yestermorrow revisited

2011-06-06T11:51:00.000-07:00

Rongorongo script

Origin

The people of Easter Island were possibly inspired to invent the Rongorongo script after seeing the writing used by the Spanish when they annexed the island in 1770. The Easter Islanders were apparently impressed by the mana or power of the Spaniards' writing.

Rongorongo was used until the 1860s, after which knowledge of the script was lost. Nowadays most Easter Islanders write in Spanish using the Latin alphabet though a few try to write their own language, Rapanui, also with the Latin alphabet.

Since missionaries started visiting Easter Island in the 1860s, they have taken an interest in the mysterious Rongorongo symbols. A number of attempts have been made to decipher them, none of which have been completely successful, though in his book Rongorongo: The Easter Island Script, Steven Roger Fischer, Director of the Institute of Polynesian Languages and Literatures in Auckland, New Zealand, claims to have unlocked its mysteries.

Two other scripts were once used on Easter Island: Ta'u and Mama, but little is known about them as very few inscriptions have been found.

Notable features

The Rongorongo script consists of about 120 symbols, mainly representations of birds, fish, gods, plants and a variety of geometric shapes.
Some of the symbols represent whole words, some represent sounds and others represent abstract concepts.
Rongorongo was used be priests to write a limited range of rhetorical statements and helped to reassert their authority.

The characters of the Rongorongo ancient written language of the southeast pacific island of Rapanui (also known as Easter Island) show great affnity to the also undeciphered ancient written script from the Indus Valley, of the archaic Harappan civilization, as noted by cutting-edge archaic language expert Andrew Robinson, however, he all but dismisses the obvious similarities of the scripts because of his timeline for their use; he rightly opines that the Harappan script, from northwest India and Pakistan, was from the circa 2000 B.C. timeframe, but wrongly opines that the script from Rapanui is only about 2,000 years old, apparently believing that the famous Easter Island moi head statues and the ancient Rongorongo script could not possibly have come about by sophisticated seafarers and megalithic builders during the time of the old kingdom Egyptian pharaohs and the Phoenicians of Sidon, when in fact, that’s the point, the Phoenicians, and the Harappans of the Rama empire, and the Egyptians, were navigating the globe in that timeframe, by the methodology in article #2 at http://IceAgeCivilizations.com, being enabled to sail to within 200 miles of Rapanui, from Harappa, or Egypt, or Sidon (from halfway around the globe) by merely sighting by the stars, pinpointing geographic locations to within a margin of 0.5%.

Much has been written about the observed similarities between south Asia's ancient Harappan script, and Easter Island's Rongorongo, an undeciphered writing system used by Polynesians on an island off the coast of Chile.

Rama's Bridge in Sri Lanka

2010-02-28T11:10:00.000-08:00

Space images taken by NASA reveal a mysterious ancient bridge in the Palk Strait between India and Sri Lanka. The recently discovered bridge currently named as Adam´s Bridge is made of chain of shoals, c.18 mi (30 km) long.

The bridge´s unique curvature and composition by age reveals that it is man made. The legends as well as Archeological studies reveal that the first signs of human inhabitants in Sri Lanka date back to the a primitive age, about 1,750,000 years ago and the bridge´s age is also almost equivalent.

This information is a crucial aspect for an insight into the mysterious legend called Ramayana, which was supposed to have taken place in tredha yuga (more than 1,700,000 years ago).

In this epic, there is a mentioning about a bridge, which was built between Rameshwaram (India) and Srilankan coast under the supervision of a dynamic and invincible figure called Rama who is supposed to be the incarnation of the supreme.

This information may not be of much importance to the archeologists who are interested in exploring the origins of man, but it is sure to open the spiritual gates of the people of the world to have come to know an ancient history linked to the Indian mythology.

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~lkawgw/adamsbridge.html

Secrets of the Star Disc

2010-02-28T10:05:00.000-08:00

It started as a police raid on German grave robbers in 2001 and turned into one of the most astonishing archaeological discoveries of recent years. This is the extraordinary saga of the Nebra Sky Disc -- a small, unassuming piece of copper and gold with an unusual feature: an image that appears to be a "sunship."

Ancient Human Metropolis Found in Africa

2009-11-03T13:13:00.000-08:00

By Dan Eden for viewzone.

They have always been there. People noticed them before. But no one could remember who made them -- or why? Until just recently, no one even knew how many there were. Now they are everywhere -- thousands -- no, hundreds of thousands of them! And the story they tell is the most important story of humanity. But it's one we might not be prepared to hear.

Something amazing has been discovered in an area of South Africa, about 150 miles inland, west of the port of Maputo. It is the remains of a huge metropolis that measures, in conservative estimates, about 1500 square miles. It's part of an even larger community that is about 10,000 square miles and appears to have been constructed -- are you ready -- from 160,000 to 200,000 BCE!

http://www.mondovista.com/adamscalendar.html

2009-02-13T15:44:00.000-08:00

Maklavun - Istrian Stonehenge

Istrian tumuli are more then 4000 years old. There are about 400 castles and forts from the Bronze and Iron Age in Istria. In the immediate hinterland of Porec, in the area between Valkarin, Dracevac and Fuškulin, are nearly a dozen identical hills, all about hundred meters high. You will not find them on the travel maps, the global importance of these hills has been known only to a small number of experts, mostly archeologists. All of these hills have in common flat tops and are recognized as a place of the prehistoric ruins. Two series of hills, Picugi (with visible traces the step pyramid shape) and Mordele, "compound" in a formation similar to the formation of stars in the Orion constellation, the same formation which faithfully followed the pyramid builders in ancient Egypt and many other ancient sites. Therefore the name Istrian Stonehenge which had most probable function of the orientation in time and space, tracking cosmic changes, and determination of beginning and end of the seasons. The Maklavun Tholos is at 207 Meters altitude. Cairn like remains with Dromos entrance way and grave. Probably had a corbelled roof, like Newgrange, now lost. Site is seriously threatened by quarry systematically consuming the hill around it.

2009-02-06T11:58:00.000-08:00

The World's Mysterious Places - Part 1

The World's Mysterious Places - Part 2

The World's Mysterious Places - Part 3

The World's Mysterious Places - Part 4

The World's Mysterious Places - Part 5

The World's Mysterious Places - Part 6

2008-12-22T06:24:00.001-08:00

THE VUČEDOL ORION

The archaeological site of Vučedol is located along the banks of the Danube, some 5 kilometres downstream from Vukovar, and is one of the most significant sites of the Eneolithic period. What makes it so significant is the fact that the valuable excavations gave a clear profile of the entire period. Consequently, this Eneolithic culture was named after its place of origin – the Vučedol culture.

Once discovered, Vučedol remained a focus for archaeologists, and became a crucial site in all attempts at understanding the complex processes of changing social and economic relations during the transformation from the Copper to the Bronze Age. At its peak, the Vučedol culture spread across a large area of some 700 kilometres, within the borders of 10 modern European countries: the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria, Hungary, Romania, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, and Albania.

Largely due to its favourable geo-strategic position, Vučedol was the site of a constant influx of new inhabitants. Among the oldest layers of the site, there are traces of an older Neolithic culture named the Starčevac culture. However, uninterrupted life at Vučedol can be traced only to the Eneolithic period, where over 700 years we can observe the intertwining of three cultures: the Baden, Kostolac and Vučedol cultures. The peak of the Vučedol site is connected with the appearance of the Vučedol culture, which lasted from 3,000 to 2,200 BC.

Life at Vučedol took place in three settlements that formed a semi-circle around Gradac, a settlement whose isolated position and appearance suggest it had the function of an acropolis. The settlement was inhabited by land-tillers, cattle-raisers, hunters and copper moulders.

This highly material culture, with its special emphasis on the production of ceramics of great technical quality and aesthetic value, clearly points to a highly developed civilisation. It was characterised by great imagination and a creative force which initiated a new direction in the course of human history. Vučedol ceramics attract attention with their perfect harmony of shape and ornament. The most famous ceramic vessel is the Vučedol Dove, the richly encrusted ritual bird-shaped vessel that was excavated at Gradac in 1938.

The Vučedol culture also produced the Vučedol Orion, which is considered to be the oldest European calendar. The vessel containing the calendar was discovered in Vinkovci underneath the Hotel Slavonija. The vessel is divided into four fields symbolising the four seasons, and the systematic repetition of ornaments suggests the change of the months. The discovery of this oldest European calendar is clear proof of a highly developed civilisation and culture existing in this area more than 5,000 years ago.

http://www.nms.si/orion/eng/the-oldest-calendar.htm

2008-12-12T09:15:00.000-08:00

Pyramids in China

China's Secret: Hidden Uyghur-Turk Pyramids

There are over 100 pyramids, made of clay, that have become nearly stone hard over the centuries. Many are damaged by erosion or farming. One pyramid is as large as the Pyramid of the Sun of Teotihuacan in Mexico (which is as large as the Great Pyramid of Giza). The big pyramid is about 1,000 feet high (other descriptions estimate 1,000 to 1,200 feet high) and roughly 1,500 feet at the base, which makes it twice as large as any pyramid in Egypt. Most are flat topped, some have small temples on top.

Chinese officials have rebuffed all questions about these pyramids and all requests to view them since they are among top secret of China. Successive dynasties have safeguarded the secret from the outside world, the Communists included with the sites being in Forbidden zones - that is until recently when too many tourists coming from the Terracotta Army kept 'discovering' them. They have been planted with trees to disguise them as hills from the air. The Chinese authorities finally admitted to the 'existence of pyramidal structures' in the 1980s, nowadays some of them even have visitor centres attached.

At the end of the 19th and the first few decades of the 20th century, scientific and archaeological expeditions to the region along the Silk Road in East Turkestan led to the discovery of numerous Uyghur cave temples, monastery ruins, wall paintings, statues, frescoes, valuable manuscripts, documents and books. Members of the expedition from Great Britain, Sweden, Russia, Germany, France, Japan, and the United States were amazed by the treasure they found there, and soon detailed reports captured the attention on an interested public around the world. The relics of these rich Uyghur cultural remnants brought back by Sven Hedin of Sweden, Aurel Stein of Great Britain, Gruen Wedel and Albert von Lecoq from Germany, Paul Pelliot of France, Langdon Warner of the United States, and Count Ottani from Japan can be seen in the Museums of Berlin, London, Paris, Tokyo, Leningrad and even in the Museum of Central Asian Antiquities in New Delhi. The manuscripts, documents and the books discovered in Eastern Turkestan proved that the Uyghurs had a very high degree of civilization.

2008-12-05T07:01:00.000-08:00

Graham Hancock's Documentary "Quest For The Lost Civilization" 3 Parts

Link To Part 1:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6424752101164728847&hl=nl

Link To Part 2:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2010585024306097538&hl=nl

Link To Part 3:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9117086926954763963&hl=nl

2008-12-03T16:02:00.000-08:00

Got Milk? Humans Did, Almost 9,000 Years Ago

Milk—it does a body good, and apparently it’s been doing so for longer than we thought. A new study led by Richard Evershed of the University of Bristol in England says that humans had discovered dairy products by the 6,000s B.C., two millennia earlier than scientists had previously believed.

Evershed and his team found milk residue in pottery dating back to 6,500 B.C., found in areas of Turkey and the Balkans. “Cattle, sheep and goats were familiar farm animals by the eighth millennium BC, but until now, the first clear evidence for milk use was the late fifth millennium,” says the team [The Telegraph].

Milk fats are not water-soluble, so their traces can be identified in pottery even if the vessels have been buried in the ground for a few thousand years. The residues don’t indicate the presence of milk itself, as those would decay away very quickly, but instead suggest more processed dairy substances, such as butter, yogurt, ghee (or clarified butter), and possibly cheese [LiveScience].

Evershed said most the 2,200 pots his team studied showed milk fat in their walls, which supports the processing idea. That finding also gets the researchers around a potential problem in their study—that adults were uniformly lactose intolerant as recently as 7,000 years ago. However an inability to drink milk wasn’t necessarily a barrier to earlier dairy consumption, as lactose breaks down during processing [National Geographic]. So as long as these ancient people ate butter, cheese, or yogurt, their lactose intolerance made no difference.

Image: Richard Evershed

2008-12-03T15:57:00.000-08:00

A Bronze “Computer” Helped Greeks Set the Schedule for the Olympic Games

A bronze and iron “computer” that the ancient Greeks used to keep track of astronomical phenomena was also a sophisticated calendar that set the dates for the Olympicgames, researchers say. The ancient Olympic Games, which marked the start of a four-year timespan called an Olympiad, began on the full moon closest to the summer solstice, which meant calculating the timing required expertise in astronomy [Reuters].

The device is named the Antikythera Mechanism; it was discovered over a century ago in a Roman shipwreck off the tiny island of Antikythera, north of Crete. The mechanism, which was built around 100 B.C., had been reduced to a collection of bronze fragments and gears by its long immersion, but a new analysis has revealed inscriptions beneath the corrosion that name the games of the Olympiad cycle, including “Olympia.”

The purpose of the device was a mystery until 2006, when researchers examined the fragments with x-ray tomography, a technique similar to the CT scans used in medicine. They concluded that the device originally contained 37 gears that formed an astronomical computer. Two dials on the front show the zodiac and a calendar of the days of the year that can be adjusted for leap years. Metal pointers show the positions in the zodiac of the sun, moon and five planets known in antiquity. Two spiral dials on the back show the cycles of the moon and predict eclipses [Los Angeles Times].

The latest imaging results, which are reported in the journal Nature [subscription required], revealed not only the names of the Olympiad games on a small dial, but also the names of the 12 calendar months used in the Greek city-state of Corinth and its colonies. These findings suggest that the device may have been constructed by one of the followers of Archimedes, the fabled astronomer and inventor. Archimedes, who lived in [the Corinthian colony] Syracuse and died in 212 B.C., invented a planetarium calculating motions of the Moon and the known planets and wrote a lost manuscript on astronomical mechanisms [The New York Times].

To read more on the Antikythera Mechanism, see the DISCOVER article, “The First Computer.”

Image: Antikythera Mechanism Research Project

2008-12-03T04:21:00.000-08:00

Were Egyptians the first scribes?

"Mountain of Light": the earliest writing yet found?

The earliest writing ever seen may have been discovered in southern Egypt. The hieroglyphics record linen and oil deliveries made over 5,000 years ago.

The find challenges the widely-held belief that the first people to write were the Sumerians of Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) sometime before 3000 BC.

The exact date of Sumerian writing remains in doubt but the new Egyptian discoveries have been confidently dated to between 3300 BC and 3200 BC using carbon isotopes.

Ancient Egyptians developed writing to develop trade

"It was thought that Sumerians were earlier in writing than Egypt," said Gunter Dreyer, director of the German Archaeological Institute in Egypt.

"With our findings, we now see it's on the same level and this is an open question: was writing invented here or there?"

It was possible that Sumerians who traded with Egypt copied their inscriptions, Dr Dreyer said. "But we have to wait for further evidence," he warned, saying publication of his results would appear in early 1999.

Archaeological experts hailed the find as momentous. "This would be one of the greatest discoveries in the history of writing and ancient Egyptian culture," said Kent Weeks, Professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo.

Describing Mr Dreyer as a "very meticulous scholar," Professor Weeks said the German archaeologist would not have disclosed his findings without being "absolutely certain."

The writings are line drawings of animals, plants and mountains and came mainly from the tomb of a king called Scorpion in a cemetery at Abydos, about 400 km (250 miles) south of Cairo.

"Mountain of Darkness": King Scorpion's plantation

Since 1985, Mr Dreyer and his team have unearthed about 300 pieces of written material on clay tablets barely bigger than postage stamps.

Clay jars and vases also display the documentary records of linen and oil delivered to King Scorpion I as taxes. Two-thirds of the hieroglyphics have been deciphered, including short notes, numbers, lists of kings' names and names of institutions.

The newly discovered Egyptian writings also show that the society then was far more developed than previously thought, Dreyer said.

He said man's first writings were not a creative outpouring but the result of economics: when chieftains expanded their areas of control they needed to keep a record of taxes. Although the Egyptian writings are made up of symbols, they can be called true writing because each symbol stands for a consonant and makes up syllables.

2008-12-03T04:15:00.000-08:00

'Earliest writing' found

The fragments of pottery are about 5,500 years old

Exclusive by BBC News Online Science Editor Dr David Whitehouse

The first known examples of writing may have been unearthed at an archaeological dig in Pakistan.

So-called 'plant-like' and 'trident-shaped' markings have been found on fragments of pottery dating back 5500 years. They were found at a site called Harappa in the region where the great Harappan or Indus civilisation flourished four and a half thousand years ago.

Harappa was originally a small settlement in 3500 BC but by 2600 BC it had developed into a major urban centre.

Harappa was occupied until about 1900 BC

The earliest known writing was etched onto jars before and after firing. Experts believe they may have indicated the contents of the jar or be signs associated with a deity.

According to Dr Richard Meadow of Harvard University, the director of the Harappa Archaeological Research Project, these primitive inscriptions found on pottery may pre-date all other known writing.

Last year it was suggested that the oldest writing might have come from Egypt.

Clay tablets containing primitive words were uncovered in southern Egypt at the tomb of a king named Scorpion.

They were carbon-dated to 3300-3200 BC. This is about the same time, or slightly earlier, to the primitive writing developed by the Sumerians of the Mesopotamian civilisation around 3100 BC.

"It's a big question as to if we can call what we have found true writing," he told BBC News Online, "but we have found symbols that have similarities to what became Indus script.

Work at Harappa is likely to fuel the debate on early writing

"One of our research aims is to find more examples of these ancient symbols and follow them as they changed and became a writing system," he added.

One major problem in determining what the symbols mean is that no one understands the Indus language. It was unique and is now dead.

Dr Meadow points out that nothing similar to the 'Rosetta Stone' exists for the Harappan text.

The Rosetta Stone, housed in the British museum since 1802, is a large slab of black basalt uniquely inscribed with the same text in both Egyptian hieroglyphs and Greek.

Its discovery allowed researchers to decipher the ancient Egyptian script for the first time.

The Harappan language died out and did not form the basis of other languages.

"So probably we will never know what the symbols mean," Dr Meadow told BBC News Online from Harappa.

What historians know of the Harappan civilisation makes them unique. Their society did not like great differences between social classes or the display of wealth by rulers. They did not leave behind large monuments or rich graves.

They appear to be a peaceful people who displayed their art in smaller works of stone.

Their society seems to have petered out. Around 1900 BC Harappa and other urban centres started to decline as people left them to move east to what is now India and the Ganges.

This discovery will add to the debate about the origins of the written word.

It probably suggests that writing developed independently in at least three places - Egypt, Mesopotamia and Harappa between 3500 BC and 3100 BC.

2008-12-03T04:00:00.001-08:00

Primitive man: Origin of sophistication

Thomas Dowson traces the South African paintings

By BBC Science's Claire Imber

Lascaux, Chauvet, Altamira. These are just a few of the fabulous and enigmatic European cave paintings discovered so far.

Dated at over 25,000 years old, we have always marvelled at them, but thought that they were made by primitive people.

These are not mere scribblings

Although the paintings are stunningly beautiful, they look like simple depictions of animals. Perhaps they are a naive hunting magic, nothing more.

But according to two scientists working in South Africa, this view of the ancient painters is totally wrong. They believe the paintings are evidence of a complex and modern society.

The researchers think they can prove that the cave painters were just like us.

In a new, landmark series on BBC Two - Ape-man: Adventures in Human Evolution - David Lewis-Williams and Thomas Dowson make the link between ancient rock paintings in Europe and more recent ones in the South African Cape.

Animal spirits

They asked modern Namibian Ju'hoansi tribespeople to explain the 2,000-year-old Cape paintings, and were amazed to hear how they represented complex cosmological and shamanic beliefs.

The Ju'hoansi believe that during a night-long dance associated with rhythmic clapping and chanting, special people in the tribe take on the power of animal spirits and use it to heal the others in their group.

A continent away, a US psychologist studying shamanism and hypnosis has added his piece to the puzzle. Etzel Cardena works with Americans especially susceptible to hypnosis.

He has found that all these people report the same kinds of feeling and visual hallucinations, which mirror the experiences of those involved in shamanic and other religions.

He believes that this means our minds are all the same, and we share the same experiences in altered states of consciousness.

The artists were not eating the animals they painted

Inside our heads

A neurologist in the UK, Dominic Ffytche, believes he has the final evidence to tie all of this together. His team work with stroke and migraine sufferers, mapping the areas of the brain responsible for visual hallucination.

His patients also see the same shapes and patterns reported by the Ju'hoansi, and indeed they are strikingly similar to the patterns painted in Prehistoric Europe. We have discovered a neurological link to the past, inside our own heads.

Each scientist alone makes a significant contribution to our knowledge, yet together their work is stronger. The South African archaeologists had little idea that there were psychologists and neurologists out there whose work could back up their own hypotheses.

Experts in prehistoric diet and lifestyle can also recognise what the other researchers have found. Their own work has shown conclusively that the cave artists were not eating the animal species that they were painting. In other words, the cave art is not an illustrated menu or a hunting wish-list.

It is clear that modern minds have been around for over 25,000 years, and with them humans have been able to think about all kinds of things. Our modern minds are what allow us to imagine other worlds and to communicate about abstract concepts.

Lonely position

Our modern minds let us wonder about who we are and where we came from, and indeed allow us to be scientists, priests and shamen.

David Lewis-Williams: Needed the input of others

The new BBC series focuses on key moments in human prehistory, from our origins as upright African apes, to our lonely position today as the last human species left.

The scientists and archaeologists tell their own stories of discovery and revelation, and lead us to places we might otherwise never see.

We visit their private excavations, laboratories and caverns, to track down the answers to those elusive and universal questions: who are we, and where did we come from?

Ape-man: Adventures in Human Evolution is broadcast on BBC Two on Tuesdays at 21:00 GMT. Claire Imber was the series researcher.

2008-12-03T03:57:00.000-08:00

'Oldest' prehistoric art unearthed

Are abstract markings on a piece of ochre ancient art?

By BBC News Online science editor Dr David Whitehouse

The world's oldest example of abstract art, dating back more than 70,000 years, has been found in a cave in South Africa.

Scientists say the discovery shows that modern ways of thinking developed far earlier than we think.

The abstract art was found on two pieces of ochre in a cave on the southern Cape shore of the Indian Ocean.

Previously, the earliest evidence of abstract art came mainly in France from the Eurasian Palaeolithic period less than 35,000 years ago.

Complex motif

Dr Christopher Henshilwood, from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, says: "They may have been constructed with symbolic intent, the meaning of which is now unknown.

Dr Christopher Henshilwood believes the items are significant

"The engraving itself is quite a complex geometric pattern. There is a system to the patterns."

"We don't know what they mean, but they are symbols that I think could have been interpreted by those people as having meaning that would have been understood by others."

The engraved ochre pieces were recovered from Middle Stone Age layers at Blombos Cave, 290 kilometres (180 miles) east of Cape Town, and are at least 70,000 years old.

Dr Henshilwood says more than 8,000 other pieces of ochre were found in the cave, many of which had been rubbed smooth as if to make pigment powder.

Some say they could be just meaningless doodles?

Ochre, a form of iron ore, is frequently found in Stone Age deposits less than 100,000 years old. It may have been used as a body or decorative paint.

The researchers believe that the ochre was first scraped and ground to create flat surfaces. It was then marked with cross hatches and lines to create a complex motif.

The find pushes back by some 35,000 years the earliest time when biologically modern humans were known to have developed modern behaviour.

"The theory up until now has been that modern human behaviour started only around 40,000 years ago," says Dr Henshilwood.

"The whole of South Africa was occupied by a biologically modern people who had evolved about 150,000 years ago.

The research team excavate in Blombos Cave

"There is no doubt that the people in southern Africa were behaviourally modern 70,000 years ago."

'Just doodlings'

Scientists believe that these finds demonstrate that ochre use in the Middle Stone Age was not exclusively utilitarian and, arguably, the transmission and sharing of the meaning of the engravings relied on fully syntactical language.

While the markings are suggestive, not all scientists are prepared to classify them as a form of artistic expression and abstract thought.

Steve Kuhn of the University of Arizona says the finding is the result of some "very good work by some very serious researchers".

But he adds: "I'd be more comfortable if there were more of these engraved stones; if these alleged symbols were found many times in different places. It is possible they were just doodlings that really didn't mean anything."

Blombos Cave is 290 kilometres (180 miles) east of Cape Town

The research was funded by the US National Science Foundation and is published in the journal Science.

2008-12-03T03:49:00.000-08:00

Ice Age star map discovered

The star map gives insight into our ancestors' minds

By BBC News Online science editor Dr David Whitehouse

A prehistoric map of the night sky has been discovered on the walls of the famous painted caves at Lascaux in central France.

The map, which is thought to date back 16,500 years, shows three bright stars known today as the Summer Triangle.

A map of the Pleiades star cluster has also been found among the Lascaux frescoes.

And another pattern of stars, drawn 14,000 years ago, has been identified in a cave in Spain.

According to German researcher Dr Michael Rappenglueck, of the University of Munich, the maps show that our ancestors were more sophisticated than many believe.

Scientific heritage

The Lascaux caves, with their spectacular drawings of bulls, horses and antelope, were painted 16,500 years ago.

The caves may have been a prehistoric planetarium where the stars were first charted

Discovered in 1940, the walls show the artistic talents of our distant ancestors. But the drawings may also demonstrate their scientific knowledge as well.

The caves could be a prehistoric planetarium in which humanity first charted the stars.

The sky map has been found in a region of the Lascaux caves known as the Shaft of the Dead Man.

Painted on to the wall of the shaft is a bull, a strange bird-man and a mysterious bird on a stick.

Summer triangle

According to Dr Rappenglueck, these outlines form a map of the sky with the eyes of the bull, birdman and bird representing the three prominent stars Vega, Deneb and Altair.

The ancient star map shows a bull, birdman and a bird on a stick

Together, these stars are popularly known as the Summer Triangle and are among the brightest objects that can be picked out high overhead during the middle months of the northern summer.

Around 17,000 years ago, this region of sky would never have set below the horizon and would have been especially prominent at the start of spring.

"It is a map of the prehistoric cosmos," Dr Rappenglueck told BBC News Online. "It was their sky, full of animals and spirit guides."

Seven sisters

But the sky map is not the only evidence that prehistoric man took a keen interest in the night sky. Nearer to the entrance of the Lascaux cave complex is a magnificent painting of a bull.

Cave drawings in Spain may also point to the stars

Hanging over its shoulder is what appears to be a map of the Pleiades, the cluster of stars sometimes called the Seven Sisters.

Inside the bull painting, there are also indications of spots that may be a representation of other stars found in that region of sky.

Today, this region forms part of the constellation of Taurus the bull, showing that mankind's identification of this part of the sky stretches back thousands of years.

Northern Crown

Dr Rappenglueck has also identified a star map painted on the walls of a cave in Spain 14,000 years ago.

The Cueva di El Castillo cave, in the mountains of Pico del Castillo, contains a region called the Frieze of Hands.

At the end of this remarkable section can be found a curved pattern of dots.

"Nobody paid much attention to it," said Dr Rappenglueck. "But, it is obviously a drawing of the constellation we call the Northern Crown. It is remarkable."

The archaeologists who have looked at Dr Rappengleuck's conclusions have so far agreed that they are reasonable and that he may have uncovered the earliest evidence of humanity's interest in the stars.

2008-12-03T03:46:00.000-08:00

Science shows cave art developed early

Chauvet cave paintings depict horses and other animals

By BBC News Online science editor Dr David Whitehouse

A new dating of spectacular prehistoric cave paintings reveals them to be much older than previously thought.

Carbon isotope analysis of charcoal used in pictures of horses at Chauvet, south-central France, show that they are 30,000 years old, a discovery that should prompt a rethink about the development of art.

The remarkable Chauvet drawings were discovered in 1994 when potholers stumbled upon a narrow entrance to several underground chambers in a rocky escarpment in the Ardeche region.

Because the paintings are just as artistic and complex as the later Lascaux paintings, it may indicate that art developed much earlier than had been realised.

'Discovered nothing'

The analysis was performed by Helene Valladas and colleagues at the Laboratory for Climate and Environment Studies at France's CEA-CNRS research centre at Gif-sur-Yvette.

The prehistoric cave art found in France and Spain shows ancient man to be a remarkable artist.

When Pablo Picasso visited the newly-discovered Lascaux caves, in the Dordogne, in 1940, he emerged from them saying of modern art, "We have discovered nothing".

They are obviously very old, but dating them has been difficult because of the small quantities of carbon found on the walls or in the caves. The element is needed, in the form of charcoal or bones, for the standard technique of carbon dating.

To overcome these problems the French researchers have used a newer technique called accelerator mass spectrometry. This separates and counts carbon isotopes found in dead animal and vegetal matter.

'Reconsider theories'

It found the Chauvet drawings to be between 29,700 and 32,400 years old. This is about 10,000 years older than comparable cave art found in the Lascaux caves that are around 17,000 years old.

Art may have progressed in leaps and bounds

According to Helene Valladas the research shows that ancient man was just as skilled at art as the humans who followed 13,000 years later.

"Prehistorians, who have traditionally interpreted the evolution of prehistoric art as a steady progression from simple to more complex representations, may have to reconsider existing theories of the origins of art," she says.

The research is reported in the scientific journal Nature.