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By Aristos Georgiou
Science and Health Reporter
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A "unique" and mysterious collection of engraved stone plaques were seemingly sacrificed by prehistoric people in Scandinavia following a devastating volcanic eruption around 4,900 years ago, a study reports.
In the study, published in the journal Antiquity, a team of researchers link the deposition of the enigmatic artifacts—known as "sun stones"—to the eruption, providing fascinating insights into the ritual practices of Europeans in the Neolithic (or New Stone Age) and a prehistoric environmental crisis.
The first discovery of the so-called sun stones arrived in 1995 when a few pieces came to light during excavations at the Neolithic site of Rispebjerg on the Danish island of Bornholm. But they did not turn up in significant numbers until more recent excavations were carried out at the archaeological site of Vasagård, a few miles from Rispebjerg on the island, from 2013 to 2018.
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The majority of the known sun stones were found during these excavations, with archaeologists uncovering more than 600 whole and fragmentary stones at the site.
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"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. They symbolized fertility and were probably sacrificed to ensure sun and growth," study co-lead author Rune Iversen from the University of Copenhagen, who participated in the excavations, said in a statement.
The sun stones had been deposited in part of a causewayed enclosure—a type of Neolithic archaeological site characterized by one or more concentric rings of ditches—together with the remains of ritual feasts, represented by animal bones, broken clay vessels and flint objects. The ditches were subsequently closed.
Evidence from the site indicates that Neolithic people deposited the stones en masse over a short period—possibly in a single event—around 2900 B.C.
"Since they displayed variation in ornamentation, it became obvious that we needed to establish some kind of classification of the rich imagery," Iversen told Newsweek.
This led to the first part of the recently published study in which the authors demonstrate that depictions of the sun dominate among all of the observed motifs.
"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. We were looking for a natural disaster or climatic event that could have affected crop yields or the visibility of the sun," Iversen said.
As part of this effort, the researcher and his collaborator Poul Otto Nielsen—the study's other co-lead author—then contacted experts with the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen.
With their help, Iversen and Nielsen were able to link the deposition of the sun stones to a volcanic eruption that had been detected in ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica. Ice cores are long cylinders drilled from the ice sheets of the polar regions. They essentially function as time capsules, preserving detailed information about Earth's climate and environment over hundreds of thousands of years.
The eruption in question presumably took place around the equator somewhere and can be dated relatively precisely to around 2900 B.C., thanks to the ice cores. According to the study, this eruption was powerful and seemingly had widespread repercussions for people living at the time.
"Its consequences for early agricultural societies must have been significant and devastating," Iversen said.
An eruption of similar magnitude 3,000 years later in 43 B.C.—which has been described in ancient documents from the Mediterranean—can shed light on what the environmental effects might have been like for the people of the Neolithic, who did not produce written records. The 43 B.C. eruption resulted in unusually cold, inclement weather in the region, as well as crop failures, famine and disease for more than two years, historical sources suggest.
Similarly, the impact on the early agricultural societies living in northern Europe must have been severe, according to Iversen.
"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.," he said.
Since the deposition of the engraved sun stones represented a single—or a few—contemporary depositional event(s) around 2900 B.C., coinciding with the volcanic eruption, the researchers made the connection and linked the two.
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"We were able to link a major volcanic eruption and its consequences to an archaeological event," Iversen said.
Given that many of the engraved stones display sun and field motifs, the researchers offer a possible interpretation of them.
"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. 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," Iversen said in the statement.
"It was obvious to see the depositions of such imagery as fertility offerings made to enhance the yield of the fields and an attempt to evoke the darkened sun," Iversen told Newsweek.
"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. 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."
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Reference
Iversen, R., Nielsen, P., Sørensen, L., Svensson, A., Steffensen, J., Land, A., Thorsen, M., Finn, & Nielsen, O. (2025). Sun stones and the darkened sun: Neolithic miniature art from the island of Bornholm, Denmark; Background and recent excavations. Antiquity, 99(404). https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2024.217
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