In the UK, in the county of Oxfordshire, there is a mysterious landmark, the location of which alone makes the curiosity of not only a scientist, but also an ordinary man in the street.
On the southern tip of the island, on a chalk hill called "Dragon's Hill", gallops a giant White horse, which is at least 3 thousand years old, according to archaeologists. The horse is carved into a chalk slope and is about 110 meters long. It is one of the largest and most outstanding monuments of the Bronze Age, and one of the most ancient geoglyphs in the history of the planet.
The horse is clearly visible from far away in this hilly area - its contours are carved so that they do not overgrow with grass. Researchers believe that it served both as a reference point for trade routes and marked the boundaries of a certain territory, which probably belonged to the ancient leader.
Joshua Pollar from the University of Southampton recently established that the horse is associated not only with territorial boundaries, but also with astronomy - in winter it gallops towards the movement of the winter constellations, and in summer it hurries to follow the movement of the sun.
Path of the sun over Dragon Hill (Science et Avenir)
In many ancient cultures, the Sun was associated with a heavenly horse, a heavenly chariot. In Denmark, in the Odsherred swamp in 1902, a sculpture was found depicting a horse harnessed to the sun, like a giant wheel. The sculpture is called "Trundholm's heavenly chariot", the time of its creation dates back to the 15th century BC. According to Pollar, the horse pulling the Sun across the sky is a fundamental myth of all Indo-European peoples, it is one of the primary myths of mankind - people explained the world in ways that were available to them.
Solar chariot from a museum in Copenhagen