Do you think that they exterminated the big cats on propose, since they were a threat? They could either hunt humans or serve as competition for humans’ food.
Great explanation of animals and numbering. Have you written this up anywhere aside from here?
There are professionals in the field out there who are trying to crack the code. They are looking at what would ordinarily be called "shamanistic symbols" and suggesting that these things are actually IDEOGRAPHS.
Frankly I think that the ancients of the time had some well developed memory palaces and given the amount of knowledge around at the time you could probably have 2 or 3 guys in each clan in each tribe who KNEW IT ALL!
They'd not had a need for writing.
However, they were long into symbolic representation of Clan Structure and Power ~ and the use of Totems.
They don't do those animals just for the artistic aspect ~ they do them because THEY COUNT.
Actually, in doing the analysis I did and finding that there were no large cats it occurred to me I'd also discovered that was quite meaningful ~ and I've owned three pet cats ~ there are general characteristics ascribed to cats and to eagles.
Later religions have the Eagle and the Owl rotating night and day but earlier religions could have easily had the Eagle and the Small Cat rotating night and day ~ and death on the ground, and death in the air!
There are just all sorts of meanings you can derive out of counting which of each kind of animal totem you have.
Notice I came up with a base 14 rather than 12. That could have come about through mergers or cooperative agreements between two broader groups that had a slightly different range of totems ~ which may be why they have two kinds of deer in the mix. But 14 gives you some brackets on the smaller set of 12 ~ which was used thousands of years later in nearby Mesopotamia (Babylonian 24 hour day, 60 minutes, gives you two numbers divisible by 12 such that you get a prime number 2 and a prime number 5.
I suspect the Babylonian counting system derives from a system similar to this one, but it would have been developed in Eastern India more than likely "way back when".
I go back to this thing regularly, and if there are any new animals pop up I'll see where they belong.
I need a better record of the Kola Peninsula ideographs and bas reliefs carved back about 7 thousand years ago ~ Some of the oldest Chinese/Tartaric poles out in the Gobi desert might be relevant (See: Deer Stones)