Johannis stones (Lage (Lippe))

This article describes the Johannis stones in Lage in the Lippe district. For the Johannis stones of the same name in Osnabrück, see Johannis stones .

The Johannis stones

The Johannissteine are a group of boulders in the area of ​​the Lippe town of Lage .

The mighty erratic granite blocks were pushed to their present location by glaciers from the Saale Ice Age 200,000 to 125,000 years ago and are entered as a nationally important geotope under number 2.3-16 in the “ List of natural monuments in Lage ”.

location

The Johannissteine ​​are located around one and a half kilometers southeast of the town center of Lagens, south of “ Detmolder Straße ” ( Bundesstraße 239 ) towards Orbke / Detmold , in the extension of the “ An den Johannissteinen ” road in the Lippe district of North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany .

description

The largest of the three actual Johannis stones , " Stone 1 ", is 6.20 meters long, 5.50 meters wide and has an estimated weight of around 104 tons with a volume of around 39 cubic meters. It lies exactly in a north-south direction.

" Stone 2 " (5.2 × 3.0 × 2.3 m) lies at right angles to " Stone 1 ", " Stone 3 " (4.0 × 2.7 × 2.1 m) lies southwest of the two large stones ; in the wider area there are small boulders and fragments.

In 1990 the Johannis stones were declared a ground monument.

origin

It is very likely that the Johannis stones come from the Åland Islands in the northern Baltic Sea , between Sweden in the west and the Finnish mainland in the east. As early as 1926, the origin was determined by so-called thin section examinations at the universities of Greifswald and Münster and the Swedish University of Uppsala .

Place of worship / calendar

All three large stones have a total of 15 carvings (symbols such as heart, pentagram, notches, circles) as well as 13 drill holes and channels.

Three exact pentagonal holes in " Stone 1 " allow the precise localization of the winter solstice with the use of sticks . The other seasonal turning points can also be determined from the Johannis stones, so that the Johannis stones probably served as a kind of calendar in pre-Christian times. The holes could have been made between 500 and 100 BC.

See also

• List of natural monuments in Lage (Lippe)

literature

• Johannissteine ​​- a prehistoric place of worship? , Flyer from the tourist information office Lage, Lage, June 2001.
• Johannissteine ​​- a (pre) prehistoric calendar system? , Flyer from the tourist information office Lage, Lage, June 2001.
• Erich Neumann and Wolfgang Lippek: Johannis stones near Lage an early historical place of worship? . In: Heimatland Lippe, February 1981, p. 44ff.

Web links

Commons : Johannissteine ​​(Lage (Lippe))  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• How the boulders came to Westphalia , Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe , Münster
• Johannisstein research

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Karl-Heinz Otto: How the boulders came to Westphalia at www.lwl.org, accessed on May 11, 2020.
2. ↑ Location map of the Johannissteine ​​at www.johannissteinforschung-lage.de, accessed on May 10, 2020.
3. ↑ Erich Neumann and Wolfgang Lippek: Johannis Stones near Lage an early historical place of worship? . In: Heimatland Lippe, February 1981, p. 44ff, accessed on May 10, 2020.
4. ↑ Johannissteine ​​- a prehistoric place of worship? , Flyer from Tourist Information Lage, Lage, June 2001, accessed on May 10, 2020.

Coordinates: 51 ° 58 ′ 47.8 "  N , 8 ° 48 ′ 34.7"  E