Thousands of mysterious gold spirals have been found in Zealand, Denmark. A little while back, a team of archeologists found four Bronze Age gold bracelets there. The archeologists thought they were done, so they handed the site over to amateur archaeologist Christian Albertsen. But Albertsen believed there was more to be discovered. And he was right. There was a lot more.
All in all, Albertsen located around 2,000 gold spirals. The hoard weighed in at between 200 and 300 grams. Experts believe the spirals are from between 900 and 700 B.C. during the Bronze Age. While the date and size of the collection has been determined, just what those unusual golden swirls were used for is still up for debate. Until now, no discovery like this has ever been made in Denmark.
“Maybe the spirals were fastened to threads lining a hat or parasol. Maybe they were woven into hair or embroidered on a ceremonial garb. The fact is that we do not know, but I am inclined to believe that they were part of a priest-king’s garb or part of some headwear,” said Flemming Kaul, curator at the Danish National Museum.
In the 1800s farmers discovered six gold bowls in the same location. The amount of Bronze Age gold found on the site throughout the years leads experts to believe the land was spiritually significant during that time.
“Maybe the priest king had a golden bracelet around his wrist, and the gold spirals adorned his cape or his hat, where during rituals they shone like the sun. The sun was one of the holy symbols in the Bronze Age and gold was presumably seen as having some sort of particular magic power. It is colored like the sun, it shines like the sun, and because gold lasts forever, it was also seen as containing some of the sun’s power,” Kaul said.
With this latest discovery so significant, archeologists are definitely going to keep digging in the area. The next big find could be right around the corner.
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