BRNO, CZECH REPUBLIC—A bronze belt buckle depicting a snake consuming a frog-like creature has been unearthed in South Moravia, at the same site where an animal rib engraved with ancient Germanic runes has been found, according to a Radio Prague International report. Four other nearly identical belt buckles have been unearthed in other parts of Central Europe. Jiří Macháček of Masaryk University said that the image on the eighth-century belt buckle was common in Germanic, Slavic, and Avar mythology. He suggests the belt may have been worn by an elite member of the nomadic Avar people, who lived in Hungary’s Carpathian basin. “The problem is that we know very little about the pre-Christian religion among the Germanic people and the Slavic people,” Macháček said. “We believe that this scene of the fighting snake could be connecting with the pre-Christian religion of the people of Central Europe.” Analysis of the five belt buckles will attempt to determine if they were produced in the same workshop. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Journal of Archaeological Science. For more on the archaeology of the Czech Republic, go to "The Man in Prague Castle."
