Ancient, engraved stones may have been buried to summon the sun

Ice cores hint at a volcanic eruption around the time of the burial in Stone Age Denmark



More than 100 engraved stones unearthed in Denmark depict images of the sun. The stones, including the two shown here, may have been buried as part of a ritual to bring back the sun after a volcanic eruption, researchers say.

JOHN LEE/NATIONAL MUSEUM OF DENMARK, R. IVERSEN ET AL/ANTIQUITY 2025

By Richard Kemeny

9 HOURS AGO
As a volcanic eruption darkened the sun roughly 4,900 years ago, a Stone Age culture sacrificed hundreds of decorated stone plaques to try to coax it back.

A trove of engraved stones unearthed from ritual gathering sites on Bornholm, an island in Denmark, display motifs that most commonly represent the sun and croplike plants. What’s more, an analysis of ice cores points to a volcanic eruption around the time the stones were intentionally buried. Taken together, the evidence suggests the stones’ burial may have been linked to the potentially cataclysmic event, archaeologist Rune Iversen and colleagues report January 15 in Antiquity.

“The predominance of sun and plant motifs is striking,” says Alison Sheridan, an archaeologist at National Museums Scotland in Edinburgh who was not involved in the research. “These stones are seen as a kind of prayer or invocation for the sun to return, and for crops to grow again.”

Iversen’s team discovered the collection of over 600 decorated stones between 2013 and 2018, in ritual gathering sites thought to have been built by the Funnel Beaker culture. These people appear to have carved out and refilled several ditches over about a century. Around 2900 B.C., they scattered sun stones across the land like seeds in a field, sealed the ditches and built several circular wooden structures on top.

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