What is this? (pics included)

[CrystalMoon]

Hello! Not sure if I posted this in the right topic but seems close enough.
So a few days ago I was walking around in cemetery and passed by an old abandoned chapel (which seems to have had weird things going on around there) and saw this; a big rock with a perfectly round shaped hole in the middle of it and in the hole there was a perfectly ball-shaped rock. It looked like it was done by something but at the same time didn't look like a human did that. It seemed like something related with a ritual or something, if I'm not wrong. Anyone know what this may be? I'm just curious. And sorry if I'm just being stupidly wrong here.
Pics are here:


Thanks!

[YanaKhan]

Well, I can't be certain, but this looks to me like a part of an ancient sanctuary.
Ancient people worshipped the Sun and I've seen similar stones with round shaped holes in them in Thracian sanctuaries. They used to be Sun Altars where the priests put offerings for the Sun Gods. I don't know about the ball stone though. It may be something completely different, maybe a corn (wheat) crushing stone for offerings? Or some kind of mortar?
Perhaps research a little about the area where you found the stone?

[Vesca]

Don't be so sure it's not man-made. While I'm not sure what the purpose of your specifically linked setup was, people in earlier eras did shape and smooth down stone for their own purposes.

I think Yana may have something about the mortar concept there, but I couldn't say for sure.


Just to illustrate my point, below is what is called a "snake head." There have been 7 found so far in Slovenia and they were placed in sacred spaces for ritual purposes. Someone actually sat down with a large stone and performed a ritualesque method of carving it into a snake-shaped stone with an "eye" (a hole that one would look through). So hey, it's not an unheard of thing to form stone to suit your ritualistic or spiritual needs.

snake head.jpeg (32.32 KiB) Viewed 869 times

[SpiritTalker]

To me, the first photos look like the underside of a flat headstone or monument foundation. The thing has been flipped over. The hole is for a vase or an anchor for a statue. The metal ring in the hole would be flush with the right side of the surface. The hole goes all the way through the stone on all vase or statue foundations I've ever seen to enable assembly. If the slab were right side up, the top surface would probably be smoothly polished than the side we are looking at. The stone ball may have been part of a decoration that was broken off.