Dragon stones of Armenia

[Imperial Dave]

https://www.nature.com/articles/s40494-025-01998-z

Fascinating...

[Sharur]

At risk of breaking the Forum, given it's more than eight years since I last dropped-by and posted anything here (), I did want to say I too found this fascinating Dave. It's actually a bit odd I hadn't come across this before, as it's "only" five years since I was writing on other types of standing stones in the ancient Near East elsewhere, and didn't source anything on these then. I was primarily concentrating on aniconic, commonly isolated, stones, however, so that may be why.

An earlier version of me might have been tempted to contrast the fishy types of dragon stone with the ancient Syrian deity Dagon or Dagan, previously thought to be some kind of fish-god, an etymology now dismissed as improbable, however. So that's a non-starter!

[Imperial Dave]

Really glad you found the article useful Alastair. Ive been looking into amimal symbols and totems as part of some research and happened across it. Fascinating stuff

[DBS]

It my be a superficial resemblance (big stone, carvings, clearly some sort of ritual significance), but I immediately thought of the Mongolian Deer Stones.