A calendar used to record significant events, both terrestrial and celestial. 10,000 earlier than it was previously believed such things came into use. 20,000 years old. Deep in the last Ice Age, which ended 10,000 years ago.
Amateur archaeologist uncovers ice age ‘writing’ system
A primitive writing system used by ice age hunter-gatherers appears to have been uncovered by an amateur archaeologist, who concluded that the 20,000-year-old markings were a form of lunar calendar.
The research suggests cave drawings were not only a form of artistic expression but also used to record sophisticated information about the timing of animals’ reproductive cycles.
Ben Bacon spent countless hours trying to decode the “proto-writing” system, which is believed to predate other equivalent record-keeping systems by at least 10,000 years.
He approached a team of academics with his theory and they encouraged him to pursue it, despite him being “effectively a person off the street”, he said.
Bacon collaborated with a team, including two professors from Durham University and one from University College London, to publish a paper in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal.
Prof Paul Pettitt, an archaeologist at Durham University, said he was “glad he took it seriously” when Bacon contacted him. “The results show that ice age hunter-gatherers were the first to use a systemic calendar and marks to record information about major ecological events within that calendar,” he said.
Cave paintings of species such as reindeer, fish and now extinct cattle called aurochs and bison have been found across Europe. Alongside these images, sequences of dots and other marks have been found in more than 600 ice age images on cave walls and portable objects across Europe. Archaeologists have long believed these markings had meaning but no one had deciphered them.
Bacon set out to decode these, accessing previous research and cave art imagery at the British Library and searching for recurrent patterns, saying that it was “surreal” to be figuring out what people were saying 20,000 years ago.