Are Cave Paintings Calendars?
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- čas přidán 6. 01. 2023
- A recent study in archaeology suggests a calendar has been deciphered from the Upper Palaeolithic, and I wanna talk about it!
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Article (it's open access): www.cambridge.org/core/journa...
Images:
flickr.com/photos/cvalette/33...
www.britishmuseum.org/collect...
www.bradshawfoundation.com/ni...
www.britishmuseum.org/collect...
www.britishmuseum.org/collect...
archeologie.culture.gouv.fr/l...
www.britishmuseum.org/collect...
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
pixabay.com/photos/bison-cave...
www.britishmuseum.org/collect...
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...
pixabay.com/photos/the-alps-s...
pixabay.com/photos/nature-vie...
pixabay.com/photos/veal-calf-...
www.britishmuseum.org/collect...
pixabay.com/photos/river-wint...
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Oh come on everybody knows that those dots actually signify the painter's ranking of that animal on their favourite animal scale. My primary sources are as follows:
Trust me bro.
Lmao
Maybe those marks were made to see if the pigments or carving tools were working properly? Or maybe in some caves it was a form of identification, like "I am the 6th painter to leave my mark here" or something. Who knows!
I see graffiti ethics stretch all the way back to the Stone Age
It could have also been used to show when the painting was made in regards to the month ...
Like this statuette of a raindeer was made in the 11th month , no correlation with raindeers ,
Or maybe even how many years it had lasted ...
We'll likely never know
100th like!
I did a guided tour of Creswell Crags in Derbyshire, UK a few years ago, which has the best known of Britain's few examples of Paleolithic rock art. The guide actually pointed out 'tally' marks next to some of the animal carvings, and said that they didn't know what they represented, which I found absolutely fascinating. As I recall there were also a lot of mysterious marks a bit like the 'Y' symbol, but most weren't actually associated with the animal depictions.
It's worth remembering that a lot of caves were used by Paleolithic people for literally thousands of years- their cultures would have changed over time and some groups using them over the years would presumably not even be related to others, so it's likely that there's not a single 'correct' meaning to all Paleolithic European rock art. Even if this calendar theory isn't borne out, hopefully it'll spark some more research and debate. I don't know whether they included the Creswell Crags art in the paper- if not it'd be a potential way to enlarge the data set.
Anyway, I saw the news story about the calendar theory, and was really keen to hear informed opinions on it, so thanks for making this video.
This reminded me of the calendar of the indegenious people of north russia, the Komi, where the seasons/months are based on the activity of particular animals but also with some addition of solstices and equinoxes. Especially, the Komi in the north, mostly hunters and fishers, seemed to have more seasons that corresponded with twelve months and twelve animals, while the more agricultural Komi-Permyaks had fives seasons corresponding to specific animals
Wow. It’s a simple logical observation of nature. Our ancestors saw, they learned, they knew, they drew.
It’s beautiful and I love them.
Edit: if true
my favorite part about anthropology is that we can make statements such as “simple” but we have little to no data on how these time leeping processes were developed socially, or what their nonpragmatic use was
its just as driving a car to us seems like a normal (and to some easy and simple) but we have to remember the YEARS of knowledge and trial it took to form secure and effective rules of the road, etc. i love that everything we could deem “simple” is really anything but simple
I love how you varied your art to mimic the style of those cave paintings. It's a really nice touch!
I think there're 2 other problems with using the mark to note when a particular animal is in abundance. Firstly, they don't need to keep track of the breeding season of that many animals to develop a system to help with their memory, especially when these were already so important to their daily life. Secondly, why didn't they apply that to plants? Knowing when and where you can find berries/fruits/nuts/grains is equally important, but it is weird that they will devote so much effort to animals and ignore the plants.
Maybe they had an alternate system for tracking plants, like keeping a certain number of the actual seeds?
@@MisterCynic18 what a genius, that's a great hypothesis
This proves that paleolithic daykeeping is way too complex for anthropocene smoothbrains to understand 😝
Cool vid!!
My lack of understanding shames my ancestors v_v
This reminded me of some cool carvings i saw once at the tomb of the otters in Orkney, where there were carivings that looked like the letter V everywhere. One of the theories was that, because otters seemed to play some sort of significance to the people buried here, the V was supposed to be the shape of the wake that otters left when they traveled through the water. Again, like u say its hard to spectualte about the past and really anything couldve been true, but i do think its cool how many theories about people of the past link them so strongly to nature and the things around them.
The fact that it starts in may remained me of old Polish text where in telling the age of someone instead of using years they were using springs like a 17 years old would be 17 springs old
Some of then could just be the recordings of when it was painted as well
Any chance you make more videos? Hope you are doing well and continuing to be creative!
reminds me of when people thought a knife being kept out of children's reach was instead to gain power to it from the gods, or people didn't know what a little walled off area in a floor was for until shown modern people keeping their chicken in it (apologies if im misremembering these situations), i feel like as an artist this just feels like additional artistic liberties and perhaps it's being read into a bit much. Not to say there can't be more complexity to cave carvings or drawings, I'm sure people back then had their own clever bits of shared information, but it almost feels like "because it looks good" is being left out of a possibility.
It's an interesting idea but honestly I usually lean into the idea of "the simplest idea is usually the right one" and I always assumed the dogs/lines were just counting of days in a shelter, number of kills or hunts or such, etc. I'm a bit averse to giving huge time-keeping meaning to what could just be "hey, I made a record that I killed deer here, look how many I killed" or even just scribbles.
Hope you're well! Miss your videos alot
That’s a really cool system! Even if it isn’t real it could be great for a conculture!
I actually know Ben Bacon, the man who made the discovery about Cave paintings containing lunar calendars. He is an avid Badminton player and played with him for nearly a decade. Really good video btw.
I'm no archeologists or any scientists but I can see how ancient people would base the first calendars on the Moon, through some shower thoughts and layman thinking. You can look at the Moon, but not the Sun. You would just be blinded if you were to stare at that giant flaming ball of light in the sky. The Moon is easier to see and thus record, so a lunar calendar based on months and completely disregarding the Sun and year cycles could have risen as the first calendars. Eventually one would notice that the Sun has some sort of a cycle but by mostly observing it when it's setting or rising, the only times you can actually stare at the Sun. I also think this might be the very distant and underlining reason for why in ancient history many calendars like the Julian calendar have the day start at sunset and not on midnight like we're used to today. Essentially two different calendar system were created, one would be much older (presumably lunar) and the other would come about a bit or much later, and people eventually realize the drift both systems have with each other leading to the invention of certain mathematical concepts and formulas in antiquity to create a more accurate calendar even though they will inevitably drift no matter how much effort you put in to correct them through time. Even our current, universal atom-precise Gregorian-based calendar kept in check by atomic clocks will drift in comparison to the world we see, because we currently don't take in account the Precession of Equinoxes, so in many thousands of years Summer can start in November for example.
You don't need to look directly at the sun to see it, and I'm 99% they would've at the very least used it's shadows to tell the time of day. Just by doing that consistently for a year they'd notice the sun gets higher or lower based on seasons. I'd imagine they would use both lunar and solar in tandem until somebody realized the drift problem. But then again maybe they didn't have any need for such precision and got along fine despite it
its a beautiful concept, but i agree with you, im skeptical. what i wonder is why would this information need to be recorded? i feel like this is the sort of thing that can be easily passed on orally, especially considering societies with oral traditions tend to have stronger memory. the time keeping aspect is intriguing tho, my first thought when you brought up the marks in animals was that was the date an animal was killed... kind of an ancient experiration date system 😅
7:04 I feel so simple for failing to consider this. Thank you for making such a great video!
Super cool stuff, great work!
Thank you! :D
Every time you release a new video, I thank the CZcams algorithm for having sent your channel my way. This is so cool!
love your channel d- (thumbs up emoticon)
Your videos are such high quality, I can tell you're going to pick up a good audience!
This is fascinating.
Man, these videos are great, the information conveyed is really cool, but honestly, I'm mostly here for the soothing voice!
Hope you make many more videos Nakari!
I know that this has nothing to do with the video, but I love that in the background of the first image you use, the one with the medieval scholar, you a potted vegetable lamb.
Very good video!
Very cool
Happy new year god bless
I can't help but think that the dot carving around 1:30 (Abri Blanchard, ~32,000 BP) looks like one of those photos of a moon's progress through the sky over a year (an Analemma, my quick google tells me).
It makes perfect sense, they were as inteligent as us, why would they not have a deeper, more practical use for the cave paintings.
Yeah, and I think this is a good step to get people thinking about Palaeolithic people having abstract thoughts and wanting to convey them! Just not sold on this particular explanation, but I do think they were smart enough for it :P
Benefits of being an archaeology student, being in the loop on new papers and such :3
Tbh, a news article about it got posted in my Discord 😅 (thanks, Chango!)
@@NakariSpeardane fair enough lol
How this video have only 7600 views 😅 (CZcams algorithm need to recommend it to the commoners we are lol)
wouldn't a calendar need to be in a more accessible place then were many of these paintings are found? Deep inside the cave, far from the living areas and often difficult to access.
That's true, but we don't really know how much art would have been in more easily accessible areas or outside cause it would be so much more likely to be destroyed. Some was also on portable things like carved onto bones or antlered, or flat bits of stone, so those could have been carried around. Plus these are only the physical manifestations of something people would have held in their mind!
What are your credentials?
Nah what is that owo??? in the description
I just came here for calendars
OWO?!?!
owo
So, some artifacts survived for over 10,000 years, were found by archaeologists, sketched and catalogued, only to be lost afterward? Incredible. How do you just lose irreplaceable relics like that?? You had one job, bruh.
U dead?