The air of antiquity must be filled with mystery!
Be it about the lifestyle of ancient people, their eating habits or even daily rituals. It is, to say the least, a strange attempt to assess the nature of the spirituality of people who lived thousands of years ago; what they believed and how they defended their faith.
Thousands of years ago, people on a modern Danish island Bornholm threw hundreds of mysteriously carved stones into the moat before burying them.
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The purpose of these so-calledsun stones“, and the reasons for their mass dumping into ditches have remained a mystery until now.
However, ancient ice found in Greenland may have the answer to quell the curiosity about these stones.
The study was published in Antiquity.
Revealed mystery:
About 4,900 years ago, there was a volcanic eruption so powerful it would have obliterated the Sun, prompting ritual sacrifices of sunstones in an attempt to restore it.
According to archaeologist Rune Iversen of the University of Copenhagen, “We’ve known for a long time that the Sun was the focal point for the early agricultural cultures that we know in Northern Europe. They cultivated the land and depended on the Sun to bring home the crops. If the Sun were almost disappeared due to fog in the stratosphere for a longer period of time, it would be very scary for them.”
Sunstones:
Sunstones (“solsten” in Danish) have been found in large numbers at an archaeological site on Bornholm called Vasagård. The site, which was used between about 3500 B.C. to n. e. and 2700 to n. e., is considered a religious complex; more specifically, a place of worship of the Sun, as the entrances to the complex are aligned with the Sun at the time of the solstice.
Archaeologists have unearthed more than 600 whole or fragmented sunstones buried in ditches next to the dam that runs through the site. These are mostly palm-sized, usually flat, rounded stones engraved with lines radiating from the center like the rays of the sun, although there is some variation in the shape of the stones and the patterns engraved on them.
All of these sunstones display intricate carvings that would have required hours upon hours of painstaking hard work. According to archaeologists, such deliberate work must have had a purpose, and they believe that purpose was spiritual, relating to the Sun, fertility and growth.
According to Iverson, “sunstones have been found in large quantities at Vasagord West, where residents stored them in ditches that formed part of the dyke enclosure, along with the remains of ritual feasts in the form of animal bones, broken clay vessels, and flint. Objects around 2900 to n. e. were later closed.”
The grouping of these stones in time and space indicates a specific purpose or event.
According to Iversen and his colleagues, they identified what this event might be in ice cores taken from the Greenland ice sheet, annual layers of sediment from the bottom of ancient lakes, and tree rings that formed around the same time.
In the ice core, in a layer that was deposited around 2900 BC. BC, significant amounts of sulfate can be seen, a feature seen when a massive volcanic eruption occurs and its emissions settle on the ice sheet and are buried by subsequent layers of ice.
Annual layers of sediments from Germany, known as varves, indicate two periods of low sunlight, one of which occurred largely around 2900 AD. BC Tree-ring data from bristlecone pines in the western US show very thin rings around the same time period, associated with very cold, dry conditions.
Main contact:
It is well known that large enough volcanic eruptions can cause widespread problems for several years, such as cooling periods, lack of sunlight, crop failures and subsequent famine. Iversen and his team believe that all this evidence points to a connection between the volcano and the sunstones in Vasagorda.
According to Iverson, “it is reasonable to assume that the Neolithic people at Bornholm wanted to protect themselves from further deterioration of the climate by offering sunstones – or perhaps they wanted to show their gratitude that the sun had returned again.”
There is another significant catch.
In the years following the laying of the stones, the design of the site changed significantly. At the same time, the plague ravaged the region and the culture was undergoing major changes as mass migration took place across Europe. If the devastation caused by the volcanic eruption has come and gone, and other major changes have occurred, it is not a great leap to conclude that the changing needs of the local people have led to a change in their gathering place.
Iverson adds: “After sacrificing sunstones, the inhabitants changed the structure of the site so that instead of sacrificial ditches, it was provided with extensive rows of stockades and circular houses of worship. We don’t know why, but it’s reasonable to assume that the drastic climate changes they were exposed to would have played a role.”
