Stone Age drawings showed Lunar calendar?

[Elckerlyc]

How can certain times year be a "full moon period"? The lunar year is only 354 days long.

Sorry, careless phrasing. I meant the period between mid Dec and mid Jan is more or less the same length as a lunar month, ca 29 days. When you live by a lunar calendar that's a considerable time-span.

 

[Matteo]

My memory has failed me, I'm sure I've read about Palaeolithic people plotting equinoxs but I can't think where. I have a feeling it's not an actual paper, but a mention in a book discussing more general issues (so any paper should be cited, I suppose).

I'll have to check my books and some papers I've printed off over the years - though a couple of years back I had a (wife imposed) clear-out so the pile is up in the attic.

In the paper mentioned here, the authors accept that the "bonne saison" (i.e., their start date) can vary by several weeks between Northern and Southern Europe but don't go into any detail how they account for that - though I assume it's in their statistical analysis. However, they don't discuss that "spring" can also vary from year to year.

There is also the question how the painter knew how may dots/dashes to mark - though I suppose they could have been added month by month, or when the mating/birth occured.

 

[Wayne Mack]

In general, I find it to be the simpler explanation to only rely on a lunar month than to need both a solar calendar and a lunar month.

The winter and summer solstices, I feel, are much more observable than the spring and fall equinoxes. The solstice represents a change in direction of the sunrise and sunsets as they traverse the horizon. The equinoxes are merely the halfway points between the two and there does not seem to be any unique characteristic associated with the point. Determining the equinox would require the counting of days and this appears to be lacking in the cave paintings.

The paper, as I recall, does address both the points of the dots representing days and of the starting point being midwinter. Calibration in lunar months does not align with the proposal of breeding cycles. I suspect that using the spring equinox as the starting point would show the same lack of alignment.

I agree that the paper makes some rather large, unsupported assumptions. I am especially concerned by the assumption that a group that relied on drawings of animals would also have an abstract symbol, Y, to represent birth. And though statistical correlation does not constitute proof, I also note that it fails to disprove the hypothesis. And failure to disprove is usually the best one can expect from scientific theories.

 

[Cthulhu.Science]

In general, I find it to be the simpler explanation to only rely on a lunar month than to need both a solar calendar and a lunar month.

The winter and summer solstices, I feel, are much more observable than the spring and fall equinoxes. The solstice represents a change in direction of the sunrise and sunsets as they traverse the horizon. The equinoxes are merely the halfway points between the two and there does not seem to be any unique characteristic associated with the point. Determining the equinox would require the counting of days and this appears to be lacking in the cave paintings.

The paper, as I recall, does address both the points of the dots representing days and of the starting point being midwinter. Calibration in lunar months does not align with the proposal of breeding cycles. I suspect that using the spring equinox as the starting point would show the same lack of alignment.

I agree that the paper makes some rather large, unsupported assumptions. I am especially concerned by the assumption that a group that relied on drawings of animals would also have an abstract symbol, Y, to represent birth. And though statistical correlation does not constitute proof, I also note that it fails to disprove the hypothesis. And failure to disprove is usually the best one can expect from scientific theories.

Finding the equinox was pretty common among ancient peoples. Here is a paper on it which, appears to be from 1943.

Here is an article of 11 stone age sites that mark the equinox.

In college I took a class where we learned to find any time of year using a sun dial. This was while computers were really expensive and so we learned to determine shadows using math. The point is that the Equinox is just as easy as the solstices if you have someone showing you why it is just as easy.

 

[Swank]

Finding the equinox was pretty common among ancient peoples. Here is a paper on it which, appears to be from 1943.

Here is an article of 11 stone age sites that mark the equinox.

In college I took a class where we learned to find any time of year using a sun dial. This was while computers were really expensive and so we learned to determine shadows using math. The point is that the Equinox is just as easy as the solstices if you have someone showing you why it is just as easy.

Sure, ancient people that were around the same location every day. Migratory hunter gatherers wouldn't have had daily access to a measuring site.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Sure, ancient people that were around the same location every day. Migratory hunter gatherers wouldn't have had daily access to a measuring site.

It was long presumed that, before farming, people were essentially migratory. However, excavations at Scar Carr, a Mesolithic site in the UK, have revealed that they could keep permanent camps. At least in some instances, only some of the group may have gone out on long-term hunting expeditions and the rest stayed at a home base. The real problem for us is that Mesolithic camps are rarely preserved, and also that archaeology is full of assumptions/opinions about how we used to live which are simply repeated - even in the absence of any kind of evidence.

 

[Matteo]

I'm perfectly willing to admit they were aware of, and/or measured in, lunar cycles as they are a pretty obvious "clock" (though I am still skeptical that's what the dots/dashes represent). My problem is with the bonne saison start date.

The summer solstice is also problematical as it falls a good month after the date used in the paper - and so would not fit the hypothosis.

Either way, the paper does not suggest the people were migratory - only hunter-gatherers. The fact that they were using caves at least suggests they were (relatively) fixed in one location. Therefore, the possibility of plotting equinoxes/solstices was there.

Didn't have the chance to check through my stuff last night (had been a long day) but the more I think of it, the more I'm convinced I didn't read any paper - I would remember more detail. I'm starting to think it's one of the many in the pile (of geology/palaeontology/pre-history) that I never got around to actually reading - I just remember the title or abstract.

 

[Dave]

archaeology is full of assumptions/opinions about how we used to live which are simply repeated - even in the absence of any kind of evidence.

That same can be said for History as a whole. Even when contrary evidence is discovered, such as an account written in some contemporary manuscript, it can take ages to change those assumptions/opinions, depending on the standing/eminence of the historian who originally made them. I think that it is great that we can use the scientific method to prove statistically that we had excellent timekeeping, and also that we used Henge sites to accurately measure time. It explains why we spent so much time and effort in building so many Henges in the Neolithic. If the statistics or dates used in the research are problematic then peer review will flag that up.

Some of the large mammals we hunted would be migratory too, but one theory of why we began keeping permanent camps is the discovery/invention of brewing. That required equipment with a semi-permanent location even before farming did.

 

[CupofJoe]

Some of the large mammals we hunted would be migratory too, but one theory of why we began keeping permanent camps is the discovery/invention of brewing. That required equipment with a semi-permanent location even before farming did.

And it has been down hill ever since...

 

[Wayne Mack]

Finding the equinox was pretty common among ancient peoples. Here is a paper on it which, appears to be from 1943.

Here is an article of 11 stone age sites that mark the equinox.

In college I took a class where we learned to find any time of year using a sun dial. This was while computers were really expensive and so we learned to determine shadows using math. The point is that the Equinox is just as easy as the solstices if you have someone showing you why it is just as easy.

I believe that the original article calls the drawings a 20,000 year-old mystery and the second article that follows specifies 21,500 years ago or 18,000-19,500 BCE. I didn't check all of them, but these structures implementing solar clocks are more recent. Chichen Itza is noted as being built 1,000 CE, while Stonehenge was initially constructed about 9,000 years ago, around 7,000 BCE.

I believe that the second article makes a case for the start of counting lunar months to be bonne saison, approximately May 1. The spring equinox, however, occurs mid-March. If the equinox was used as the starting point, the numbers in Table 2 would be offset by 1-2.

 

[Swank]

It was long presumed that, before farming, people were essentially migratory. However, excavations at Scar Carr, a Mesolithic site in the UK, have revealed that they could keep permanent camps. At least in some instances, only some of the group may have gone out on long-term hunting expeditions and the rest stayed at a home base. The real problem for us is that Mesolithic camps are rarely preserved, and also that archaeology is full of assumptions/opinions about how we used to live which are simply repeated - even in the absence of any kind of evidence.

Given that the amount of wild growing plants available to eat are relatively small everywhere that isn't a jungle, it doesn't seem like an entirely crazy theory. But even if a group retains a 'home base' of operations, is that area continuously occupied by people that are making astronomical observations?

The problem with equinoxes or solstices are that they are not divisible by lunar months and they require the observer to make counts that go into the hundreds. Many primitive societies don't develop that ability to document large numbers or do arithmetic with them. So the observation of the solstice and the astronomical prediction of it's arrival through observation are one thing, but tying those observations back into a calendar are a very different problem. In other words, do we really expect that these people knew that some migration would happen 43 days before an equinox, and were capable of doing that math? Lunar months are much easier to count in one's head.

 

[JunkMonkey]

How can certain times year be a "full moon period"? The lunar year is only 354 days long.

I think he meant mid December to mid January is 30 ish days - time for the moon to cycle through its phases once.

 

[Dave]

I didn't check all of them, but these structures implementing solar clocks are more recent.

I think you are correct that most stone structures are much later than most cave paintings, There was a period when we went absolutely nuts about building stone henges, and that was relatively recently, but before that, we could have built wooden structures that have not survived, or found exisiting natural landscape featues that coincidentally lined up, so I don't see that as a problem.

 

[JunkMonkey]

I think you are correct that most stone structures are much later than most cave paintings, There was a period when we went absolutely nuts about building stone henges, and that was relatively recently, but before that, we could have built wooden structures that have not survived, or found exisiting natural landscape featues that coincidentally lined up, so I don't see that as a problem.

I remember someone somewhere (may have been back in the days when Horizon was worth watching) pointing out that many of the dates that could be inferred from standing stones and henges may well have been the date that (say) Orion was at it's highest in the sky... but could equally be the date of some local bigwigs birthday. "I paid to ship these bloody huge stones all the way from Wales I want this henge to mark MY birthday! Or else!" - much in the same way as Renaissance benefactors got their portraits worked into any paintings for which they laid out the dosh.

 

[THX1138]

One thing that would be good to do would be to map all of the caves that have these drawings and then pick one animal type, like deer, and plot the migration patterns. Then relook at the drawings themselves and identify the individual drawing styles and clues in order to separate one tribe/clan from another. The 'Us' as opposed to 'Them'. Then do the same for each of the other animals one at a time.

This would give more information regarding the tribes/clans own pattern of movements and interactions with others as well as hunting/gathering behaviors. Then re-examine the drawings and lunar markings to see if there is also a connection to tribal/clan interaction. I could see this happening in the lunar cycles pre and during mammoth mating season. The best time to join together for a successful hunt.

 

[Yozh]

Knowing exact, numbered dates was probably not useful, but knowing the equinoxes/solstices (which are easily observable at European latitudes) to fix the year, and then using moon cycles to plot progress between the solar fixed points would give people enough of a framework to predict or describe certain annual events. E.g. knowing to expect certain birds to arrive in the third moon cycle after the winter solstice.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

I've been researching all this recently for a book. My feeling is that lunar+solar calendars are recent in comparison with the length of Ice Age human existence, e.g. Warren Field, which is about 8000BC. Hunter-gatherers (really, we should be calling them gatherer-hunters, as the former food source for the vast majority of prehistoric peoples is much more important) would certainly have recognised the Moon as a celestial timekeeper. They wouldn't particularly have needed to know about equinoxes, but they did need a general comprehension of natural history, into which midwinter, midsummer etc would have fed.
If you look for instance at the Lascaux cave paintings, the three main species depicted, aurochs bull, deer and horse, are all depicted how they appear in their mating season. So there would have been generalised connections in their minds, passed on orally down the generations, between natural events and themselves.

 

[Matteo]

So...I dug out the paper I was looking for. It shows convincing evidence that Palaeolithic people were able to plot the solstices and equinoxes. Basically, the orientation of cave entrances align with the rising and setting of the sun at those times - or at least those examined in France. It seems that this is restricted to caves that were decorated (non-decorated caves do not show alignment) which the author claims were uninhabited - so they held some sort of special significance.

This does not disprove the theory in the paper in the original post of course, but to my mind it does put some doubt on the bonne saison reference point.

And after a bit of hunting around on the interweb, I found the paper: https://www.ccsp.it/web/INFOCCSP/VCS storico/vcs2007pdf/Jègues-Wolkiewiez.pdf

 

[Wayne Mack]

So...I dug out the paper I was looking for. It shows convincing evidence that Palaeolithic people were able to plot the solstices and equinoxes. Basically, the orientation of cave entrances align with the rising and setting of the sun at those times - or at least those examined in France. It seems that this is restricted to caves that were decorated (non-decorated caves do not show alignment) which the author claims were uninhabited - so they held some sort of special significance.

This does not disprove the theory in the paper in the original post of course, but to my mind it does put some doubt on the bonne saison reference point.

And after a bit of hunting around on the interweb, I found the paper: https://www.ccsp.it/web/INFOCCSP/VCS storico/vcs2007pdf/Jègues-Wolkiewiez.pdf

If one accepts that the timing is in lunar months and to tracks the breeding cycles of animals, using a solar calendar requires selecting a starting reference (late April or early May) of approximately halfway between the spring equinox (mid-March) and the summer solstice (mid-June). It seems like a far simpler assumption to use some other natural event as time zero.

Of the various conjectures in the article, assuming that the dots and slashes represent lunar months seems to be the best supported. I can see how the circles could be pictographic representations of a full moon. Having a range of 1-13 with 1 and 13 showing overlap coincides with lunar months overlaid on an actual year. The Y being an abstract symbol to represent birth seems to be a little bit of a reach for a people recording animals with readily recognized pictures. Given that the lunar cycle counts seem to be repeating, assumption of a yearly restart point seems logical. The selection of time zero does seem a little suspect to make the alignment with animal breeding cycles work, but the statistical analysis does show alignment, i.e., the analysis fails to disprove the hypothesis.

Given the predicted time zero where counting lunar months is restarted, it does appear aligned with readily apparent physical changes in the environment--melting ice and the start of the growing season. This seems to require fewer additional assumptions, such as the understanding of a solar calendar (which does not appear to be represented in the drawings) and then the use of a somewhat obscure point within the solar calendar to restart the counting of lunar months. Including a solar calendar appears to bring in more complications than it solves.

 

[Elckerlyc]

Does the paper deal with the fact that a (synodic) lunar calendar does not align with the solar calendar? One lunar month is about 29.5 days, times 12 makes 354 days. Not 365. So each new year your calendar is somewhat off when you start 'counting moons'.
Every year the start of spring can vary, let's say 14 days. So, combined it all adds up to a rather dubious system for keeping track of your hunting schedule.