The first of the Sword in the Stone stories was told in Anatolia where the Hittites came c. 2230 BC from the south Russian steppes. But 40,000 years earlier, observers of the night sky saw something disturbing. How in heaven's name do the two connect?

Many Indo-European peoples worshipped a sword-god, but the oldest of those associated with the Sword in the Stone come from the Hittite culture. The major evidence is found in a sacred complex at Yazilikaya near the original Hittite capitol of Hattusha. Twelve sword-bearing runners are depicted and there is a chamber dedicated to the swords that depicts a sword god. Clearly, we are looking at a zodiac pattern. Christ had twelve disciples and Charlemagne and King Arthur both had twelve companions. The twelve runners with the swords are on the western wall, and ''west'' is the traditional direction of the Otherworld, the Land of the Dead, in many Indo-European traditions. The Hittite ''Prayer of Kantuzzili'' tells how Underworld gods were shaped from clay into the form of swords and implanted in the ground. The story of the Sword in the Stone is repeated down through the centuries in different cultures, and the authors here bring all the strands together to explain hoe we arrive at Arthur. And even Galahad, the son of Lancelot, deputed to be the successful Grail knight in the later accounts of the quest, also performed this miracle. In this case the sword is placed in a floating stone by Merlin.

Why is it a forty-thousand-year-old mystery? Observers in the Mesopotamian and Babylonian cultures noticed then that what is today referred to as the Pole Star, which sat at the centre of the heavenly dome, was shifting several degrees to the North. This event, which became known as Northshift, changed the positions of the constellations written across the sky, affecting the way in which the stars were perceived to influence the fate of us all. This is a fascinating tale of human perception of the night sky, and how it produced its own timeless narrative.