In the yard of Šiauliai “Aušros” Museum, you can find mythological stones: one stone with holes and three stones with bottomed bowls.
In the Baltic lands, ceremonial stones began to be worshiped in the Neolithic and Bronze Age. Today they are associated with the Baltic religion, its gods and deities. A big group of monuments consists of ritual stones with holes, narrow-bottomed or sharp-bottomed bowls and feet. About 600 ritual stones are known in Lithuania.
Stones with narrow-bottomed bowls are unique and specific only to the culture of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania: they are common in Central and Northern Lithuania. These stones used to be altars for sacrificing liquids (beer, mead, blood of a sacrificed animal), so sometimes they had special channels for draining those liquids. Rainwater collected in a bowl was historically considered sacred and healing.
The stone with narrow-bottomed bowl was considered the cornerstone of the house. It was built into the foundations so that the bowl remained in the corner of the room of the house, where a sacred hearth used to be and grass snakes lived.
In the years 1977-1987, during land reclamation and demolition of homesteads, many such stones with narrow-bottomed bowls were taken to quarries and were destroyed.
Stones with narrow-bottomed bowls are found all over the Baltic region: in Sweden, Finland, especially in Estonia. They are associated with agriculture, with those customs that farmers could perform while ploughing land, harrowing and sowing grain. Some scientists had the version that the bowls correspond to the position of the constellations in the sky.
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