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Anthropology
Related: About this forumFound: Neolithic Spiderweb Stones in Denmark
They may have more to do with the sun than with arachnids.
BY VITTORIA TRAVERSO FEBRUARY 13, 2018
FROM ANCIENT NATIVE AMERICANS TO the classical Greeks to today, spiders and their webs have long had symbolic and religious meaning. Now, archaeologists digging at a Neolithic site on Bornholm, Denmarks easternmost island, have unearthed some mysterious 5,000-year-old stones engraved with what appear to be spiderwebs. But they may not have had anything to do with arachnids.
Their patterns are not vastly different than those on the roughly 300 sun stones found since the 1990s at the site of Vasagard, on the same island, which appears to have been a ceremonial center for Neolithic sun worship. (Bornholm is the place in Denmark with the most hours of sunlight per yearso perhaps it is no surprise that prehistoric sun-lovers gathered there.) However, as explained by Finn Ole Son Nielsen, chief archaeologist at the Bornholm Museum, sun stones usually have a simpler set of radiating lineswhile the new finds have more intricate lines in between, giving them a distinctly arachnoid look. Researchers have found at least four so far, including one that is somewhere between a sun stone and a spiderweb stone.
More:
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/neolithic-spiderweb-stones-denmark-archaeology
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Found: Neolithic Spiderweb Stones in Denmark (Original Post)
Judi Lynn
Feb 2018
OP
Hermit-The-Prog
(36,631 posts)1. looks spidery to me
I think it's a stretch to associate that carving with the sun. The ladder rung lines connecting the spokes are much more suggestive of a spider web, to me. The medieval church ceiling used for comparison likewise looks spidery. Note on the church ceiling that to the left in the photo is what appears to be the moon, and on the right a special star which could be the sun. That leaves the spider web in the middle as just that -- a spider web.
bobbieinok
(12,858 posts)2. Read several artcles at link. Are a lot of scandinavian archeologists women? Lots of women mentioned