World’s First Known Written Word at Göbekli Tepe on T-Shaped Pillar 18 Means God

Göbekli Tepe is a prehistoric, man-made megalithic hill site in today’s southeast Turkey which is riddled with walled circular and rectangular enclosures lined by and surrounding T-shaped monolithic pillars proposed to represent supernatural humanoid beings. We examined if H-shaped carvings in relief on some of these pillars might have a symbolic meaning rather than merely depicting an object of practical use. On Pillar 18 in Enclosure D, for example, one such “H” is bracketed by two semi-circles. An almost identical symbol appears as a logogram in the now extinct hieroglyphic language of the Bronze Age Luwians of Anatolia and there it meant the word for “god”. Further supporting a linguistic connection between Luwian hieroglyphs and images at Göbekli Tepe are to date untranslated Luwian symbols resembling the T-shape iconography of Göbekli Tepe and an H-like symbol which was the Luwian word for “gate”. We conclude that the T-shaped pillars at Göbekli Tepe were in fact built and symbolically marked to represent a god, possibly a bull-associated being, which guarded the entry to the human and animal afterlife. We propose that this theme may have been inspired by real celestial images of the then prevailing night sky, ritually reenacted and celebrated for centuries by hunter-gatherer pilgrims to this hill and then spread by their descendants across Anatolia still influencing language in the region spoken and written thousands of years later.


Introduction
Origin of Writing. The invention of writing is commonly attributed to Sumer and Egypt and the earliest evidence of either language dates to the late fourth millennium B.C.E. (Damerow, 2006). The first alphabet was created from Egyptian hieroglyphs by Canaanite miners in Sinai approximately one thousand years later at the beginning of the second millennium B.C.E. (Goldwasser, 2016).
While the terminus ante quem of the origin of writing in the world can thus be traced to the Chalcolithic Age of Egypt and Mesopotamia, prehistoric civilizations may have expressed thought as recorded symbols long before, but evidence of such early writing may have been lost due to the decay of the medium, due to cultural invasion and replacement, or may yet be discovered. For example, traces of a pictographic script used in predynastic Buto and the region of the Nile Delta at large survived as hieroglyphic symbols in the mixed phonetic and ideogrammic script of dynastic Egypt while the rest of the language was apparently phased out by the time of Horus Den during the First Dynasty (Helck, 1987, Chapter 11, page 138). The oldest recording system to date appears to have been clay tokens used to account for food stores which were discovered at Tell Mureybet by the western Euphrates in that site's layer III whose beginnings date to circa 9300-8600 B.C.E. (Senner, 1991: pp. 29-30). From this discovery and others, a widely-held model of cultural evolution by 20 th century archeologists implies that written language was invented after the development of agriculture based on the domestication of plants and livestock, and thus, like urban living, social stratification, and religion, represents an expression and outgrowth of materialistic culture, the ultimate driving force of cultural change in this model. The two main successive phases of this change from prehistoric hunter-gatherers to ancient historic dynastic city-state or nation dwellers were originally defined as the Neolithic and Urban Revolutions by V. Gordon Childe (Smith, 2009). Jacques Cauvin (2000), however, who led France's CNRS-sponsored excavations at Tell Mureybet in the mid-1970s, proposed the antithesis to this model by Childe: That symbolic thought and a belief system did not only predate domestication of food sources and the sedentary life-style of permanent settlements, but that it was instrumental in fostering them. In other words, the Neolithic revolution, according to Cauvin, was first and foremost a prehistoric revolution of ridge over a period of about 800 or more years in the 10 th and 9 th millennia, further extended with ancillary structures in Layer II for a period of 1800 years during the 9 th and 8 th millennia, and then completely buried and abandoned by circa 7000 B.C.E. (Schmidt, 2000(Schmidt, , 2011(Schmidt, , 2012. Originally discovered as a possible site of interest in 1963 by the Universities of Istanbul and Chicago led by Halet Çambel and Robert Braidwood, respectively, it was found to be a very ancient megalithic site in 1994 during initial excavations undertaken by the German Archeological Institute's late Klaus Schmidt (Schmidt, 2000(Schmidt, , 2011. Schmidt (1) has the phonetic value of "li". #239 translates into "Gate" and #263 and #457 (2) are unknown (Petra Goedegebuure, personal communication). #261 is uncertain. From Laroche (1960: pp. 129, 137, 237); modified.  Luwian contains, by our survey, at least four symbols directly related to iconography found at Göbekli Tepe, we think random chance is unlikely. However, even if Luwian adopted symbolic themes from its distant ancestors, we have to consider the more trivial scenario that people who lived in southeast Anatolia during the Bronze Age may have discovered decorated T-shaped pillars, ascribed importance to the symbolism of the pillars and some of the reliefs found on them, and consequently attached a meaning to these icons unrelated to that intended by the builders of Göbekli Tepe, which itself may be a trivial depiction of the details of a hunter's belt. The main reasons why we think this is unlikely are that: 1) the "H" symbols occur both as part of the belt bracketed by semi-circles on Pillar 18 of Enclosure D, as a part of an apparently purely symbolic element on the front of Pillar 18 along with a disk inside a crescent, alone on the front of Anatolian pottery decorations where the T-shape is evidently part of a bull head ( Figure 13 and Figure 14) suggests that they represent the prehistoric word for "bull" or a syllable sound related to that word.
Spiritual Theme. Taken together, this evidence suggests that the T-shaped pillars at Göbekli Tepe were likely meant to represent a god in the form of a bull-like being. But what was its power or function within the context of circles?
The answer to this question may come from the lay-out of the dwellings found at Çatalhöyük. There, the adult dead were commonly buried on the northeast side of the homes and sometimes marked with bucrania ( Figure 15). This suggests the god in question was a guardian of the dead. In the same context, the vulture with the headless torso marked the north side of the dwelling. At Göbekli Tepe the general orientation of most circles unearthed so far is approximately south to north ( Figure 16). The animals are shown to seemingly migrate towards the    Figure 3(j)) in analogous fashion as to what is seen on north-wall murals inside dwellings at Çatalhöyük ( Figure 17). Therefore, the view of the world suggested by this iconography could be interpreted as revolving around the inevitability of the death of all creatures, animals and humans, symbolized by the vulture and the headless torso, and that this passage from life to death involves an encounter with a god who stands at the gate of a passage (Collins, 2015) between life and death 4 . The discovery of limestone heads by Pillar 31, decorated fragments of human skulls at Göbekli Tepe, and plastered skulls at Çatalhöyük suggests that this word-view also made room for the notion of coming back to life (also suggested by Collins, 2014)  that Deneb was instead represented by the "Soul Holes" found in two of the enclosures (see Figure 9 and Figure 10 in Collins, 2015). The celestial torso from which the head (i.e. Vega in our interpretation) was severed may also have been inspired by the constellation Orion, also possibly imagined as a headless humanoid figure (Schoch, 2012: p. 55).
The snake-like constellation Draco ( Figure 18) may explain the iconography of the many snakes on the T-shaped pillars and on the back of a limestone head found at Nevalı Çori and their seeming migration depicted on some pillars towards the "H" symbol (e.g. Figure 3(m)) is neatly explained by Draco's and Boötes' (possibly imagined as a scorpion) proximity to Hercules. The vulture "flying" and "chasing" after the "torso" of Hercules during the hours of the night could have been seen in Cygnus (represented on Pillar 43; Collins, 2017) and we agree that this is more likely than another interpretation which suggests it was meant to represent Sagittarius (Sweatman & Tsikritsis, 2017: p. 237), as the 4 Andrew Collins has interpreted the meaning of a bone plaque found at Göbekli Tepe to show a path taken by a person in between two T-shaped pillars and towards the "soul hole", opening through limestone slabs placed at the north ends of Enclosures C and D (Collins, 2015). A similar passage-like iconography is shown in Laroche #207 (Figure 9), a ligature of "god" and "path" which was the Luwian word for "mountain".  (Cavalié & Jónsson, 2013, see Figure 1 of citation). This means that the perspective from Anatolian monuments on the ground very slowly rotates west of north relative to the stars in the night sky.
The extent to which this may affect alignments to certain stars measured today should be confirmed to be negligible, but it cannot be ignored a priori.
The bull-like T-shaped god statues of Göbekli Tepe are not facing toward the north and the circumpolar region, but are rather turned toward the south. It is possible that the southeastern night sky with the constellation Taurus and Orion's belt asterism, previously suggested by one of us (Schoch, 2012: p. 55), may have been associated with the T-shaped anthropomorphic pillars, and with the cranium of an aurochs. Indeed, the god in question (represented by the central pillars of Enclosure D) was facing toward the region of the sky containing Orion-with its strong belt stars, perhaps represented by the belts on the pillars-and Taurus, the bull or aurochs, on the vernal equinox during Göbekli Tepe times (Schoch, 2012).
It is also possible that prehistoric sky watchers associated either the bull, or the T-shape, or both with the southern hemispheric cross-shaped constellation Crux, which was visible in Anatolia during the 10 th Millennium B.C.E. Likewise, the nearby constellation Centaur's inverted "U"-shape may have inspired the same symbol on the belt buckle of Pillar 18, the circular shape of Enclosures A-D, and the "U"-shaped stone entrance to Enclosure C to its south. The Milky Way, on which Crux can be seen, forms a starry path to the circumpolar region and this may have been symbolized as the path to the afterlife in the north.
T-shaped megalithic pillars on the southern side of the island of Menorca called Taulas surrounded by horseshoe-shaped enclosures built by the Talayotic (Talaiotic) Civilization (circa 1300-800 B.C.E.) were also likely oriented to the low altitude constellations Crux and Centaur (Hoskins et al., 1990) and the sites were abandoned at the same time when Crux disappeared in the northern hemisphere due to Earth-axial precession hinting at a causal connection 5 . The Taulas are a compelling example of an ancient monumental recreation of starry images imagined in the night sky ( Figure 19).
Animal Imagery. We may ask if it is necessary to invoke an association with celestial images in order to explain the ancient worship of animal-like gods or gods associated with certain animals. From the perspective of ancient people, the wild aurochs must have been an imposing and ferocious animal ( Figure 20) 5 Klaus Schmidt did not believe that the Bronze Age Menorcan Taulas had any relationship to the similarly T-shaped pillars at Göbekli Tepe because they were made from two stone elements instead of one monolith (Schmidt, 2012 perfectly suited to symbolize power and this association continued into the Bronze Age when the Anatolian storm god Tešup is seen with a bull ( Figure 6 and Figure 8). Kingdom, for example, likely saw the hippopotamus goddess "reret", the scorpion goddess "serket", the falcon god "anu", and the ox thigh "mesekhtiu" in the circumpolar star group, while Claudius Ptolemaeus' Almagest (Alexandria, 2 nd century C.E.) listed Draco, Ursa major and minor, and Boötes (Lull & Belmonte, 2009, Chapter 6, pp. 164-168 setting the stage for the domestication of plants (Demiral, 2016: pp. 131-133) and animals by larger groups of people united by the same beliefs conveyed by its powerful spiritual symbolism. This, then, may have been the real catalyst in Cauvin's model of the origins of agriculture: The communal spirit of interacting in a large group captivated by iconic symbols recognized by many as opposed to hunting in the isolation of small bands composed only of a few closely-nit family members. It is this power of symbols which we think was the driving force behind the desire to record them in stone and the word for God fittingly would be the first such symbol recorded, making it the first word in recorded history. 6 Bruce Fenton has suggested a close match between the H-symbols carved onto Pillars 18 and 28 at Göbekli Tepe and an Australian Aboriginal symbol for exchanging knowledge seen on some Churinga stones.

Introduction
The presence of bunkers in the Canary Islands comes to my attention through

Historical Information
During the WWII and the years after, the Independent Artillery Group of Cana- The denomination "pillbox" applied to casemates and bunkers is current in literature (Pillbox Study Group, 2016-2018 although its meaning is uncertain.
In this article it will be applied to small, camouflaged bunkers provided with one or more fire apertures, encountered during the visits.

Playa Blanca Coastal Defences
The visit took place on 25 th November 2018 and, proceeding West to East; the identified military structures were the following. A well preserved old lighthouse (1) (Figure 2) (28˚51'19.89"N, 13˚52'21.06"W), built in local, magmatic, black breeks, composed by a one floor, square building about 20 × 20 m, and a protruding cylindrical light tower, about 10 m high and 4 m in diameter. The south facade had one window at each side of the light tower, the west facade had two windows, the north facade had an entrance and a window and the east facade had two windows and an entrance. All the windows were closed by breeks and a layer of concrete. The entrance on the east façade was closed by breeks with a superimposed concrete layer and the entrance on the north facade was closed by a brown painted, wood door. The interior was inaccessible; therefore, the internal room organization remained unknown. Satellite images show an internal, central square court. The facade walls were covered by recent graffiti. The flat roof had a balustrade and a protruding chimney at the corner between the east and the south facades. At the top, the tower preserved a white painted top circular portion in which an exit gave access to a circular balcony, and, superimposed, the metallic rests of the lamp house. No defensive structures were identified around the old lighthouse.
A well preserved truncated, pyramidal base (   surfaces letting visible traces of the construction formwork. A cylindrical, metallic shaft, about 5 cm in diameter with a central hole slightly protruded at the centre of the top surface. A well preserved one floor, rectangular pillbox bunker (4) (28˚51'38.76"N, 13˚51'30.81"W) ( Figure 5), about 8 × 5 m, 2.5 m high. Rather robust, it fallen from the cliff to the beach without structure damages. Its front facade had two fire apertures, about 30 × 40 cm, each with splinter guards and its rear facade had one entrance. The facades and the roof were covered by local, sea rounded magmatic stones. A single room formed its interior.
A quite well preserved truncated, pyramidal base (5) (Figure 6(a)), 0.5 m high, 1.2 m each side at the base, 1 m each side at the top, partially buried in the modern touristic promenade. It was built by local, small magmatic pebbles mixed with concrete. A thin concrete layer covered portions of the side surfaces. No cylindrical, metallic shaft was at the centre of the top surface.
A bad preserved truncated, pyramidal base (6) ( Figure 6  A well preserved one floor, rectangular pillbox (9) (28˚51'28.03"N, 13˚47' 55.67"W) (Figure 9(a)), about 5 × 4 m, partially buried in the terrain. The entrance and the single fire aperture were buried in the terrain, so that the inspection of its interior was not possible. Its facades and coverage were camouflaged with local, rounded magmatic stones, and a thin, horizontal concrete layer covered a portion of the front facade.
A well preserved one floor, rectangular pillbox (10) (28˚51'27.44"N, 13˚47' 55.23"W) (Figure 9(b)), about 5 × 4 m, partially buried in the terrain. The entrance and the single fire aperture with splinter guards were buried in the terrain, so that the inspection of its interior was not possible. Its facades and coverage were camouflaged with local, rounded magmatic stones.
A possible, circular ground emplacement (11) (Figure 9(c)), about 3 m in diameter was on a side of the pillbox (10).
A well preserved truncated, pyramidal base (12) (Figure 9(d)), 0.5 m high, 1.5 m each side at the base, 1 m each side at the top, built by local, small magmatic pebbles mixed with concrete, letting visible traces of the construction formwork. A cylindrical, metallic shaft, about 5 cm in diameter with a central hole slightly protruded at the centre of the top surface.

Punta Del Papagayo Coastal Defences
The visit took place on 27 th November 2018 and continuing toward East the identified military structures were the following.
A well preserved truncated, pyramidal base (13) (28˚51'25.1"N, 13˚47'54.46"W) ( Figure 10  A well preserved truncated, pyramidal base (15) (Figure 10(e)), 0.5 m high, 1.5 m each side at the base, 1 m each side at the top, built by local, small magmatic pebbles mixed with concrete, letting visible traces of the construction formwork. A cylindrical, metallic shaft, about 5 cm in diameter with a central hole slightly protruded at the centre of the top surface.
A well preserved truncated, pyramidal base (18) (Figure 11(b)), 0.5 m high, 1.5 m each side at the base, 1 m each side at the top, built by local, small magmatic pebbles mixed with concrete, letting visible traces of the construction formwork. No cylindrical, metallic shaft was at the centre of the top surface.
A well preserved one floor, rectangular pillbox (19) (28˚51 '15.22 Figure 11(d)), about 8 × 5 m, 2.5 m high, at the East side of Playa Mujeres. Its front facade had two fire apertures about 30 × 40 cm, without splinter guards and its rear facade had one entrance. The facades and the coverage were camouflaged with local, sea rounded magmatic stones. A single room without furniture formed its interior. A well preserved one floor, rectangular pillbox (20) (28˚51'5.26"N, 13˚47' 30.75"W) ( Figure 11(e)), about 8 × 5 m, 2.5 m high, at the West side of Playa Mujeres. Rather solid, it fallen from the cliff to the beach without structure damages. Its front facade had two fire apertures, about 30 × 40 cm, each with splinter guards, the rear façade was buried in the terrain. The facades and the coverage were camouflaged with local, sea rounded magmatic stones. A concrete layer was under the apertures.
A bad preserved truncated, pyramidal base (21) (Figure 11(f)), 0.5 m high, 1.5 m each side at the base, 1 m each side at the top, built by local, small magmatic pebbles mixed with concrete. Part of the top was lost. The sides were deeply eroded letting visible layers corresponding to the construction formwork. A cylindrical, metallic shaft, about 5 cm in diameter with a central hole slightly protruded at the centre of the top surface.
A well preserved one floor, rectangular pillbox (22)  The sand invaded the single room of its interior. The walls appeared orange coloured; on the ceiling the traces of the construction formwork were clearly visible.

Mirador Del Rio Artillery Batteries
The visit took place on 29 th November 2018, but, unfortunately, the Mirador del Rio military structures ( Figure 15) were on a terrain with access interdiction; therefore they were only indirectly identified. Satellite images permitted to recognize a 1 st battery (1) (29˚12'52.73"N, 13˚28'51.28"W) and a 2 nd battery (2) (29˚12'52.73"N, 13˚28'51.28"W). The identified structures ( Figure 16) of the 1 st artillery battery (1), near the modern Mirador del Rio parking, were the following.
A well preserved oval emplacement (28)    a support for a gun at its centre was not clearly identifiable.
A three sided barrier wall (36)

Discussion
The Lanzarote defences were composed mainly by pillboxes, truncated, pyramidal bases, ground emplacements and artillery bases.
The pillboxes were of simple project, easy and rapid to build. They were not built on island elevations from which dominate beaches and large spaces but letting them exposed and easy to identify. Rather, they were built low along the coasts or directly on the beaches. Normally, they were located at one side of short beaches, as pillboxes (22) spaces. They were generally close to pillboxes for supporting their fire. The bases hosted probably one offensive and defensive or static defence machinegun served by two or three soldiers. However the way in which a machine gun was mounted on a truncated pyramidal base and the machine guns designated for said bases remain unknown. The ground emplacements were located in relatively elevated positions to dominate large spaces were the fire of machine guns on said bases was judged insufficient. They offered better protection to one or two officers and about five to ten soldiers armed with personal machine guns and one or more offensive and defensive or static defence machine guns. The ground emplacements (8), (11), (13) correspond to machine gun nests (Defensa, 2015).
The two floors, bunker (7) corresponds to the command bunker of the Punta Limones battery (Defensa, 2015). The cylindrical shafts on the 180˚ aperture were placed later after its construction. During the WWII the aperture was free, and the reduced room dimensions, the absence on its floor of a basement for a heavy gun or a projector suggests that it was mainly used for observation and fire direction of the battery. It probably hosted a telemeter although the presence of one or more defence machine gun mounted on its own bases for far and close defence cannot be excluded. Its armoured concrete structure confirms its construction during the WWII. The battery guns were field guns on their own carriage (Defensa, 2015), therefore they needed only circumstance places not necessarily artillery emplacements. The battery personnel lodged outside the bunker in disappeared barracks or tents. The bunker (27) lodged personnel in the 1 st and 2 nd rooms and one or two guns mounted on wheeled support in the 3 rd room to be conducted and placed outside through the ramp. The square pit (Tomezzoli, 2017) near the entrance was probably an open, drinking water cistern although the function of external observation post for the surveillance and protection of the bunker by one soldier cannot be ruled out. The absence of trace of a kitchen and latrines at the interior and a chimney at the exterior, indicate that the personnel lodged outside the bunker in disappeared barracks or tents and reached the bunker in case of alarms.
The satellite images confirm that Mirador del Rio hosted two artillery batteries (1) (1). The 2 nd artillery battery (2) apparently had no command bunker. Therefore, its fire was directed by the 1 st artillery battery (1) (1).

Conclusion
Today, at about seventy years from the WWII end, to which they did not parti-

First Be-2 Visit
The first visit of the Be-2 site ( Figure 1) took place on 21 st December 2009, following a suggestion of prof. Mevel of the Rennes University after a visit of the WWII German radar camp of Monterfil (Dupont et al., 2007), and permitted to identify the following Be-2 components (Tomezzoli & Dupont, 2011). A ground emplacement (b) in the terrain, probably for machine or Flak guns.
Built by local stones, it was in a degraded preservation state and completely invaded by the vegetation.  (Tomezzoli & Dupont, 2011), it was the basis of a disappeared latrine barrack.
A degraded trench (j) still visible on the terrain, connecting the bunkers (i) and (k).
The descending entrance, oriented toward the FuSan 724/725, was filled by terrain; therefore the inspection of the interior was not possible. It was probably a protection bunker for the personnel or for Be-2 instrumentation in case of attack. Two antenna cable anchorage supports (l) at their places on the terrain.
The FuSan 724/725 support (m) formed by a concrete, circular ring about 20 m in diameter and 1.5 m in width, with a circular, concrete construction about 4 m in diameter at its centre, slightly emerging from the terrain. The internal room of the construction was completely filled by terrain; therefore the inspection of the interior was not possible. The circular rail on the ring for the rotation of the FuSan 724/725 disappeared and only its fixation joints emerged from a light concrete layer covering the ring. The well preserved 17 th cen. Saint Michel chapel (n) having a short bell tower superimposed on its front facade. One of its doors was open, but surprisingly its interior was not vandalized or disfigured by modern graffiti. The chapel and its bell tower evidently have not interfered with the FuSan 724/725 radio emissions.
The ruins of a small construction (o), still intact in the year 1991, probably hosting a transmission centre.
Two antenna supports (p) at their places on the terrain.
A possible emplacement (r) for a Flak gun, excavated on a mount side.
At that time, the vestiges of the transformer cabin (q) ( Figure 1) were not recognized and because of the lack of information, the vestiges of the cable trench (b) and the monitoring mast (d) ( Figure 2) were not searched at all.  The operating quarters mentioned in the rapport are visible in an after war French air reconnaissance image of Be-2 ( Figure 1) and correspond to the components (a)-(r) identified in the first visit.
The mention of a cable trench and a calibration mast ( Figure 2) not identified during the first Be-2 visit motivated the further visits on the Be-2 site.

Second Be-2 Visit
The second Be-2 visit, in the light of the Interpretation Report NO. G.590 information, took place on 13 th May 2017. The weather initially rainy and windy permitted to ascertain that the Be-2 components (a)-(p), (r) remained in the preservation state evaluated in the first visit. But the following storm did not permitted the identification of cable trench vestiges and consequently to arrive to possible mast vestiges ( Figure 2).

Third Be-2 Visit
The third Be-2 visit took place on 14 th May 2017 with good weather. It was possible to recognize on the terrain the traces of the foundations of the transformer cabin (q) close to the chapel (n) and to ascertain that the cable trench (b)

Discussion
The secret Interpretation Report NO. G.590 informs that on 6 th October 1942, i.e. well after the conclusion of the Battle of Britain, Be-2 was under construction, but the cable trench and the mast were already in place.
The mast was about 921 meters distant from the centre of the Be-2 ring, i.e. not about 950 ft. (289.5 m) from the site as written in the Report. The mast distance is the longest compared to those of the other W/T German Be stations. The mast distance was selected for avoiding radio interferences from other Be-2 devices, allowing measuring the FuSan 724/725 radiation pattern cleanly and avoiding saturation of the mast receiver (Dörenberg, 2019a (Dörenberg, 2019a), would be still in place, or was filled up by terrain after the cable removal.
The fixing portion beams and the sawn legs indicate that the mast was a metal, square and four legs truss mast. Thus, it was similar at least to the masts of Be-0 at Trebbing/Glau (Germany), Be-3 at Le-Bois-Julien (France), Be-10 at Hundborg The failure of the concrete layer on two sides, the absence of the corresponding two fixing frame beams and the third mast leg rest sawn but also broken and curved toward the exterior of the foundation, indicate that during the mast removal, at least three legs were sawn and the mast fall in the direction of the third leg. The fall of the mast on the terrain broken and curved the third leg rest. During the fall, the fourth leg tore up the two missing fixing frame beams which caused the observed failure of the thick concrete layer. The mast, and may be the cable, was removed between the 1946, when the antenna FuSan 724/725 was sold for demolition, and the 16 th April 1948 date to which it is no longer visible in the air reconnaissance image C3639-0431_1948_MISSIONBETAGNE9_0168 ( Figure 2).
The transformer cabin (q) was a classical transformer cabin connected to the local/regional electrical system (Dörenberg, 2019a). It was completely demolished after the WWII because un-useful after the FuSan 724/725 removal and anti-aesthetically close to the chapel (n).
The absence of rests of cables or other military devices along the stone straight alignment indicates that it was simply a stone border between two adjacent pri- The now available information permits to reconstruct Be-2 as it was during the WWII and as seen by the personnel in service (Figures 5-7).

Conclusion
The information in the secret Interpretation Report NO. G.590 allowed the

Introduction
Maya cave archaeology as a self-conscious area of investigation dates only to the end of the last millennium (Scott, 2012). The rapid expansion of the field since that time has produced an impressive corpus of data concerning Maya ritual and, in the process, field archaeologists involved in cave studies have begun to more critically examine their artifact assemblages. Classes of material not previously collected have been shown to have ritual significance (Brady et al., 1997;Brady & Prufer, 1999;Brady & Rissolo, 2006;Halperin et al., 2003). A similar situation appears to be the case with animal bones where cave investigators, with the notable exception of David Pendergast (1969Pendergast ( , 1971Pendergast ( , 1974, have tended not to save and analyze faunal remains. Even where samples have been saved, however, the bones of species that inhabit or frequent caves are often not given close consideration since one cannot rule out their being naturally deposited (Luther, 1974: p. 63;Pohl, 1983: p. 90;Pollock & Ray, 1957: p. 642;Savage, 1971: p. 83 (Redfield, 1941: p. 117). The problem for cave archaeologists is that their field or analytical procedures might tend to exclude from consideration the remains of those species which are potentially most intimately associated with cave ritual. This paper will offer evidence that this is the case with respect to bat remains.

Bat Utilization at Naj Tunich
Naj Tunich, a large cave site located in southern Peten, Guatemala, was first reported in 1980 ( Figure 1). Archaeological investigation was carried out between 1981 and 1989 (Brady, 1989).    unit. This is exactly the opposite of what one would expect. On our initial visit to Naj Tunich, it was noted that our presence scared away bats living in the tunnels and they did not return the subsequent day. The posting of a guard shortly after this was enough to keep the bats from returning. Thus, even a moderate use of the cave in ancient times should have been sufficient to cause the bats to relocate.
During ceremonies conducted in Naj Tunich by Q'eqchi ' Maya in 1988 and, huge quantities of copal incense were burned, filling the entire entrance chamber with clouds of thick black smoke. Such burning appears to be a common feature of Maya ceremonies, so much so, that the K'iche' refer to rituals as "burnings" (Cook, 1986: p. 139). During the archaeological survey at the site, it was noted that many of the ceiling formations had been smoke blackened in ancient times so it is suspected that ancient ceremonies would have regularly filled the entrance in the same way as modern ceremonies. Once again, it is unlikely that bats would have remained in the presence of such pollution. Finally, the ceilings above our excavations were checked for evidence of bat marking which might indicate that the area had been used for perching since most naturally occurring skeletons would be deposited below such an area. None were found and it should be noted that all the bats encountered on our first visit had been roosting in the tunnels rather than the entrance. For all these reasons, the presence of large quantities of bat bones along use-floors appears anomalous and suggests cultural utilization.

Archaeological Distribution of Bat Remains
Although bat remains are infrequently reported, they are not unknown in the archaeological literature. Large quantities of bones from two species of bat and several species of rat were found in the excavation of a series of altars in Temple E-II at Uaxactun (Ricketson & Ricketson, 1937: p. 55). Mixed with the bones were over 70 fragments of jade as well as flint and shell in a matrix of fine black soil. Associated with the altars was Cist C-8 containing two ceramic vessels placed lip to lip inside of which were to two obsidian lancets that the authors suggest were used for sacrificing the animals. A vampire bat skull was found in Burial A33 (Smith, 1950: p. 98) at the same site along with the bones of a rat, mouse, shrew and a small bird. Skull fragments of an unidentified specie of bat was also recovered in Burial E4 along with bones of a bird and the skull of a rodent (Ricketson & Ricketson, 1937: p. 141).
The skull of a leaf-nosed bat was found in Cache C5 beneath a bench at San Jose, Belize (Thompson, 1939: pp. 189-190). The cache contained a tubular bone ornament, a jade pebble, a pottery spindle whorl and a human tooth. The bones of bats and birds were also found in a cache at Palenque (Fernandez, 1943: p. 55). The bones were deposited in two cylindrical vessels with sherd lids so these are clearly not intrusive. In addition to the bones were fragments of jade and "anthropoid extremities". Two bat skulls were recovered from a burial at San Gervasio but these were treated as intrusive (Hamblin, 1984: p. 162). Ignacio Bernal (1949: p. 95) investigated a number of tombs in Coixtlahuaca, Oaxaca that were so well sealed that there was no dust on the floors. He found quantities of bat skeletons in vessels that had been left as funerary offerings.
Willian Coe (1990: p. 673) discovered bat bones along will bones of deer, dog, cottontail, toad, lizard, snake, tortoise and 150 bird bones in a Preclassic chultun in the bedrock located beneath the centerline of several later structures in Tikal's North Acropolis. In addition, 200 Pomacea and 400 animal teeth were recovered. Twenty-five human bones were also found. Based on the unusual assemblage Coe (1990: p. 674) suspected that the chultun may have had an "esoteric" function.
Kitty Emery (2004) lists bat remains from the Cueva de los Quetzales among the "sacred animals" found in the faunal assemblage. Although she acknowledges that the species may have been utilized outside the cave and deposited there only at the conclusion of the ritual, her analysis frequently mentions the "underworld" association of the species in attempting to link them to the cave context. The archaeologists who excavated the site, however, clearly see all the material from the deposit as being utilized in rituals conducted in the central plaza of the site of Las Pacayas before being dropped down an opening in the plaza into the cave below (Brady & Rodas, 1995: pp. 30-31).

Discussion and Conclusion
While the proposal that bats were utilized for ritual purposes is not new, the idea does not appear to be widely accepted. Based on the cases available to him, Coe (1959: p. 64) states that, "The practice of sacrificing birds (and bats) and subsequently depositing them as votive offering evidently was established widely and persistently among the Maya". Given the fact that Coe produced fewer examples of bat offerings than cited above, his assertion was more provocative than convincing. Pohl (1983: p. 85) also raises the possibility that bats, along with rats and birds that live in caves, were used in ritual because of their cave association.
Our data support the proposition that bats were considered by the ancient Maya to be a ritual fauna and suggest that they may have played an important role in cave ritual. (2016)  ask for when meeting the gods (Tozzer, 1941: p. 223). In this way, the victim was both an offering to the gods and a messenger from the society. We find this to be a very reasonable model to apply to bat sacrifice. Brady and Coltman (2016: pp.  Tozzer (1941: p. 180, note 948) notes that sacrifice is particularly prominent in petitions for rain and the Maya consider rain to be a terrestrial phenomenon produced in caves (Morris, 1986: p. 57;Vogt, 1969: p. 302). Thus, bats become the ideal sacrifice/messenger for rituals carried out in caves because of the animal's ability to navigate cave passages in complete darkness.

Brady and Coltman
The bat remains previously documented in archaeological contexts tend to be recovered from caches, burials and constructions. They were noted simply because they were so "out of place". The current work is the first to offer solid evidence of utilization within caves. Utilization of bats within caves presents an obvious problem for archaeologists excavating in caves and analysts dealing with cave faunal assemblages who must now attempt to determine when or to what extent the remains are natural or cultural. At a minimum, archaeologists need to make a detailed examination of the physical location of excavation units in relation to current bat traffic and roosting areas. The presence or absence of bat bone on the surface should also be noted before excavation is begun. Such steps will provide data which will allow analysts to eliminate the most obvious cases of naturally deposited bone. Most importantly, careful control of archaeological context during excavation is essential.
The problem for the analyst is even more difficult. Certain areas may reflect natural deposition while others cultural utilization, so analyses which fail to separate one unit from another may obscure potentially significant patterns. On the other hand, dealing with individual lots generally reduces bone counts to the point where the numbers are not statistically significant and a methodology which allows the analyst to consider certain lots while excluding others opens the door to all kinds of bias. There will be no simple solution to the problem.
The best remedy is for excavators and analysts to work closely. Excavators should, based on cave context, rate each lot on its potential for containing naturally deposited bones so that lots likely to contain non-cultural material can be eliminated before analysis is undertaken. In the end, the best results may be obtained by focusing attention on only those lots that offer particularly good opportunities for providing uncontaminated samples, such as those directly off use-surfaces.
Finally, we have noted that studies of Maya ritual fauna have tended to focus on very restricted samples recovered from special contexts such as burials and caches (Carr, 1985: pp. 126-129;Moholy-Nagy, 1985). As archaeologists and analysts increasingly venture out into "natural places" (Bradley, 2000), they need to adopt the perspective of the ritual specialist who realizes that species naturally associated with these landmarks may be the most likely to have been utilized in ritual. Archaeological Discovery Fellowship from the US Department of Education. The project was financed in part by a National Science Foundation Dissertation Improvement Grant (BNF-8800946). The authors would like to thank Betty Benson for her encouragement in looking more deeply into bats and Kitty Emery for her always constructive critiques of this work.

Conflicts of Interest
The author declares no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this paper.

Introduction
Despite the fact that thousands of stone ships were built in Scandinavia in the period 1000-4000 BP, there are no traces anywhere of a stone ship comparable to Ales Stones. It is unique. The stone ship of Ales Stones is 69 m long and 19 m wide, and it is strictly aligned with respect to the sunrise at Winter solstice in the SE and the sunset at Summer solstice in the NW (Figure 1). Radiocarbon dates indicate that the stones were in position by about 500 AD, at the latest. Stratigraphy indicates that the monument was erected before the major sand-drift period dated at 600-400 BC (Mörner, 2015). Cup marks are indicative of the  (Lind, 2004(Lind, , 2005Mörner, 2015). The ship consists of 57 stones (originally 58 stones). The bow and stern stones are two monoliths of quartzite, quarried at Brantevik 20 km to the NE (Mörner, 2015). There is also a "rudder stone" and an "altar-stone" of quartzite. Today, the so-called "altar-stone" lies inside the ship, thrown there by the farmer from its original position in front of the bow stone. Therefore, this stone must have originally marked the ram of the ship. The ram (in its original position) and the so-called "rudder stone" are likely to represent the extended keel stern typical for ancient Greek ships and the ships found in Swedish rock carvings (Figure 2). On a drawing from 1777 (Hilfeling, 1777), the stone ship is drawn in great details ( Figure 3) and there is no stone drawn where the "altar stone" is lying today.   The strict solar alignment of the ship is illustrated in Figure 4. At Winter solstice, the Sun is rising just beside the stern stone, and at Summer solstice, it is setting right behind the bow stone. As evident from the drawing by Hilfeling (Figure 3), the stern stone was standing upright in its original position in 1777 (whilst the bow stone was half fallen). In a photography from 1916 , the 3 stern stones are still in original position, whilst the bow stone is lying down. This implies that strict calculations of the solar alignment can only be done with respect to the stern stone. In Figure 4, the Sun rises just to the left of the stern stone. The tiny deviation in alignment (about 15 -17 cm) is a measure of the time elapsed since the erection of the stern stone (see below).
With this description of the general shape and organization of the Ales Stones magnificent stone ship, we turn to the dating and the interpretations of the function of the monument (cf. Lind, 2004;Mörner, 2015).

Dating the Erection of the Ship
There are five main means of shedding light on the time of the erection of the Ales Stone monument, viz. 1) the age of archeological finds in the vicinity of the ship, 2) C14-dates of finds inside the ship, 3) the exact solar alignment with respect to the sunrise at Winter solstice over the stern stone, 4) stratigraphy and C14-dates at Ales Stones, and 5) the time of the quarrying and shipping of the 4 quartzite blocks (Section 3). Table 1 lists all the archaeological finds in the vicinity of Ales Stones. Whilst there are lots of finds of tools and objects from the Bronze Age, especially the Late Bronze Age, there are no finds at all of objects from the Neolithic and the Iron Age (except for a number of charcoal dates as listed in Table 1). This seems quite significant for the age of the activity at Ales Stones. This was also the conclusion drawn at the excavation in 2011 (Mörner, 2011;Duczko, 2011).

Archaeological Finds at and around Ales Stones
From the Neolithic, there are two C14-dates of charcoal. One from a hearth just in front of the bow stone of Ales Stones, collected and dated by Lind Mörner, 2015). The age is 3175 ± 375 cal. yrs BC, which implies that humans were present in the area at least 5000 years ago. There is also a charcoal date of 2525 ± 36 cal. yrs BC from a depression in the old till surface There are a lot of finds of tools and objects found in direct association with Ales Stones (Table 1). There are also cup marks and hearth dates. Most of the finds can be assigned to the Late Bronze Age. This is a strong argument in favor of a dating of Ales Stones to the Late Bronze Age. Stratigraphically, the Bronze Age ends with the deposition of a widespread layer of eolian sand dated at 600-400 BC (Mörner, 2015).
The Early Iron Age is represented by a hearth in the cliff section dated at 385 ± 35 cal. yrs BC. It overlies the first generation of eolian drift and underlies the second generation of eolian drift (Mörner, 2015).

The Middle Iron Age (the Migration period in Sweden, 375-550 AD) is
represented by an urn buried in the eolian sand inside the ship, and charcoal found close beside one of the stones (at the outer side of stone N24). The age, 525 ± 105 cal. yrs AD, is identical to the age of food left in the urn. Because it was found at the side of one of the big blocks, it implies that Ales Stones must have been erected well before this age (Mörner, 2015); i.e. well before 500 AD. stones. Its surface is covered by stones placed in position by humans (Mörner, 2011(Mörner, , 2015. It provides firm evidence that people have lived in the vicinity during the Viking time.

Dates of Objects inside the Ship
The original surface upon which Ales Stones once was built has a sandy-silty humus soil. It is covered by eolian sand deposited in three main sand drift generations. There was a major gap with soil formation in the period at about 400-1100 AD. The urn and charcoal dated 525 ± 105 cal. yrs AD belongs to this soil formation period. Obviously, the finds were buried in the previously deposited eolian sand. The dates indicate that the erection of Ales Stones must be older than 500 AD. There are also some dates of charred wood (Table 1), which may signify a growth of trees on the moraine plateau.

Date from the Exact Solar Alignment at Winter Solstice
Today, the Sun is rising not exactly behind or at the edge of the stern stone, but at about 15 -17 cm to the left of the stone (edge to edge) when observing the sunrise at Winter solstice from the center of the ship ( Figure 5). From this deviation, Lind calculated that the stones must have been erected at about 700 BC (Lind, 2004(Lind, , 2005. This age fits very well with stratigraphical data and new C14-dates (Mörner, 2015). The deviation observed implies a northward displacement of the Sun's path by 0.77˚ in 2700 years. Astronomer Göran Henriksson has kindly undertaken a high-precision astronomical recalculation of the data ( Figure 6). The time when the Sun rose in perfect alignment with the stern stone is 700 BC. This lends strong support (not to say final conclusion) to a Late Bronze Age time for the erection of the Ales Stones monument. Figure 6 is a novel contribution to the discussion of the true age of the Ales Stones monument. It is a very important contribution because it implies that we now have the time quite well locked in the Late Bronze Age. Earlier, there were "greater than" dates but not really any limiting chrono-stratigraphic limit back in time (Mörner, 2015). With the Figure 6 image, the time of the erection of the Ales Stones monument seems to be limited to a fairly narrow time-window at about 700 BC, which is 200 years before the end of the Scandinavian Bronze Age.

The Occurrence of Cup Marks on Ales Stones
Cup marks (small round depressions) were predominantly carved into the bedrock in the Bronze Age, but may also occur on carvings from the Neolithic and Early Iron Age. On the outer surface of the stone just to the east of the bow stone, there are cup marks, which form the Swan star constellation (Figure 7) . This implies a deep knowledge of and interest in astronomy, typical for the Bronze Age Kristensen, 2010;Bröndsted, 1938;Montelius, 1911).

Stratigraphy and C14-Dates at Ales Stones
Strömberg, who undertook all the original excavations of Ale Stones, seems to have been focused on finding objects and graves. Therefore, stratigraphic observations are virtually lacking in her reports (Strömberg, 1990(Strömberg, , 1992(Strömberg, , 1997, like later summaries of her reports . Notions of 60 and 85 cm of topsoil or humus soil (Swed: "matjord"), of course, represent inadequate sediment identifications. There are fundamental stratigraphical facts that must be considered, however. This applies both from the moraine hill around the ship and from the shore sections below (Mörner, 2011(Mörner, , 2015. The reference sites are marked in Figure 9.   Figure 9) from an excavation in 1995 (photo: Lind, 1995). The till surface is covered by about 90 cm of eolian sand. It is easy to identify a strong humus soil developed in the top of the till surface (of boulder clay) and a second strong soil separating two units of eolian sand.

The Moraine Hill
The hill, upon which Ales Stones are located, is an interlobate moraine of boulder clay and glacifluvial material. The age of the moraine is about 14,000 BP.
On top of the moraine, there is a soil from an exposed land period lasting from about 12,000 to 600 BC. The Ales Stones monument is built on this surface. All the tools and objects from the Bronze Age (Table 1, nos. 4 -13) and the two charcoal dates from the Neolithic ( Table 1, (Table 1, Iron Age, nos. 2 -5), which implies that the soil formation period was also a period with trees and shrubs covering the hill. Furthermore, there are several finds of depressions in this surface, which represent the removal of stones and blocks for the construction of the monument (Mörner, 2011).  On the plane east of Ales Stones, the old till surface is covered by only about 20 -40 cm of eolian sand (except for depressions where the cover may go up to 40 -60 cm). In most places the stirring by plowing has reached all the way down to the till surface exposing a black humus soil from the ground surface down to the till surface ( Figure 12(a)). In a few places the ground has remained undisturbed and there is a normal humus soil of about 12 cm in the top of the eolian sand ( Figure 12(b)).
Most of the artifacts found on the plane surrounding Ales Stones were found by the farmers when plowing the fields (Figure 13). Predominantly, they all belong to the Late Bronze Age (Table 1).
At our excavation in 2011, Mörner (2011) observed that there was an imprint in the bounder clay from a big block of about 3 m in length and 1 m in width ( Figure 14). Obviously it had been broken-up out of the till surface by the builders of Ales Stones. There were even marks in the ground from the process of breaking it out of the till.
The depression is filled with eolian sand from the period of extensive sand drift 600-400 BC (Mörner et al., 2009;Mörner, 2011Mörner, , 2015. As there were no sediments in the depression, it is likely that the removal of the block occurred shortly before the sand drift starting in 600 BC. In Figure 15 we compare the size of the imprint with stone S26 (the second on the south side from the stern stone). The agreement is reasonably good. Even other blocks could be considered, however. The height of the stone is 1.5 m, and this level is marked with a green bar in Figure 15. When the stones were put in place the ground level was about 60 -70 cm lower as marked with the blue line, implying that about 1 m of the block was rooted in the till (and fixed in place by foot stones pounded into the boulder clay).
It is of great importance that the big boulder was bent out of position in the surface of the till by humans for the obvious purpose of using it for the building of Ales Stones. Because the imprint in excavation pits D and B (Figure 14 & Figure 15) was filled by eolian sand dated 600-500 BC, the building of Ales Stones must be older than 600 BC.   Mörner, 2011Mörner, , 2015. Black layer = fire surface, brown layer = earthquake layer, and purple layer = mound with bones and burned stones from the Viking time.

The Shore Cliff
In the shore cliff to the west of Kåseberga and just downhill from Ales Stones ( Figure 9), there is an excellent stratigraphic record covered by profiles along the cliff and perpendicular to the cliff (Mörner, 2011(Mörner, , 2015. A total of 8 C14-dates were obtained in this section, which led to the establishment of a very clear stratigraphy (Figure 16).
At the base, there is a boulder clay from the deglaciation period, with an erosional unconformity covered by shore 1 from around 2600 BC.
Shore-2 has a known age of 1000-750 BC. It is underlain by a humus soil C14-dated at 1285 ± 165 cal. yrs BC, and overlain by a black layer of humus and burned remains (a fire surface) C14-dated at 785 ± 35 and 780 ± 45 cal. yrs BC.
Directly above this layer lies eolian sand. This represents a well-known period of general sand-drift at the Sub-Boreal/Sub-Atlantic boundary at about 500 BC.
In Mörner et al. (2009)  consists of stones placed in position by people (Mörner, 2011(Mörner, , 2015. A bone was C14-dated at 995 ± 45 cal. yrs AD, implying the Viking time.  seems that the centre of the stoneship was used as a firebox. The beech wood dated at 905 ± 145 cal. yrs AD is an excellent firewood. In combination with the midden (or mound) dated at 995 ± 45 cal. yrs. AD (Mörner, 2011(Mörner, , 2015; Figure   17) it indicates that the area hosted intense activity by people during the Viking time. This was an activity linked to a re-use of the existing old ship monument, and has nothing to do with the time of construction.

The 4 Quartzite Blocks: Quarrying and Shipping
Ales Stones has 4 blocks consisting of quartzite: the two huge megaliths erected as bow stone and stern stone, and the two extended ram stones termed the altar stone and the rudder stone. These four blocks have sharp angular edges and fracture marks indicating that they have not been transported to the region by the land ice (as all the other blocks in Ales Stones have), but must have been quarried from an in situ quartzite bedrock. This was already proposed by Bergström et al. (1988), and they pointed out the coastal area between Gislövshammar and Simrishamn.
In 2009, we found fractured quartzite blocks in a forested area at Brantevik.
After extensive cleaning, it became obvious that a large area of quartzite bedrock had been fractured up in large angular pieces by an earthquake (Figure 18). Figure 18. A quartzite bedrock fractured into angular blocks with knife-sharp edges. The surface is weathered and glacially scoured. The origin is a seismic deformation 750 BC (Mörner, 2014). The bedrock surface at Branteträsk (the name of the site of quartzite bedrock deformation and quarrying) is heavily fractured into blocks ( Figure 18). The original fracturing can only have originated from a major earthquake generating extensional forces in two perpendicular directions (Mörner, 2012b(Mörner, , 2014Mörner & Lind, 2013). Traces of this earthquake have been recorded over an area of about 70 × 20 km and include post-carving fracturing of petroglyphs from the Bronze Age (Mörner, 2012a(Mörner, , 2012b(Mörner, , 2014. The magnitude was estimated at about 6.3 -6.8 (Mörner, 2014). This earthquake was dated at about 780 BC (Mörner, 2014).
After the earthquake fracturing, people must have turned the site (well prepared with its bedrock surface fractured up into loose individual blocks) into an "industrial" quarry. This quarrying is evident from the removal of flat quartzite discs from the bedrock blocks, and from a block piled up in inclined position ready to be transported away ( Figure 19). Figure 19. The pieces of deformed quartzite bedrock have undergone a second deformation by people breaking-off large discs (i.e. using the blocks for quarrying). In the background, there is a piled-up bedrock (1) and in the quartzite surface one can identify the removal of large discs (2,3).  (1) and the internal bedding pattern (2) of the stern and bow stones in Ales Stones (above) and the blocks at Branteträsk (below). The similarities are very close, not to say identical, lending strong support to our proposition that this was the place of the quarrying of the quartzite blocks now being the bow stone and the stern stone plus the two ram stones (i.e. the rudder stone and the altar stone) in Ales Stones. Age (Lind, 2011). It included some bronze objects, a rock-carving of a sun-symbol (typical for the Bronze Age) and an urn dated at 800-300 BC ( Figure 22). It also included some 75 huge blocks of quartzite, indicating intensive quarrying at around 700 BC (Mörner, 2015). Figure 22. (a) The Brantarör grave as drawn by Hilfeling (1777). The sarcophagus included a hilt of bronze and an urn (b), and a sun symbol was cut in one of the stones. This indicates that the grave belongs to the Bronze Age. The urn is quite unique and was dated at 800-500 BC; i.e. the Late Bronze Age (Lind, 2011;Mörner, 2015).
The Brantarör grave (Figure 22 Obviously, the Brantarör grave dates from the Late Bronze Age (Lind, 2011;Mörner, 2015;Mörner, 2017a). There are a number of graves at Brantevik (Lind, 2011). It seems significant that they exhibit an alignment with respect to the Sun (Lind, 2011). The "southern grave" lies 1.2 km to the SW of the Brantarör grave. At Summer solstice, the Sun rises right over the Brantarör grave when viewed from the southern grave (Lind, 2011). This is another factor linking the Brantevik area to the Ales Stones monument and its erection in the Late Bronze Age (Mörner, 2015).

The Function of the Ales Stones and Related Monuments
We have reviewed the dating of Ales Stones, indicating a time of erection of the monument of about 750-700 BC, and it is now time to review the function of the monument. Lind (2004Lind ( , 2005 showed that the monument must have worked as a sophisticated astronomical calendar in good agreement with earlier proposals (Alfredson & Meurling, 1976;Lind, 1977;Carter & Malmström, 1979;Roslund, 1979) and later verifications Mörner, 2015).

Ales Stones as a Calendar
The 69 m long stone ship was erected on the top of the Kåseberga hill with a remarkable view over the sea (Figure 1). The position of the individual stones (57 plus 1 missing) is arranged in a very close (not to say exact) relation to the Sun's annual and daily motions over the sky (Lind & Mörner, 2010, p. 96 and 98, respectively).
The construction of the stone ship is shown in Figure 24. The long-axis is in NW-SE with sunrise at Winter solstice at the stern stone in the SE and the sunset at Summer solstice at the bow stone in the NW. Stone colouring: red = in place, green = tilted, black = fallen before restauration in 1916 (Lind, 2018). Asterix signs denote cup marks. Basic geometric concepts: the NW-SE long-axis, the stone 8 rectangle, the stone 12 square and the central point (blue dot). The arrangement of stones gives a sophisticated astronomical annual calendar and sundial (Lind, 2005; as further discussed below. • Sunrise at Winter solstice over stone 1 in the SE (Figure 4).
• Sunset at Winter solstice over stone 16 in the SW.
• Sunrise at Spring Equinox over stone 12 in the E.
• Sunset at Spring Equinox over stone 12 in the W.
• Sunrise at Summer solstice over stone 16 in the NE.
• Sunset at Summer solstice over stone 1 in the NW (Figures 4-6).
• Sunrise at Spring Equinox over stone 12 in the E.
• Sunset at Spring Equinox over stone 12 in the W.  Figure 18) and Lind (2017, Figure 3 and Figure 5). The cup marks in a triangle on top of stone 8 in the SE give a perfect alignment to the sunrise at Winter solstice (Figure 8(a)). The cup marks as a ship on top of stone 8 in the NW record the 4 solar turning-points during a year (Figure 8(b)).
The fact that the cup mark signs and the main ship itself (Figure 25) give exactly the same alignments with respect to the Sun's main annual positions indicates beyond doubt that we are dealing with sophisticated astronomical calendar alignments (it is, of course, impossible that these perfect solar alignments would have been achieved by coincidence). Ales Stones also works as a huge sundial (Figure 27; cf. Lind, 2005;. The stone ship can be divided up in 16 segments each representing 1.5 hours making a full day of 24 hours. Placing a long rod in the centrum point (with a dip to the north of about 25˚), its shadow will move as follows: • On stone 16 in the SW at 03.00 o'clock (sunrise at Summer solstice).
• On stone 14 in the WSW at 04.30 o'clock.
• On stone 12 in the W at 06.00 o'clock at (sunrise at the Equinoxes).
• On stone 8 in the WNW at 07.30 o'clock.
• On stone 1 in the NW at 09.00 o'clock at (sunrise at the Winter solstice).  • On stone 8 in the NNW at 10.30 o'clock.
• On stone 12 in the N at 12.00 o'clock (noontime).
• On stone 14 in the NNE at 13.30 o'clock.
• On stone 16 in the NE at 15.00 o'clock (sunset at Winter solstice).
• On stone 14 in the ENE at 16.30 o'clock.
• On stone 12 in the E at 18.00 o'clock (sunset at Equinoxes). • On stone 1 in the SE at 21.00 o'clock (sunset at Summer solstice). Age people Mörner & Lind, 2013, 2018Mörner, 2015;. There is no mathematical possibility what so ever that all these perfect alignments could have been obtained just by chance.
Furthermore, solar symbols and solar alignments are recorded at several other sites in southern Sweden ( Figure 28). Obviously, there are numerous archaeological objects in southern Sweden that are constructed with solar alignment (e.g. Mörner, 2015). We will select a few sites for special analysis below. From the Island of Bornholm, we add two exceptionally interesting and important sites, especially site 8 with the "Madsebakke Sun-wheel" of almost identical astronomical calendar functions as those in Ales Stones.  Figure 26). The Sun's daily movements record sixteen 1.5 hours segments (just as in Ales Stones; Figure 27).

Stenhed has an interesting geographic position right in the middle between
Ales Stones and the remarkable Kivik grave Mörner & Lind, 2013).

The Winter Solstice Festival at Järrestad
Järrestad refers to a site of extensive rock-carvings west of Simrishamn (Althin, 1945;Lind & Mörner, 2010: p. 86). Mörner (2012a) showed that most of the images exhibit strict solar alignments. A central figure  of all 144 feet and shoes are watching the event in the same alignment ( Figure   29).
There is also a mini-ship oriented just as Ales Stones (Lind & Mörner, 2010: p. 88;Mörner, 2012a). Many of the rock-carving pictures are fractured by a post-carving earthquake (Mörner, 2012b(Mörner, , 2014. Figure 29. Part of the Järrestad rock-carving site (Mörner, 2012a). All the pictures (shoes, feet, sun wheal and the Dancer) are aligned with respect to the sunrise at Winter solstice in the SE. This was the Mid-Winter Festival and "the return of the Sun".

Solar Alignment at Heimdall's Stones
Heimdall's Stones refer to a 30 m wide circular astronomical calendar (Mörner et al., 2009). There are numerous rock-carvings in the stones; cup marks, an omega sign, a delta sign, sun symbols, etc. The ground surface of the monument is covered by eolian sand from the sand drift dated 600-500 BC; hence the mo-  et al., 2009). In 4 minutes, the Sun will be at the peak of Stenshuvud. From Bornholm 70 km on the other side, there is an opposed sightline of the sunset at Summer solstice (Kaul, 2005).  Lind, 2013Lind, , 2015. Figure 32. The sightline from Lensbjer to the sunset at Summer solstice over Hammer Odde and Stenshuvud in the NW (i.e. the opposed direction to that documented in Figure 31). The ship (white) has a form dating from 900-1000 BC. It sails towards the sunset. At Madsebakke (Allinge) there is a sun-wheel with the same astronomical function as that of Ales Stones. A ship (red) comes from the west; i.e. from the Ales Stones-Brantevik area in Sweden. This ship has a form dating from around 700 BC (just the age of Ales Stones).

Solar Alignment from the Island of Bornholm
More than 100 rock-carving images are documented on the Island of Bornholm (Kaul, 1998(Kaul, , 2005(Kaul, , 2006. The boat images are dated at about 900-500 BC (Kaul, 2006;Cole, 2011). They exhibit close similarity to the boat images in the Simrishamn area indicating communications and cultural linkage (Cole, 2011).
At Lensbjer (at Lensgård), 3 km SW of Gudhjem, Kaul (2001Kaul ( , 2005Kaul ( , 2006 found a site with six ships. Two of the ships points to the peak of Hammer Odde in the NW and further over the sea to Stenshuvud, and Kaul (2005Kaul ( , 2006 noted that the Sun sets along the same alignment at Summer solstice ( Figure 32). The ship is 60 cm long. It is drawn with the bow in the direction to the sunset in the NW. Its shape suggests an age of 900-1000 BC (e.g. Cole, 2011).
At Madsebakke in Allinge on northwest Bornholm, there is a rock-carving with multiple images of shapes indicating ages ranging between 1000 and 500 BC (Kaul, 2005;Cole, 2011).

The "Madsebakke Sun-Wheel" on the Island of Bornholm
The

Some Other Sites of Sun Cult Relevance in Southern Sweden
We have addressed the questions of long-distance travel and trading  and the advanced astronomy and sun cult in the Bronze Age Mörner, 2015;. In this section, we will highlight a few facts of the Sun Cult flourishing in Southern Scandinavia in the Bronze Age (e.g. Montelius, 1911;Almgren, 1927;Bröndsted, 1938;Kristensen, 2010; with respect to some other sites in Southern Sweden ( Figure 28).
The Kivik grave (site 6 in Figure 28) is a remarkable place as noted above  Figure 31). It has been further discussed in   and Mörner & Lind (2013 and exhibits obvious links with the cultures of the East Mediterranean. At Mjövik (site 9 in Figure 28) a golden urn was found in 1847. In 2017, we turned it up-side-down and found that we, in fact, were dealing with "sky dome" with 12 sun symbols, 12 moons and a 6-spoke sexagesimal system . This bears testimony of an advanced and widespread Sun Cult during the Bronze Age.
The Bjäre Peninsula has numerous mounds from the Bronze Age and some sites with clear solar alignment (Mörner, 2015, Figure 19). We will here limit the discussion to two sites with clear solar alignments (sites 10 and 11 in Figure 28).
At Gråthögarna (site 10) there is man-made "road" leading out to a group of 8 stone mounds from the Bronze Age (Figure 37). At Summer solstice, the Sun sets right over one mound in the straight elongation of the "road" (Figure 38).

Conclusions
After this long review of Ales Stones and related documents on an advanced Sun Cult and deep knowledge of astronomy during the Bronze Age, we limit our conclusions to the following main points.

1) Ales
Stones was built at about 750-700 BC. This is indicated by multiple criteria: • Today, the sunrise at Winter solstice occurs 15 -17 cm to the left of the stern stone. The deviation from a perfect alignment is due to astronomical variables (precession and tilt). In Figure 6, we have compensated for those va-  Figure 14, Figure 17).
• Stratigraphy also shows that the monument is likely to have been constructed shortly after the earthquake occurring at about 780-750 BC (Figure 17).
• The quarrying of the 4 quartzite blocks in Ales Stones (like the block used in the Brantarör grave) must have occurred shortly after the earthquake dated at 780-750 BC and fracturing the bedrock (Figure 18, Figure 19). Close cultural connection is also indicated by the design of the ships found in rock-carvings on Bornholm and in the Simrishamn area. The Bornholm carvings are assigned an age of 900-500 BC (Kaul, 2006;Cole, 2011)  • This builds on to previous knowledge of an intensive Sun Cult in southern Scandinavia during the Bronze Age (e.g. Montelius, 1911;Almgren, 1927;Bröndsted, 1938;Kristensen, 2010; Strömberg (1997) described her project at Ales Stones in terms of three questions to be addressed: a) when was it built, b) what was the purpose, and c) what happened after. I think we have answered all three questions: • It was built 750-700 BC as indicated by overwhelming facts highlighted in the text and summarized above under point 1.
• The purpose was the establishment of a sophisticated astronomical calendar giving the main solar turning points, the 12 months, the 365 days and the daily hours.
• Only limited activity can be recorded for the period 500 BC to 800 AD. In the Viking time there must have been intense activity, however, judging from the mound found in the shore section (Mörner, 2011(Mörner, , 2015, which is full of bones and burned stones and dated at 995 ± 45 cal. yrs BP. 4) Finally, we stress the remarkable functional and temporal correlations here established between Ales Stones and the Madsebakke Sun-wheel.
In order not to "contaminate" our main paper with negative discussions of unfortunate misunderstandings with respect to Ales Stones, we put these perspectives under this separate additional note.
It all goes back to a very strange excavation in 1996. Strömberg intended to try to find datable material underneath one of the stones, in order to get a final date of the erection of the monument. She selected stone N24 (the 5 th stone on the northern side from the stern stone). She put two men to dig and sample any organic matter, but left for a private meeting (though this was her most important excavation). A pit was dug on the outer side of the stone, and when the men reached "the stone foot" (i.e. the circle of stones that had been hit into the bounder clay to keep the big block in position) they stopped at a depth of about 60 -70 cm.
In the lowermost 10 cm they found some black lumps, which they put into a plastic bag and backfilled the pit. When Strömberg returned she got the sample bag.
Here started the controversy about the age and function of Ales Stones. Strömberg (1997) unfortunately wrote that the sample came from beneath Stone N24, adding: "if we can trust the excavators", which sounds like she was not sure herself.
The recovery of the original sample-bag (by Mörner on March 14, 2012) was a great thing for us realizing that something was wrong because of the same age of the charcoal claimed to come from beneath the block and from the food remains from inside the urn (Figure 41). Photos of the text on the sample-bag were published Mörner, 2015;below Figure 41(C)). One of the men who actually undertook the excavation was interviewed. He was quite sure that they had dug down to the stone-foot some 60 -70 cm below surface, retrieved the samples in the lower part of the section, backfilled the pit and handed over a plastic bag with the samples to Strömberg, when she returned (certainly they had never gone below the stone).
In this situation, we are convinced that there can only be one true story, and this must be that the dated sample came from beside the stone, not below the stone. Therefore, Ales Stones must be older-not younger-than the 500 AD date.
Besides the illusion of the correct position of the dated sample (beside not below block N24) just discussed, the proponents of a date of Ales Stones of about 500-1000 AD claim that the building of huge stone ships is typical for the Late Iron Age to Viking Age Söderberg & Knarrström, 2015).
Lind (2017)   In conclusion, there seems to be no valid argument for claiming that Ales Stones was built in the period 500-1000 AD. On the other hand, there seems to be overwhelming evidence of a Late Bronze Age time of the erection of the monument. For a long time, this region was subjected to a significant number of Cenozoic palaeomagnetic investigations (Ré et al., 2008). Specific research on terminal Pleistocene and Holocene paleosecular variations records obtained at sedimentary lacustrine deposits in Argentina has been a topic since the early eighties (e.g., Creer et al., 1983;Gogorza et al., 1998Gogorza et al., , 2000Sinito & Nuñez, 1997;Sylwan, 1989;Valencio et al., 1985). Detailed studies performed in archaeological and paleontological sites in Patagonia have yielded a number of results with stable and unstable records that showed intermediate and reverse geomagnetic field (GF) directions during the last ~11/10 ky, suggesting that GF excursion(s) occurred at different times through the Holocene (Nami, 1995a(Nami, , 1999a(Nami, , 2011(Nami, , 2012Nami & Sinito, 1991, 1993Nami et al., 2017;Sinito et al., 2001). The possibility of an anomalous GF behavior during the more recent epoch seems to be an interesting palaeomagnetic subject, with important geomagnetic implications.

Introduction
The identification and definition of geomagnetic excursions have several re-  (Laj & Channell, 2007;Roberts, 2008); one of the main ones in its distinction is the recording of similar behavior of the GF feature in diverse types of materials, such as lava flows, lacustrine sediments, and continental sedimentary deposits. Specifically, results obtained from the latter ones must belong to several sites and preferably in different environments (Thouveny et al., 1985;Verosub & Banerjee, 1977;Watkins, 1972

Sampling Sites and Age of Deposits
To check results previously obtained, samplings were carried out in sections of fine sediments corresponding to the epoch under consideration. They were performed in the northern coast of Patagonia (Patagones Department) SE Buenos Aires province; also at the Gallegos-Chico River basin (Güer Aike Department), southern Santa Cruz province ( Figure 1). Sampling sites were as follows: 1) San Blas 2 (SB2) (40˚33.39'S, 62˚14.35'W) is placed at San Blas village, Jabalí Island, in the Atlantic Ocean coast. The sampling (n = 36) was carried out in a section exposed on the entrance road to the village. It showed five stratigraphic levels; three of them are fine sediments (numbered I to III) while the other ones, are two gravel layers, named as I and II. Gravel I is located under the vegetation and gravel II of about 16 cm thick, is between 0.94 -1.10 m below the surface. Layer I is sandy brown pale sediment, II is a more compacted sandy gray level and III is reddish sand, located below gravel II. The samples were taken as follows: In level I (samples SB2 1 to SB2 18), level II (SB2 19 to SB2 26) and the upper portion of level III (SB2 27 to SB2 36). A sample of re-deposited shell coming from gravel II yielded an uncalibrated 14 C date of 9720 ± 220 years before present (BP) (LP-1006); other 14 C dates on gravel deposits from Jabalí Island yielded ages of ~5.3 ky BP (Trebino, 1987). The gravel layer was probably formed at the time of the Holocene marine ingression that exhibited the maximum level between 6 and 5 ky BP in the eastern coast of South America in general (Pirazzolli, 1996), particularly in the Buenos Aires province (Violante et al., 2001).
2    (Nami, 1995b(Nami, , 1999b. Underlying the bedrock, the deposit of ~0.4 m has three layers: layer 1 is sheep dung, 2 is silt (Bayarski, pers.com), and 3 is mostly formed by ash charcoal product of human hearths. This layer contains a notably archaeological level with stone tools used by hunter-gatherers living in the area during the late Holocene (Bird, 1988;Nami, 1995b). A conventional 14 C date obtained at 50 cm from the ash layer yielded a date of 1040 ± 50 uncalibrated years BP (Beta-124706). Twelve paleomagnetic samples in two section named CM1 (n = 6) and CM2 (n = 6) were made in layers 2 (samples 1 to 3) and 3 (samples 4 to 6).

5) Laguna
Montecarlo (LMo) (51˚55'S, 69˚39'W) is a small temporary lagoon located at 2.5 km west from CM. To check the records obtained from archaeological sites from the region, a 1 m 2 trial pit by 0.9 m depth was made in center of the lagoon. Only one stratum of a uniform grayish green clay was sampled (n = 23) up to 52 cm depth. The Holocene age of the deposit may be suggested because these sort of small lagoons have been regionally formed after the post glacial times (Grondona, 1975 (Nami, 1999a). Two palaeomagnetic samplings were performed in two parts of the site with different sedimentary deposits; one in the front part and the other in the inner portion. In this paper, is reported only the preliminary results obtained in the cores (n = 5) taken from a ~30 cm sand level deposit located in the frontal part.

Sampling, Methods, and Results
With exception of LS1 that the sampling was horizontally performed, all samplings were done in vertical form from the top to the base of the sedimentary deposits ( Figure 2(e)). Samples were collected using 2.5 cm long and 2 cm diameter plastic containers carefully pushed into the sediments and overlying the next one about 50% each. Their orientation was measured using a Brunton compass; they were consolidated with sodium silicate once removed and finally, numerated from the top to the bottom. In some cases samples were not taken near the surface because the sediments were unconsolidated and they may have been disturbed by recent events, such as animal and/or human trampling (PR2, CM), the upper part might be disturbed by roots (SB2) or, because the presence of pebbles and rocks (CS).
LMo: The majority of the samples were highly reliable single components, displaying similar pattern going to the origin in the Zijderveld diagrams (LMo 12, LMo 16, LMo 29, Figure 7(b), Figure 7(d), Figure 7(e)). Some samples had univectorial behavior with south-and north-westerly (LMo 8, LMo 21, Figure   9(b), Figure 9(e)) and westerly directions (LMo 1, LMo 9, LMo 10, Figure 7    As depicted in Table 1, in general MAD values were very low. The number and intervals of demagnetization steps to isolate the ChRM and VGPs positions are described in Table 2. Except LS1, the sections shows normal and intermediate a b    Figure 9 shows that the totality of the samples horizontally taken at LS1 recorded reverse magnetization directions dated at ~5.3 ky BP during the middle Holocene. In LMo a significant but gently westward shift in declination (over 90˚) and less conspicuous shallowing of the inclination can be observed (Figure 12(a)).    Table 2. When plotted on a present world map, they show intermediate VGPs from the rotation axis of the Earth in the northern Hemisphere between 60˚ and 30˚ (mainly in North Africa) and reverse VGPs located in the southern Hemisphere ( Figure 14). Particularly, the PR2 VGPs coincides with the ones calculated for PA11 and Las Buitreras sites, respectively located in NW and SE Patagonia (Nami, 1999b Table 2. or to excursional fields seem to follow a geographical pattern that shows a non uniform distribution in longitude (Mena & Nami, 2002;Nami & Mena, 2010), those ones in the southern hemisphere are located in South America, South Africa, Australasia and Antarctica. These positions agree remarkably well with VGPs observed in previous paleomagnetic studies performed on Latest Pleistocene and Holocene sections from the southern cone of South America (Nami, 1999a(Nami, , 2006(Nami, , 2008(Nami, , 2011(Nami, , 2012Nami et al., 2017). Remarkably is that this dis-  (Laj & Channell, 2007). Is also remarkably, the agreement of VGPs located in southern Africa with the VGPs calculated for the Late Pleistocene excursion identified in several parts of Argentina and dated at ~26 -30 ky BP (Orgeira et al., 1990(Orgeira et al., , 1996Vizán & Azcuy, 2010). Besides, the location of transitional VGPs in Africa and Australasia were observed in several records from different periods of the Earth history (e.g., Coe & Glen, 2004;Creer & Ispir, 1970;Gurarii, 2005;Herrero-Bervera & Coe, 1999;Hoffman & Singer, 2004;Ohno et al., 2008).    Figure 3). Figure 19. Examples of Zijderveld diagrams with southward directions from Las Buitreras cave (modified after Nami, 1999a, Figure 6).  (b) Demagnetization curves using thermal cleaning; (c) Zijderveld diagram (modified after Nami, 1994). and reverse VGPs in San Blas records and other sites also supports its regional extent in the southern cone of South America with evidence records in Northeastern Patagonia. In the particular case presented in the previous sections, SB2, PR2, and mainly LS1 yielded new light to date with precision one of the largest amplitude GF fluctuations with reverse directions that happened during the Middle Holocene showing that one of the peaks of these oscillations occurred at ~5.3 ky BP. This situation strengthens the hypothesis of the real existence of anomalous GF behavior during the Holocene in southern Patagonia (Nami, 1994(Nami, , 1995a(Nami, , 1999a(Nami, , 2012Nami & Sinito, 1995).
As previously was noted by Nami (2012), in some areas of the southern cone of South America, during at least the last ~11 -10 ky BP, the GF might have been undergoing an anomalous behavior with large amplitude fluctuations, occasionally reaching reverse polarity positions, more than once. If correctly represent the GF record, they are revealing that these kinds of directions might haen in a very short time span, probably decades or centuries; mainly during the terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene (~11 -9/7 ky BP), middle (~5 -4 ky BP) and late (~2.5 -2.0 ky BP) Holocene. Also, very low negative and positive Archaeological Discovery inclination values occurred in the last millennia and centuries (i.e. LM and CS; Nami, 2006Nami, , 2012. These kind of anomalous records were also observed in several parts of the Earth (Burakow & Nachasova, 1990;Clark & Kennett, 1973;Dergachev et al., 2004;Guskova et al., 2008;Kochegura & Pisarevsky, 1994;Lund et al., 2007Lund et al., , 2008Nami, 1999cNami, , 2012Nami, , 2015Nami et al. 2016Nami et al. , 2019Noël, 1975Noël, , 1977Noël & Tarling, 1975;Pospelova, 1981Pospelova, , 1990Ransom, 1973;Raspopov et al., 2003;Urrutia Fucugauchi et al., 1995;Ortega-Guerrero & Urrutia Fucugauchi, 1997;Vitorello & Van der Voo, 1977;Woolin et al., 1971;Zhu et al., 1998;Wiegank et al., 1990). Hence, the hypothesis of the global excursional state of the Holocene GF with not coetaneous intermediate and reverse directions was proposed (Nami, 1999c). The records informed in this paper, suort this idea. Be- During the last 780 ky BP, the Brunhes Chron showed that the GF polarity has been "normal" as it is now. However, there have been a number of occasions when the GF either briefly reverse or behaves anomalously. In other words, this normal polarity has been interrupted by significant departures from the dipole field configuration (Lund et al., 2001;Tarling, 1983;Thouveny & Creer, 1992). These kinds of departures are considerably larger than those seen in secular variations observed during historical times, and sometimes even attain oosite polarity, originating GF excursions. They are short intervals of anomalous field directions that occur within a broader interval of "stable" normal or reversed magnetic polarity. While certain excursions may have regional or continental scale; other ones show a global existence (Bogue & Merril, 1992;Merrill & McFadden, 1994;Laj & Channell, 2007;Roberts, 2008 (González et al., 1997). Similar swings with wide amplitude variations in declination and inclination were observed in lake sediments of the Valley of Mexico during the same time span (Ortega-Guerrero & Urrutia-Fucugauchi, 1997;Urrutia-Fucugauchi et al., 1995).
Chalco lake lacustrine declination record shows a pronounced swing at ~5 ky BP. Also, the Red Rock site in California (USA) yielded intermediate and reverse polarity positions also at ~5 ky BP (Nami, 1999c). In Asia, Chinese fresh-water sediments from Beijing yielded an excursion occurring between 5060 and 4860 ± 90 years BP (Zhu et al., 1998) and besides, several cores from the Barents sea sediments yielded records of the Solovki excursion dated at 4.5 -7.5 ky BP (Guskova et al., 2008). As previously described, the Southern Cone of South  Table 3. Summary of number of sites, location, number and range of 14 C dates of sampled deposits, number, quality and polarity of the samples. References: ND: number of 14 C dates in the sites, *: indicate indirect dates, N: number of samples used in the analysis, P: polarity of the core, N: normal, I: Intermediate, R: reverse. HRe: highly reliable, MRe: moderately reliable, PRe: poorly reliable (Nami, 1999a(Nami, , 2012