Uffington hill carving was worshipped as 'sun horse' in prehistoric Britain

1/5. An aerial view of the famous Uffington White Horse.Dave Price / Wikimedia Commons

The location and orientation of the Uffington White Horse has been linked to the arc of the midwinter sun.

A huge prehistoric geoglyph depicting a galloping horse is traditionally thought to have been a symbol of ownership, territory or group identity for the prehistoric humans living on the Berkshire Downs. But now scholars are taking a second look at the 110-metre-long hillside carving. A new archaeological interpretation argues that it is a representation of a sun horse, a mythical beast that pulled the sun across the sky like a chariot.

The Uffington White Horse in the south of England is one of the oldest giant carved hill figures, or geoglyphs, in the world. The elongated, stylised horse is best visible from the sky, but was built millennia before a human would see it from that vantage point. It is thought to have been carved into the hillside, exposing the white chalk bedrock, in the late Second Millennium BCE or the early First Millennium BCE. [..] ibtimes.co.uk/