Decoding the beautiful Sun Chariot from the Nordic Bronze Age

Crafted over 3,000 years ago, this treasure is incredibly intricate. Its beauty is just the beginning of a larger mystery about the ancient world.

In 1902, a farmer working on the Trundholm meadow in Denmark, about 67 km northwest of Copenhagen, discovered the Sun Chariot. The artifact was found broken into many pieces. Photo: Getty Images.

Experts at the National Museum of Denmark then reconstructed the Sun Chariot before putting it on display for visitors to admire. Photo: mediastorehouse.com.au.

According to experts, the Sun Chariot is about 54 cm long and 35 cm high. This artifact was created by artisans around 1400 BC. Photo: world-archaeology.com.

The Sun Chariot was created about three centuries after the introduction of chariots to Scandinavia. The precious artifact is made primarily of bronze. The circular disc is covered with a thin layer of gold on one side and decorated with spirals, a common motif on Bronze Age artifacts in Northern Europe. Photo: John Lee/National Museum of Denmark.

Flemming Kaul, curator of prehistoric collections at the National Museum of Denmark, said the Sun Chariot represents the Sun’s daily journey. The divine horse pulls the Sun across the sky from east to west during the day and down to the underworld at night. Photo: thyra2005.

The spirals on the large disc and the use of a wheel may symbolize the Sun's constant journey. The artifact may have been used by ancient priests to demonstrate astronomical phenomena. Photo: thyra2005.

Another view is that the Sun Chariot represents a kind of calendar. Specifically, in a 2006 study, Danish archaeologist Klavs Randsborg argued that there is an interesting mathematical pattern in the concentric circles on the disc. He pointed out that the total number of decorative designs on the disc representing the image of the Sun is 52, or the number of weeks in a year. Photo: Amazing History and Archeology/Facebook.

In 2008, astronomers Rahlf Hansen and Christine Rink theorized that the Sun Chariot was a kind of calendar that could predict solar eclipses. Photo: Amazing History and Archeology/Facebook.

In 2011, the image of the Sun Chariot was printed on the Danish 1,000 krone note. Photo: Amazing History and Archeology/Facebook.

Readers are invited to watch the video : Revealing lost civilizations through archaeological remains.

Source: https://khoahocdoisong.vn/giai-ma-co-xe-mat-troi-tuyet-my-tu-thoi-do-dong-bac-au-post1546930.html