Western use of the swastika in the early 20th century

The swastika (from Sanskrit svástika) is a symbol that generally takes the form of an equilateral cross, with its four arms bent at 90 degrees in either right-facing (卐) form or its mirrored left-facing (卍) form. The Swastika (also known outside the Indian subcontinent as the Hakenkreuz, gammadion cross, cross cramponnée, croix gammée, fylfot, or tetraskelion) (as a character 卐 or 卍) is an ancient religious symbol originating from the Indian subcontinent, that generally takes the form of an equilateral cross with four legs each bent at 90 degrees. It is considered to be a sacred and auspicious symbol in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism and dates back at least 11,000 years.

Archaeological evidence of swastika-shaped ornaments dates from the Neolithic period and was first found in the Mezine, Ukraine.

The swastika (gammadion, "fylfot") symbol became a popular symbol of luck in the Western world in the early 20th century, as it had long been in Asia, and was often used for ornamentation. The Nazi Party adopted the symbol in the 1920s, and its use in Western countries faded after the Nazi association became dominant in the 1930s. In recent decades many public swastikas have been removed or covered over, although others have been deliberately retained as part of debate about historical preservation.

The discovery of the Indo-European language group in the 1790s led to a great effort by European archaeologists to link the pre-history of European people to the hypothesised ancient "Aryans" (variously referring to the Indo-Iranians or the Proto-Indo-Europeans). Following his discovery of objects bearing the swastika square in the ruins of Troy, Heinrich Schliemann consulted two leading Sanskrit scholars of the day, Emile Burnouf and Max Müller. Schliemann concluded that the Swastika square was a specifically Indo-European symbol, and associated it with the ancient migrations of Proto-Indo-Europeans. He connected it with similar shapes found on ancient pots in Germany, and theorised that the swastika square was a "significant religious symbol of our remote ancestors", linking Germanic, Greek and Indo-Iranian cultures. Later discoveries of the motif among the remains of the Hittites and of ancient Iran seemed to confirm this theory, but the symbol was also known for its use by indigenous American Indians as well as Eastern cultures.

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