Possible Title: Potential Evidence of ‘Sun Stones’ Used by Ancient Societies to Combat Volcanic Winters

Hundreds of mysterious carved “sun stones” excavated in Denmark may have been ritually buried after the sun disappeared in a volcanic eruption around 2900 BC.

A total of 614 stone tablets and fragments inscribed with decorative motifs of the sun and plants have been unearthed in recent years. Basagard West Ruins Located on the island of Bornholm in Denmark. They were discovered in geological formations dating back some 4,900 years, when Neolithic people were farming the region and building enclosures surrounded by earthworks of banks and ditches.

Most of the carved sun stones were found in ditches around these enclosures, which were covered with cobblestones containing pottery shards and other items. This pottery is typical of the Late Funnel Beaker culture, which existed in the area from about 2900 to 2800 BC.

It was originally proposed that the stone carving of the sun was buried to ensure a good harvest. They say the sun was central to early Nordic agricultural culture. Rune Iversen at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

“But why did they store all these images at the same time?” Iversen asks. “The last thing they basically did here was deposit these sun stones and cover them with animal bone fragments and all kinds of artifacts and stuff like that. And then it went from trench to trench. You can see it being repeated. So it's some kind of action or event.”

Now he and his colleagues have found the answer. They looked at data from ice cores taken in Greenland and Antarctica and found that high concentrations of sulfate were deposited in the years following volcanic eruptions around 2900 BC.

Researchers say the relative proportions of sulfate deposition in Greenland and Antarctica suggest the eruption was somewhere close to the equator, and its effects appear to have spread over a vast area. . Ash clouds may have blocked out the sun and cooled temperatures for years.

A severe cold period around 2900 B.C. is supported by sources such as preserved wood rings from the Main River Valley in Germany and long-lived rock pine tree rings from the western United States.

This eruption would have had a devastating impact on the Neolithic peoples of northern Europe. “If we don’t have a harvest and the crop is not accepted, we won’t be able to sow anything next year,” Iversen says. “They must have felt quite punished at the time, because endless catastrophe was just going to befall them.”

He and his colleagues say burying the sculptures may have been an attempt to bring back the sun, or a celebration after the skies finally cleared.

say “that's a good explanation” jens winter johansen At the Roskilde Museum in Denmark. “There is no doubt that our staunchly agricultural society must trust the sun.”

Lars Larsson Researchers from Sweden's Lund University asked why, if climate impacts are widespread, evidence of such behavior is only found on Bornholm and not elsewhere in southern Scandinavia. Ta.

That may be because the people there had an abundance of slate, a hard stone with which to carve statues of the sun, whereas much of the rest of southern Scandinavia is mostly clay and has fewer stones suitable for carving. The body, Iversen says. “They may have carved wood or leather from other locations,” he says, but these would not normally have been preserved.

Or it may reflect cultural differences, Johansen says. “These societies are not isolated, but they are more isolated on the islands. That may be why they developed their own customs and culture.”