Posted on 01/06/2023 10:01:08 PM PST by 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at heritagedaily.com ...
Maybe they were just keeping track of kills.
This was a hypothesis put forth by an amateur ignored by professionals for years.
Knowing when they birth offspring might give then an advantage to taking game. Knowing when they rut might offer the same advantage.
You would think the Hunters would commit to memory that animals give birth in the Spring
https://worlddeer.org/when-do-deer-give-birth/
>>Maybe they were just keeping track of kills<<.
All this time, I thought they were gang signs...
You are thinking like a modern hunter with access to grocery stores and no competition or predation from Cave Bears and Sabertooth Tigers to name a few.
...and knocking down a testosterone addled and enraged buck at 100 yds with a rifle, not by getting a few feet away with a stick with a stone point and risking getting gored for your pains!
Nope, I’m not a hunter, but we get LOTS of whitetail crossing our property and even I know to be wary of the bucks in the fall.
“Have to move elsewhere”
From what I understand, those tribes were always on the move. People didn’t remain in one spot long until agriculture was invented and that was long after these cave paintings (I think).
Which is why, when I DID hunt white tails, I harvested only doe and yearlings. Yeah, it cost me $$$ for the antlerless tags, but the meat was better and the quantity available to me greater. Venison just tastes better without all that testosterone and adrenaline.
getting a few feet away with a stick with a stone point and risking getting gored for your pains!
—
While being stalked by a packs of Smilodons and Chasmaporthetes, and having to pass throughout the territory of a cave bear on the way home.
Not so - modern archeology says many stayed in the same local for long periods
Do you think there were enough human hunters to affect the population of the great herds of game? I’d think there were so few humans that they wouldn’t have to worry about or plan for game resource management.
It seems odd, after modern humans had been hunting animals for tens of thousands of years, that they needed a subterranean reference library for something so basic. I bet they even knew what season the animals bred too.
Yup, when the Males of the species rut and compete with other Males for the attention and right to breed with a female.
Hey, it’s late Summer/early Fall and the Bucks are acting weird, just like every prior year
So many of those cave drawings are more like spreadsheets than picassos.
Fast hunting hyenas are no laughing matter!
“modern archeology says many stayed in the same local for long periods”
Not at the time set by the article were they staying in one place. FTA: 20,000 years ago. The ice age at the time was in full effect. There was zero agriculture in Europe at that time (otherwise there would be crude calendars marking equinoxes to calibrate plantings). PPl had to move to following animals if they wanted to eat. Any ‘they stayed in one place’ correlation is only because the same areas were reoccupied yearly correlated to seasonal hunting grounds.
No agriculture = hunter/gatherers. Which means moving to follow the prey.
Ours or theirs?.......................
As I have said many many times, ‘Cave Art’ is nothing more than the Cave WOMAN’s shopping list.
Instructions to the CAVE MAN as to what to bring home for din-din.
The dots simply are the number of times they have had leftovers.............
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