Paleolithic cave paintings of animals are actually star charts encoding the precession of the equinoxes, comet events and meteor strikes, according to a new scientific study.
"Cave paintings 40,000 years old reveal the use of complex astronomy, a scientific study concluded. Some of the world’s oldest cave paintings have revealed how ancient people had relatively advanced knowledge of astronomy.
Animal symbols represent star constellations in the night sky, and are used to mark dates and events such as comet strikes, analysis from the University of Edinburgh suggests.
Early cave art shows that people had an advanced knowledge of the night sky in the last ice age. Intellectually, they were hardly different from us today. A new scientific study revealed that humans had a sophisticated knowledge of stars and constellations more than 40,000 years ago.
Scientists have revealed that ancient humans tracked the passage of time by watching how stars change positions in the sky. The ancient works of art, found in many places in Europe, are not simply representations of wild animals, as previously thought. Instead, animal symbols represent constellations of stars in the night sky. They are used to represent dates, marking events like asteroid collisions, explains a new study published by the University of Edinburgh.
Scientists suggest that ancient peoples perfectly understood the effect caused by the gradual change in the Earth’s axis of rotation. The discovery of this phenomenon, called the precession of the equinoxes, was previously credited to the ancient Greeks.
...Scientists concluded that these incredible cave paintings are clear evidence that ancient humans practiced a sophisticated method of tracking time based on astronomical calculations. All of this, although the cave paintings were separated in time by tens of thousands of years."
More details: [mysteriesrunsolved.com]
Deep
"Cave paintings 40,000 years old reveal the use of complex astronomy, a scientific study concluded. Some of the world’s oldest cave paintings have revealed how ancient people had relatively advanced knowledge of astronomy.
Animal symbols represent star constellations in the night sky, and are used to mark dates and events such as comet strikes, analysis from the University of Edinburgh suggests.
Early cave art shows that people had an advanced knowledge of the night sky in the last ice age. Intellectually, they were hardly different from us today. A new scientific study revealed that humans had a sophisticated knowledge of stars and constellations more than 40,000 years ago.
Scientists have revealed that ancient humans tracked the passage of time by watching how stars change positions in the sky. The ancient works of art, found in many places in Europe, are not simply representations of wild animals, as previously thought. Instead, animal symbols represent constellations of stars in the night sky. They are used to represent dates, marking events like asteroid collisions, explains a new study published by the University of Edinburgh.
Scientists suggest that ancient peoples perfectly understood the effect caused by the gradual change in the Earth’s axis of rotation. The discovery of this phenomenon, called the precession of the equinoxes, was previously credited to the ancient Greeks.
...Scientists concluded that these incredible cave paintings are clear evidence that ancient humans practiced a sophisticated method of tracking time based on astronomical calculations. All of this, although the cave paintings were separated in time by tens of thousands of years."
More details: [mysteriesrunsolved.com]
Deep