You Are Looking At A Load Of Old Balls,

well actually three from five hundred of them,

image via the Scotland Herald, all were found in Scotland, but here is the thing, what were the Neolithic stone balls, some with intricate patterns, others with knobs and pyramids actually for? apparently nobody really knows, The National Museum of Scotland has now renewed its efforts to settle the debates once and for all, as the Scotland Herald details,

It involves a fingertip search through hundreds of documents cataloguing their discoveries, virtual reality technology, citizen science and a hunt for at least two missing balls - and perhaps many more.

Most of the intriguing stones were discovered in Aberdeenshire, however, in many cases precisely where they were found was either not fully recorded or the spheres mistaken as either not being as historically important as they are now known to be.

As a result, it’s thought that some may not even have been handed over to authorities as archaeological treasures – meaning there is every chance that they are still kept by unsuspecting owners, have been sold, forgotten about or, indeed, stuck on a window ledge.

Now Dr Hugo Anderson-Whymark, Curator of Prehistory at the National Museum of Scotland, is at the forefront of a new strand of research which it is hoped will unlock the secrets of the intriguing Neolithic objects and possibly the whereabouts of at least two missing sphere

I have to ask the question, how do they know that some, well one or maybe more are missing?