granite, However, the meter-scale stone balls
are clearly sandstone concretions. For more examples of giant meter-
scale concretions, go read Heinrich (2007a) and look at "All that
nature can never do, part IV : stone spheres" - [irna.lautre.net]
References cited:
Heinrich, P. V., 2007a, The Giant Concretions of Rock City Kansas. BackBender's
Gazette. vol. 38, no. 8, pp. 6-12. (PDF file at [
www.hgms.org] )
Heinrich, P. V., 2007b, Pseudoscience in Bosnia. Science, vol. 318. no. 5847,
pp. 42-43. (PDf file at [
www.itmems.org] )
Yours,
Paul H.
http://www.hallofmaat.com/read.php?1,48 ... msg-484955
