Mārkalne Sundial

Mārkalne Sundial About 12 thousand years ago, this granite stone was brought to Mārkalni by the last glacier of the ice age. Now it will show the local time – Markalne. The course of the sun at the sky determines the rhythm of human life. People have been using sundials for a long time to find out the time. The local time shown by the Sundial is different from the time in Latvia – as the Earth is constantly spinning, more and more areas of the earth’s surface are turning towards the Sun, which means that in the east of Latvia the sun rises earlier than in the west. Thus, depending on the time of year, the deviation of Mārkalne’s local time from the time in the Latvian zone may be even an hour ago. Time is shown by a shadow of a white metal gnomon. At night, the shine of the sun-shaped shape is created by the cobblestone produced in Mārkalne. The sundial from the 20-ton heavy boulder with the time of Mārkalne in 2020 was created by the artist Ainārs Zelčs. The stone was discovered in June 2021.