An independent researcher in London has helped uncover a fascinating meaning behind the 20,000-year-old markings of Ice Age hunter-gatherers in cave paintings, The Guardian reported.
An analysis of European cave markings, which include lines, dots and Y-shaped symbols, suggested they were a method of communication for hunter-gatherers, according to a study published Thursday in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal.
The markings, when closely associated with animal images, appeared to represent month numbers on a lunar calendar and helped communicate the animals’ reproductive cycles, according to the study.
Researchers have referred to the markings, which appear in more than 600 Ice Age images, as part of a proto-writing system, or a system that communicates information through markings.
The study comes after furniture restorer Ben Bacon spent “several hours” researching patterns online and at the British Library, the BBC reported, as he searched for repeating patterns.
Bacon noted that a Y-shaped sign in the selected drawings could symbolize birth because it showed a line growing from another line, according to the BBC.
He then began working with professors at Durham University and University College London who found information embedded in markings that, until the study, archaeologists believed “retained some kind of information but did not know their specific meaning.” a press release. .
Paul Pettitt, an archaeologist at Durham University, said he was glad he took Bacon seriously after contacting him, according to The Guardian.
“The results show that Ice Age hunter-gatherers were the first to use a systemic calendar and signs to record information about major ecological events in that calendar,” Pettitt said.
“We are able to demonstrate that these people – who left a spectacular artistic legacy in the caves of [France’s] Lascaux is [Spain’s] Altamira – also left behind an early record that would eventually become common among our species.”
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In an interview with CNN, Alistair Pike, a professor of archaeological sciences at the University of Southampton who is not affiliated with the study, compared the search for meaning in Paleolithic rock art to finding a needle in a haystack.
″[This] The study is the most compelling evidence to date of the systematic significance of the association of dots, lines and symbols with animals,” said Pike.
Bacon said the people responsible for the drawings thousands of years ago feel “suddenly much closer” to him, The Guardian reported.
“As we delve deeper into their world, what we’re discovering is that these ancient ancestors are much more like us than we previously thought,” Bacon said.
“What we hope, and the initial work is promising, is that unlocking more parts of the proto-writing system will allow us to understand what information our ancestors valued.”
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