Page 192 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

The Wide View (I) 153

But now, with the advent of the mixed people of beaker and
battle-ax origins and the building of the monolith circles, Stone­
henge becomes beyond doubt a temple of the sun. For the bat-
tle-ax peoples were sun-worshippers. Wherever they spread in
Europe and Asia, we find religious myths later current telling of
the great sun-god who rides daily across the sky in his fiery
chariot drawn by the horses of the sun. The association of the sun
with the horse chariot points unmistakably to the battle-ax
charioteers as the bearers of this religion, and, as we shall see, the
evidence for sun-worship mounts steadily through the great
period of the Bronze Age which is to come.
Thus, while in the Near East Semitic-speaking peoples hold

COMPARE WITH PAGE 151 THIS COMPOSITE JAR AND LID FROM THE
SECOND CITY OF TROY, DATED TO ABOUT 23OO B.C. SEPARATED BY
NEARLY SEVEN HUNDRED YEARS AND ALL THE LENGTH OF EUROPE,
THESE TWO DEMONSTRATE THE WIDE-RANGING VITALITY OF THE
PASSAGE-GRAVE BUILDERS’ RELIGION.