The Caves Of The Sun

While some scholars today claim there is no single explanation or source for myth, others say that the answers to riddles posed by symbols and relics from the distant past should be sought in the human mind, rather than in the environment of early man. The influence of psychological interpretations posed by Freud and Jung have been powerful and, the author believes, detrimental to a true understanding of mankind's religious origins. In CAVES OF THE SUN, Adrian Bailey revives a long-discarded 18th-century theory that all myths, religions and folk tales can be traced to one source - the sun. He shows that solar cults were founded in order to influence and channel the life-giving forces of nature, and these can be identified in neanderthal cave dwellings of 60, 000 years ago. They can be seen too in the Ice Age cave art of Altamira and Lascaux, in the Neolithic bull cult of Anatolia and Crete, in the cave-sanctuaries of Mithra and in the great circles of Stonehenge and Avebury.
It was the purpose of Stonehenge hitherto unconvincingly ascribed to astronomy or fertility worship, that first set Bailey off on his inquiry and led to his conclusion that all the evidence points in one direction.