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12,000-Year-Old Boulder in Finland Defies Gravity With Surreal Balancing Act

Phenomenons like Kummakivi are known as PBRs, or "precariously balanced rocks".

PUBLISHED SEP 15, 2024

Cover Image Source: Getty Images/ Photo by Finnish_flash (Kummakivi and the tree growing on it in Ruokolahti)

It is very rare to find a perfectly balanced rock formation that has not been knocked down a peg by natural forces. Kummakivi in Finland has defied all scientific odds and remained balanced on its base, IFL Science reported. Despite, multiple parties having tried to move the boulder nobody has been able to topple it from its designated place.

Image Source: Wikimedia Commons/Photo by Kotivalo (A large precarious boulder called Kummakivi (”Strange stone”), located in Ruokolahti, southeastern Finland. A white miniature schnauzer under it gives an idea of the scale.) — Image Source: Wikimedia Commons/Photo by Kotivalo (A large boulder called Kummakivi ("Strange stone"), located in Ruokolahti, southeastern Finland.

Kummakivi is a large boulder measuring around 23 feet (7 meters) in length, How Stuff Works reported. The structure is placed on a smaller mound of rock that rises from the forest floor. The boulder looks as if it is sliding off the perch. Experts believe that its roughness contributes to its immovable nature. The roughness helps the boulder to be stuck in one place.

Researchers also point out geology as a huge factor behind the balance showcased in Kummakivi, IFL Science reported. 8,000 years ago the area where Kummakivi is placed was reportedly covered with glaciers. These glaciers allegedly can shuffle giant objects across vast landscapes, eventually making them come to rest at a particular position. Sometimes rocks get stuck in these particular positions because all the elements are found to be perfectly balanced.

Phenomenons like Kummakivi are known as PBRs, or "precariously balanced rocks," IFL Science reported. Their presence in a particular area indicates that the place is not vulnerable to earthquakes. The reasoning behind the assertion is that if earthquakes were a possibility in the place, the rock formation would not have stood firm for so long.

Representative Image Source: Pexels | Photo by Plato Terentev

PBRs come under the category of "fragile geologic features," IFL Science reported. Items in this category would have been destroyed if they were not placed in stable and well-balanced locations.

"You need the right kind of climate conditions to create PBRs, and you need the right climate to make them last," Amir Allam, a geologist at the University of Utah explained, Atlas Obscura reported.

Researchers do not have a definite idea how Kummakivi came to be in the area. They know that the formation has been in place for 12,000 years, much before humankind began recording anything. Finnish folklore claims that some giants or trolls carried the rock from the forest and placed it on the plinth.