Ancient code in Ice Age drawings solved

Heritage Daily ^ | January 5, 2023 | Markus Milligan

[SunkenCiv]

Researchers from Durham University have decoded the meaning of markings found in Ice Age drawings, providing evidence of early writing at least 20,000 years ago.

The team were studying cave art, found in at least 400 European caves such as Lascaux, Chauvet and Altamira, which contains a series of lines and dots found alongside drawings of animals...

The team has revealed that the lines and dots indicate the mating and birthing seasons of animals. A "Y" sign formed by adding a diverging line to another has also been determined to mean "giving birth".

By using the birth cycles of equivalent animals today as a reference point, the researchers were able to work out that the number of marks associated with Ice Age animals were a phenological record by lunar month of when they were mating, as well as functioned as units of communication.

The study refers to the writing as a proto-writing system, pre-dating other token-based systems that are thought to have emerged during the Near Eastern Neolithic by at least 10,000 years...

Having demonstrated that they can crack the meaning of at least some of these symbols, the team is hoping to continue their work and attempt to understand more of the symbols, their cognitive bases and what information Ice Age hunter-gatherers valued.

[SunkenCiv]

Image Credit : Durham University

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Why would hunter/gatherers want to write down the mating and birthing seasons of animals? Wouldn’t they just go kill animals as needed?

[Jeff Chandler]

Ancient code in Ice Age drawings solved

Coding. So easy, a caveman could do it.

[SunkenCiv]

The rest of the Cave Art/Cave Painting keywords, sorted:

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[SunkenCiv]

[ComputerGuy]

What’s the earliest reference to Ovaltine?

[Buttons12]

Well I’d rather not hunt during the prey’s mating season. YMMV.

[abigkahuna]

Martin Sweatman wrote a book a few years back dealing with Cave Art and after much study determined that constellations were being depicted amd that the probability of these being anything else but constellations were something like a million to one—

he also has a blogspot: https://martinsweatman.blogspot.com Read for yourself and decide. He originally got into this line of study after seeing about Goblekli Tepe and decided to try and decode the one of the Columns.

His decoding shows that column 47 (?) depcits the season and the constellation when a comet or bollide was seen in the skies that lead to horrendous earth changes. Fascinating stuff.

I read an article earlier today here on Free Republic asking as to why science seems to be stymied when it comes to innovation these days. I would say that it is because independent researchers are ignored and cast aside. In years of old, all science was done by independent and self taught curious men. Because someone does not have letters behind their name does not mean that their research is not valid...

[Williams]

Animals become easier to hunt during mating season.
As for births, assuming the ancients didn’t have modern age restrictions on harvesting the young, that is also a time when the mothers and their offspring are more vulnerable.

[Williams]

Do you hunt? Because mating season is what hunters wait all year for.

[mairdie]

Fine Arts - Cave Paintings - Altamira Cave - Lascaux Cave - Hurrian Hymns
https://youtu.be/l99Lk66V0js

[Larry Lucido]

What’s the earliest reference to Ovaltine?

****

It was the day Oog gave his presentation on risk management.

[alexander_busek]

Why would hunter/gatherers want to write down the mating and birthing seasons of animals? Wouldn’t they just go kill animals as needed?

You aren't a hunter, are you?

Even modern hunters do well to pay attention to the rutting cycle, etc. of their prey.

Regards,

[George J. Jetso]

I used to oike The Flintstones intro where Fred eats a huge stack of ribs.

[ArtDodger]

Oog loves Zelda?

[riverrunner]

At least that is what they think it means.

[PIF]

Why would hunter/gatherers want to write down the mating and birthing seasons of animals? Wouldn’t they just go kill animals as needed?

—
Because they were not stupid? They valued their local resources and, to have it your way, they would soon kill off all the game in the area and have to move elsewhere.

Like all people today who harvest natural resources - they are better stewards than city folk who know little to nothing about preserving resources and attribute their lack of understanding to those whose lives and livelihoods depend on the continuation of the resource.

[PIF]

Animals become easier to hunt during mating season.

—
If you want to preserve the local game resource, you do not hunt them during at season, absent a government agency setting rules. Also remember during that time humans were few and animals were plentiful and very dangerous to hunt.

[piasa]

Deer hunters today hunt deer when they rut (mating season)... a time when the bucks are much less wary of humans because they are focused on competing males.

If you are hunting even larger animals, it may be less risky to hunt when there are many calves not yet full-sized.

The mating season of some game birds is followed by a period in which they are rendered flightless briefly while molting in advance of growing new feathers for migration.

Hunters are typically very interested in the life cycles of the animals they hunt.

[piasa]

No...
hunting the males ...of which there are always an excess... reduces both competition between males and the stress on the females in breeding season, making the females more successful in rearing young. When there are too many males there is more fighting, more injuries, and of course, nearly constant pursuit and harassment of females, which limits the amount of grazing they can get in a day, and can leave them underweight.