Similarities between the rituals excavated at Sintashta and Arkaim and those described later in the RV have solved, for many, the problem of Indo-Iranian origins.46 The parallels include a reference in RV 10.18 to a kurgan (“let them … bury death in this hill”), a roofed burial chamber supported with posts (“let the fathers hold up this pillar for

A so-called picture-stone memorial from the island of Gotland, dating to the fifth or sixth century and showing the characteristic burning disc thought to denote the sun, with the moon and stars. During the sixth-century climate crisis, such imagery disappeared as the sun lost its power, never to return in the Iron Age art of the North. This stone

In 2003 the site became the focus of a major research project based in the universities of Sheffield and Hull and led by Paul Pettitt and Paul Bahn, which immediately achieved spectacular success by revealing the existence of the very first Palaeolithic pictures ever found on the walls of British caves.

The Celtic Sun god Belenus, for instance, is one of the oldest and most widely known deities in Europe. An even older goddess, Innana spread through space and time across Mesopotamia and into Greek civilization, where she became Aphrodite.

Two in particular drew attention, on segments of animal rib bone. The first was the front half of a horse’s body, covered and preceded by a series of vertical lines, the second an upright shape interpreted by the discoverer as ‘a masked human figure in the act of dancing a ceremonial dance’.