Remember, the first nuclear power plant was a campfire and the first ICBM was a spear. Behold the birth of a technology:

SIDOARJO, Indonesia — How to tame a mud volcano: try dropping hundreds of giant concrete balls into it.
In recent weeks, using a system invented at the Bandung Institute of Technology, workers have been releasing the balls from a complicated crane-pulley-sling contraption into the steaming vent known to scientists as “the big hole.”
Mud volcano experts are bemused. No one has ever stopped an underground mud flow, they say, least of all with a home remedy like this.
Don’t laugh, said Satria Bijaksana, one of three institute geologists who devised the plan, standing at the rim of a vast, dull-gray sea of mud.
“I’m not just some crazy scientist throwing out wild ideas,” said Mr. Bijaksana, 42, who holds a doctorate in rock magnetism from Memorial University of Newfoundland in Canada. “This is not a joke.”