Latvian fire-cross

The oldest example ever found of the swastika, ugunskrusts ("fire-cross") in Latvian, is 15,000 years old, carved in mammoth tusk, unearthed in Ukraine. The use of the swastika among the ancestors of the Latvians is surely as ancient because the Slavic and Baltic languages/cultures stem from a common Balto-Slavic proto-ancestor.

The swastika appears in many versions in Latvian folk costumes and crafts. Indeed, there is no other culture in which it appears more ornately or in more variations. It is inseparably ingrained in Latvian identity. Different incarnations of the swastika cross symbolize different Latvian deities or aspects of life. The right-facing swastika: Pērkons ("Thunder", thus the "Thunder Cross"), left-facing: Laima ("Good Fortune"), while the multi-pronged Zars ("branch") denoted happiness; lastly, rounded, with narrowing and curved ends, Ķeksis ("hook") — however, we have not yet found documentation as to the significance of this version. In Latvian mythology, the fi