Tara MacIsaac, Epoch Times | Spheres found in the mines of South Africa

have piqued the curiosity of researchers for decades.

According to Michael Cremo and other researchers of prehistoric culture,

these spheres add to a body of evidence suggesting intelligent life existed on
Earth long before a conventional view of history places it here.

Cremo has traveled the world gathering information on out-of-place artefacts

(ooparts); he compiled his findings in the popular book, Forbidden
Archaeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race.

In 1984, while investigating the spheres, he contacted Roelf Marx, curator of

the museum of Klerksdorp, South Africa, where some of the spheres are kept.
Marx described the spheres as being about 2.8 billion years old, with a very
hard surface and a fibrous structure inside. He found them quite strange and
puzzling.

Marx wrote, according to Cremo: There is nothing scientific published about

the globes, but the facts are: They are found in pyrophyllite, which is mined
near the little town of Ottosdal in the Western Transvaal. This pyrophyllite
is a quite soft secondary mineral with a count of only 3 on the Mohs scale [a
scale of 1 to 10 to rank the hardness of minerals] and was formed by
sedimentation about 2.8 billion years ago.

On the other hand, the globes, which have a fibrous structure on the inside
with a shell around it, are very hard and cannot be scratched, even by steel.
The Mohs scale of hardness is named after Friedrich Mohs, who chose ten
minerals as references points for comparative hardness, with talc the softest
and diamond the hardest.

Steel ranks about a 6.5 to 7.5 on the Mohs scale, so the spheres would be
harder than that, according to Marx.

Were They Naturally Formed?

Some say the spheres were formed by a natural process of concretion.

Concretions are masses of hardened mineral matter.

Some of the so-called Klerksdorp spheres are elliptical in shape with rough
ridges around the center. But some are so balanced in shape and proportion,
and the grooves around them look so straight and hand-carved, it seems
unlikely they were naturally formed, say proponents of the theory that these
spheres were made by intelligent beings.

In 2002, the Klerksdorp Museum posted a letter from John Hund of

Pietersburg, South Africa, on its website. The claims made in this letter were
not verified, according to geologist Paul V. Heinrich, and the letter was later
removed. Hund stated that one of the spheres was tested at the California
Space Institute, and scientists concluded that its balance is so fine, it
exceeded the limit of their measuring technology. It was within onehundred thousandths of an inch from absolute perfection.

Heinrich did not find the South African spheres he studied perfectly balanced
and shaped