In an unusual discovery, a team of researchers has found evidence that prehistoric people living in the lands of modern-day Scandinavia were performing sacrifices to appease their gods following a huge eruption that rocked the globe around 2,900 BC. What was unusual is that the sacrificial “victims” in this case were a collection of engraved stone plaques, which were apparently considered sacred.
In a new article published in the journal Antiquity, the researchers link the apparent disposal of objects they call “sun stones” to that terrifying and catastrophic eruption. This discovery offers some intriguing and surprising insights into the religious beliefs and ceremonial customs of Neolithic Europeans, showing how they responded to a natural disaster of sudden and epic proportions.
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When the Gods of Nature Turn Vengeful, a Sacrifice is Needed
The first sun stones were recovered in 1995, during excavations at the Neolithic site of Rispebjerg on the Danish island of Bornholm, which can be found east of Denmark in the Baltic Sea. There were just a few fragments of the stones discovered at that time, but excavations between 2013 and 2018 at the archaeological site of Vasagård, which is also on Bornholm, unearthed many more examples of these objects. In total more than 600 intact stones and fragmented pieces were recovered, giving the researchers plenty of artifacts to study and evaluate.
Map showing the location of the archaeological site of Vasagård on Bornholm. The sun stones found at the site have been linked to a prehistoric volcanic eruption in a study. (University of Copenhagen/Antiquity Publications Ltd.)
"One type of find that is completely unique to Bornholm is the so-called sun stones, which are flat shale pieces with engraved patterns and sun motifs,” study co-lead author Rune Iversen, an archaeologist from the University of Copenhagen, said in statement released by Antiquity. “They symbolized fertility and were probably sacrificed to ensure sun and growth."
But why did the research team conclude that these objects had been sacrificed? It seems they were found carefully deposited in a causewayed enclosure, a type of Neolithic installation that features concentric rings of ditches (in design, similar to megalithic monuments like Stonehenge, but without the heavy standing stones). The sun stones were mixed in with the remains of ritual feasts, including clay vessels, flint objects, and animal bones, and the evidence shows everything was intentionally buried together after the rituals were finished.
Intriguingly, all of these things were deposited at one time, during what was apparently a singular ceremony that took place around 2,900 BC – or right around when the volcano is known to have erupted (which the researchers actually didn’t know about at the time they made their discovery).
"Knowing that the sunstones represent a single—or a few—contemporary event(s) and their imagery is focused on the sun, fields and crops, made us look for potential external courses for this significant deposition event,” Rune Iversen told Newsweek. “We were looking for a natural disaster or climatic event that could have affected crop yields or the visibility of the sun.”
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With the assistance of experts from the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen, Iversen and his co-lead author, Poul Otto Nielsen, were able to link the sacrificial ceremony to a massive volcanic eruption that left its imprint in ice cores in both the Arctic and in Antarctica. While this eruption took place in the equatorial region, it was so potent that it blocked out the Sun and disrupted atmospheric flows on a global basis.
"Its consequences for early agricultural societies must have been significant and devastating," Iversen noted. Those consequences would have included dramatically lower year-round temperatures, massive crop failures, famine and disease outbreaks, and a prolonged period of global dimming (reduced sunlight) that would have been highly disturbing for a people who worshipped a sun god that was believed to intervene in human affairs.
A Global Catastrophe
The results of the eruption would have been felt all across Europe, where the earliest agricultural societies formed during the Neolithic Revolution could be found.
Sun stones engraved with field- and plant-related imagery. (René Laursen, Bornholms Museum/Antiquity Publications Ltd.)
"The temperature would have dropped significantly, and the crops would have suffered. We can see from sub-fossil tree rings in Germany the presence of spring and summer frost events both before and after 2900 B.C.," Iversen said.
Since this event occurred in prehistory, there is of course no written record to prove that the volcanic event and its aftermath led to the ceremonial sacrifices. But it is a reasonable and logical conclusion nonetheless, given the circumstances in which the sacrificial treasures were found.
"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,” Iversen explained. “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.”
Under those circumstances, it is not hard to see why they would want to appease a sun god who had seemingly decided to punish them for reasons unknown.
"There have been varying interpretations of the engraved stones ranging from gaming pieces to calendars, but from their scattered distribution across the same layer within the ditches it is obvious to see them as being 'sown' (like grains) in the ditches metaphorically representing large furrows,” Iversen said. “The idea behind it could be that sowing images of the sun and the fields would help 'reboot' the agricultural production and make the crops grow again and the sun shine."
Top image: Two sun stones found on the Danish island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea. The prehistoric artifacts are small, flat, shale pieces with finely incised patterns and sun motifs.
Source: National Museum of Denmark/Antiquity Publications Ltd.
By Nathan Falde
