Talk:Carved stone balls

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A fact from Carved stone balls appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 21 May 2007. The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that over four hundred 4000-year-old carved stone balls have been uncovered in archaeological digs in Scotland?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2007/May.

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Which 'Towie'?

Mentioned in:

Carved stone balls #Materials / 2nd paragraph and
Carved stone balls #Ornamentation / 4th paragraph.

In Towie (disambiguation) there are several articles mentioned.
Which one is meant?

Answer:
1st: The caption under the photo says "Towie in Aberdeenshire".
2nd: The main contribution in Talk:Carved stone balls/Archive 1 #"You don't say" / list elements "8" to "10" mention the same "Towie in Aberdeenshire".

Ping welcome, Steue (talk) 11:05, 5 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Function, my guesses

My first guess was: a ball for throwing:

either in a game, kind of a forerunner of the British, and later American, Football
or as a weapon.

But since I heard (in a TV documentation) that the Towie balls ( from Aberdeenshire ) are from a very fragile kind of stone, my guesses are:

as a symbol of power, for the leader/king, and/or
as a kind of ID ( Seal (emblem) ), for messengers ( Couriers or Messenger of the Court ), carrying messages from one king to an other king, as they were later used in combination with a sealing wax.

Re. other suggestions:

as a weapon they would not be decorated.
fishers would, very likely, not decorate their weights.
in the working of hides:
taking a piece of leather and filling it with stones, sand or earth would be much easier/faster, even more so if such pieces of leather were available in ample quantity.
ball bearings for transporting larger stones:
- would, very likely, not be decorated; plus:
- ball bearings with knobs don't roll well, :).

Ping welcome, Steue (talk) 11:57, 5 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The stone balls could have been possibly game pieces, such as dice.

Dr. Vito Volterrra 2604:3D08:137D:7500:ED0A:8A60:BF3:C4DF (talk) 01:14, 19 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Balls found on MARS, are they similar to Scottish stone balls ?

https://telegrafi.com/en/mbeshtetesit-e-teorive-te-komplotit-thone-se-kane-gjetur-deshmi-te-nje-lufte-te-lashte-ne-planetin-mars-foto-video/ 96.244.240.204 (talk) 21:42, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ah yes. Starts well: "Conspiracy theorists claim to have discovered a number of strange and wonderful objects on Mars...." Martinevans123 (talk) 22:02, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]