Did The Vikings Use a Solar Stone Crystal to Navigate Cloudy Seas?
Vikings dominated the North Atlantic seas for at least 300 years, but how did they sail across great distances with incredible accuracy, without a magnetic compass? A long-held theory about Vikings using crystals for navigation may have been proven true with modern science.
The Vikings, the great north seamen, sailed from Norway to Greenland and many parts in between. They were known to have amazing maritime navigation skills, by using the sun to plot their position on the globe. But scientists have wondered for years how they could navigate when they couldn’t see the Sun. Enter the sunstone, or solar sign, a crystal that when held up to a cloudy sky, can help to locate the Sun.
For years the use of Sunstones has been nothing but a theory based on a legend. Such as this mention in the tale Rauðúlfs þáttr:
“The king made people look out and they could nowhere see a clear sky. Then he asked Sigurður to tell where the sun was at that time. He gave a clear assertion. Then the king made them fetch the solar stone and held it up and saw where the light radiated from the stone and thus directly verified Sigurður’s prediction.”
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Has The Lost Ark of the Covenant Been Found in Israel?
The ancient city of Ekron — later to be renamed Lod — was known as one of five great Philistine cities, founded in the 12th century B.C.E. in Southwestern Canaan. Under Assyrian rule, it had become the largest olive-oil production center in the ancient Near East. Biblically speaking, wrote one historian, Ekron was the last place to which they carried the Ark of the Covenant before it was returned to Israel (1 Samuel 5:10; 6:1-8). The Ark is said to have been wrested from the Children of Israel during a battle, but as its new guardians experienced unexpected catastrophes they feared resulted from its presence, the Philistines had decided it was too much trouble to keep. Here we are, thousands of years later, and Israeli archaeologists may have stumbled upon a clue to the Ark’s actual existence.
The Ark’s Illustrious History
The Bible states that the Ark of the Covenant found its first resting place in Siloah, near Jerusalem, after the ancient Jews had expelled the Canaanites from the Promised Land. And then, after losing a battle to the Philistines, the Ark was captured. God punished the Philistines with a plague, and the artifact was returned to the Israelites, who placed it in Beth Shemesh, where it remained for years before King David had it taken to rest in Jerusalem.
National Geographic reporters Richard Lovett and Scot Hoffman wrote that, according to Biblical accounts, the Ark was about the size of a 19th-century seaman’s chest, made of gold-plated wood and topped with two large, golden angels. It was carried using poles inserted through rings on its sides.
