20,000-Year-Old Cave Paintings May Represent the First Use of a Calendar System to Pass on Survival Information

Ben Bacon, a London furniture restorer, solved a long-standing riddle about the meaning of markings seen in cave paintings around Europe. Among the marking are a line, a dot, and a symbol that looks like the letter "Y." These mysterious markings nearly exist alongside cave paintings of animals, which confounded researchers since they first found them in the 1800s.

Archaeologists recognized the marks but had no idea what they meant. Explorer's Web reports that these symbols were coupled with surrounding animal paintings, representing complex information about the species such as wild horses, deer, cattle, and mammoths. They have been around for at least 20,000 years.

(Photo : PHILIPPE LOPEZ/AFP via Getty Images)
Paintings are seen in the Lascaux cave replica on May 12, 2012 in Montignac, during preparations for its reopening following a closure as part of restrictions aimed at curbing the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic.

A 'Person Off the Street' Solves Ice Age Mystery

Bacon is a hobbyist archaeologist who decided to decode the meaning behind these mysterious markings. As per BBC News, he spent hours searching the internet and in the British Library to look for information about cave paintings and identify repeat patterns in cave paintings.

He eventually realized that the Y form may be a sign for "giving birth." It was merely a small leap from there to the conclusion that the dot and vertical line symbols may represent lunar months.

Bacon presented his ideas to lecturers at Durham University and University College London. One of the researchers told BBC News that they chose to listen to this "person off the street" and collaborated to figure out the life cycles of modern animals that are most comparable to the ones scribbled on Europe's cave walls.

Their results supported Bacon's hypotheses in the same way that the meaning of any 20,000-year-old writing system can be confirmed.

Bacon and the scientists wrote in their paper. titled "An Upper Palaeolithic Proto-writing System and Phenological Calendar" published in Cambridge Archaeological Journal, that the location of the "Y" inside a series of marks shows the month of birth, an ordinal representation of numbers as opposed to the cardinal representation used in tallies.

They added that the data indicate that the purpose of this system is to associate animals with the calendar information to record and convert season behavioral information to help Ice Age humans hunt with maximum effectiveness.

READ ALSO: Australia's Oldest Rock Painting of Kangaroo Found To Be 17,000-Year-Old Thru Radiocarbon Dating

Ice Age Hunter-gatherers Were the First To Use a Systematic Calendar

Science Alert reported that the finding demonstrates that these Ice Age hunter-gatherers were not only living day to day but were also keeping records of previous occurrences to aid them in the future, even if the calendar system they used here has since fallen out of use.

University College London mathematician Tony Freeth explained that lunar calendars are challenging because they are slightly under twelve and a half months in a year, which does not fit into a year. That is why today's calendar almost completely lost all connection to genuine lunar months.

However, not everyone is convinced by the conclusion about the meaning of the markings found in the cave paintings that they relate to the mating season or that it was the earliest writing system. Even the team said that these markings are best thought of as an intermediary step between a writing system and a simpler notation.

Writing as most people know it, began in the Sumer region in Mesopotamia around 3,300 BCE, which took the form of pictographic shapes as letters. But archaeologist Paul Pettitt from Durham University said in a press release that the study shows that hunters in the Upper Palaeolithic era were the first to use a systemic calendar and marks to record survival information.

RELATED ARTICLE: Oldest Cave Painting: 43,000-Year-Old Warty Pig Cave Painting was Discovered in Indonesia

Check out more news and information on Archaeology in Science Times.