1000’s of years in the past, folks on what’s now the Danish island of Bornholm threw tons of of mysteriously carved stones right into a ditch earlier than burying them.
The aim of those so-called ‘solar stones’, and the explanations for throwing them into ditches en masse, have been one thing of a thriller – however historic ice excavated from Greenland might have the reply.
Some 4,900 years in the past, a volcano erupted so massively that it will have blotted out the Solar – prompting the ritual sacrifice of solar stones in a bid to revive it.
“We have known for a long time that the Sun was the focal point for the early agricultural cultures we know of in Northern Europe,” says archaeologist Rune Iversen from the College of Copenhagen.
“They farmed the land and depended on the Sun to bring home the harvest. If the Sun almost disappeared due to mist in the stratosphere for longer periods of time, it would have been extremely frightening for them.”
Solar stones – or “solsten” in Danish – have been present in nice numbers at an archaeological website on Bornholm referred to as Vasagård. The positioning, in use between round 3500 BCE and 2700 BCE, is assumed to have been a spiritual advanced; extra particularly a spot of Solar worship, because the entrances to the advanced line up with the Solar on the time of the solstices.
Buried in ditches subsequent to a causeway that runs by the positioning, archaeologists have excavated greater than 600 complete or fragmented solar stones. These are largely palm-sized, normally flat, rounded stones which might be engraved with strains that radiate out from middle, just like the rays of the Solar, though there’s some variation within the form of the stone and the patterns engraved upon them.
Taken collectively, they signify hours upon hours of painstaking carving. Such deliberate work should have had a goal, and archaeologists consider that this goal was religious, in regards to the Solar, fertility, and progress.
“Sun stones were found in large quantities at the Vasagård West site,” Iversen says, “where residents deposited them in ditches forming part of a causewayed enclosure together with the remains of ritual feasts in the form of animal bones, broken clay vessels, and flint objects around 2900 BCE. The ditches were subsequently closed.”
The clustering of those stones in time and house suggests a selected goal or occasion. Iversen and his colleagues consider that they’ve recognized what that occasion is likely to be in an ice core extracted from the Greenland ice sheet, annual sediment layers from historic lakebeds, and tree rings that shaped across the identical time.
Within the ice core, in a layer deposited round 2900 BCE, a major quantity of sulfate may be seen, a signature that’s seen when a volcano massively erupts, and its ejecta settles onto an ice sheet and is buried by subsequent ice layers.
Annual sediment layers from Germany, often known as varves, point out two intervals of low daylight, with one considerably occurring round 2900 BCE. And tree ring knowledge from bristlecone pines within the western US present very skinny rings across the identical time interval – related to very chilly, dry situations.
We all know that giant sufficient volcanic eruptions can trigger widespread issues for a number of years, reminiscent of a interval of cooling, low daylight, crop failure, and subsequent famine. All these strains of proof, Iversen and his group consider, level to a connection between a volcanic occasion and the solar stones at Vasagård.
“It is reasonable to believe that the Neolithic people on Bornholm wanted to protect themselves from further deterioration of the climate by sacrificing sun stones – or perhaps they wanted to show their gratitude that the Sun had returned again,” he says.
There’s yet another important clue. Within the years following the deposition of the stones, the design of the positioning modified considerably. On the identical time, plague ravaged the area, and the tradition was present process a serious shift as mass migration happened throughout Europe.
If the devastation wrought by a volcanic eruption had come and gone, and with different giant adjustments occurring, it is not a big leap to deduce that the altering wants of the locals led to the rejigging of their gathering house.
“After the sacrifice of the sun stones, the residents changed the structure of the site so that instead of sacrificial ditches it was provided with extensive rows of palisades and circular cult houses,” Iversen says.
“We do not know why, but it is reasonable to believe that the dramatic climatic changes they had been exposed to would have played a role in some way.”
The analysis has been revealed in Antiquity.
