Being named after a banana field doesn't quite evoke the `come-visit' romance of the tropics, but charming Dominical's proximity to the mystical stone spheres discovered in the Diquis Delta to the south creates an enigmatic history for this town 28 miles south of Quepos.
Jack Ewing, a local legend for his pioneering conservation efforts associated with the nearby acclaimed wildlife center Hacienda Barú, said the town's name derives from one of the many types of banana grown in Costa Rica or rather the plantation on which it grows.
South of Dominical, the land flattens out into the extensive Diquis Delta, filled with mangroves and rich alluvial plains, formerly the center of a once-thriving indigenous population. It was here that the stones, mostly granodiorite, a hard igneous substance similar to granite, were first discovered in the 1930s by United Fruit Company workers clearing land for banana plantations. The rock used for the spheres came from high up in the Talamanca Mountains, not from the region.
These nearly perfectly formed balls ranged from a few inches to over nine feet in diameter and weighed as much as 20 tons, depending on the information source. Researchers believe the megaliths once sat on mounds surrounded by stone statues and stelae before they sank, into the ground.
Archaeologists first suggested the Chorotegas Indians might have created the spheres but then surmised the tribe lacked the technology. They determined the globes had to be produced by an advanced civilization like those in Stonehenge, in Egypt and other ancient places in the world. Of the hundreds discovered to date, many spheres have been moved from their original locations — to museums and gardens — making it hard to study them in situ.
Subsequently, many myths surround the stones including one that the native inhabitants had access to a potion that softened rocks. Another one claims a single coffee bean was in the center of each one. Other tales claimed gold was hidden in their core that lead to many being destroyed by zealous fortune hunters.
People and Society 
