In the 1930s, Companía Bananera, the Banana Company and a pre-cursor to Chiquita, was preparing a plot of land for new cultivation in the Diquis Region of southern Costa Rica when they unearthed a sizable stone sphere. That incident began a series of similar discoveries that has, up to now, resulted in finding over three hundred of these unique and extraordinary rock balls of stone. From the moment they were first found, Costa Rica's stone spheres (Las Esferas in Spanish) have been a subject of speculation. Who formed them? When exactly had they been formed? How was it that many of them were nearly perfect spheres of precision far beyond pre-Colombian technical capability? And also, how were these very heavy rocks widely distributed about the countryside where they were found? Many explanations proposed by knowledgeable people fall short of answering these mysteries, including a suggestion that space aliens helped the natives. Perhaps in the future we will find the answers to these mysteries, or then again, maybe we won't. In the meantime the spheres remain a Costa Rican historic national treasure. Las Esferas is the story of a fictional tribe called the Kaberkirwaks, meaning keepers and protectors of the Quetzal, a sacred bird. The tribe was formed from two migrant indigenous groups of Amerindians that came from up from South America and settled in the Diquis region or southern zone of Costa Rica. This happened some five hundred years before the Spanish arrived in the new world or over 1,000 years ago. This book offers another, more spiritual possibility. As part of the tribe's development, an early Cacique, or Chief, institutes a coming of age ceremony called a Vision Quest that includes an herb enhanced spiritual exercise. For over one hundred years, a period called the Golden Age of Spheres, this ceremony results in accumulation of the spheres. The book also offers a rational explanation of why the spheres were not found for over 500 years.
