Gotland sun stone with horses and ibexes

 Sun-wheel stone, Gotland, 6th century AD, Fornsal Museum, Visby

It is one of several so called "sun stones". 

I already talked about this one here 

And I talked about this one here

And I talked about this one here

Anyway, the horses are depicted facing each other, fighting for the right to mate...

The horse fertility is governed by the sunlight and peaks on summer solstice. Hence solar horses all over Eurasia...

Articles about solar horse (equid):

Iran "Water carrier equid", "Dioscuri plate from Iran"

Mesopotamia "Shamash playing with the solar horse", "Sun god from Tell Brak"

India "Hayagriva"

China "Longma", "Three legged crow", "Mythical beast from Xian"

Levant "Alexamenos graffito", "Goddess on a horse", "Unicorn"

Europe "Archaic rider", "Beotian solar pyxis", "Pegasus and chimera", "King John", "The horseman"

Which is why horses are an animal calendar marker for summer, and summer solstice. Horse is hidden among zodiac symbols as The Devine Horse Twins...Dioscuri...

I talked about this in my posts "Hayagriva", "Dioscuri plate from Iran"...

So that's horses. What about ibex goats? 

Across their range, ibex goats start mating in Oct/Nov...At the beginning of winter...And they announce that to the world by loudly banging their heads...Not something you can easily miss...

I talked about symbolism of ibex goats in many of my posts, like 

Europe:

"Pitys", "Goat in European culture", "Patera of Rennes"... 

Levant:

"The tree of life/light", "Lachish animal calendar"...

Mesopotamia:

"Feast plaque from Louvre", "Green pastures", "Problems with Abzu", "Relief from Dur Sharrukin", "Goatfish"...

Iran: 

"Flamingos from Susa", "Goat carrier", "Iranian goat of rain", "Strider", "A vessel from Tepe Hissar"...

Their mating season peaks around winter solstice. Which is why ibex goat became animal calendar marker for winter, and winter solstice. Which is why in zodiac we find Capricorn marking the winter solstice...

So on this sun stone we have opposite animal calendar markers marking opposite times of the year, goat marking winter solstice and horse marking summer solstice...I think this is quite cool...

To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, which were the key to deciphering all this, start here…then check the rest of the blog posts related to animal calendar markers I still didn't add to this page, and finally check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am 9 months behind now...