{"id":594170,"date":"2023-01-05T05:49:34","date_gmt":"2023-01-05T11:49:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.sellorbuyhomefast.com\/index.php\/2023\/01\/05\/londoner-solves-20k-year-ice-age-drawings-mystery\/"},"modified":"2023-01-05T05:49:34","modified_gmt":"2023-01-05T11:49:34","slug":"londoner-solves-20k-year-ice-age-drawings-mystery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2023\/01\/05\/londoner-solves-20k-year-ice-age-drawings-mystery\/","title":{"rendered":"Londoner solves 20k-year Ice Age drawings mystery"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Furniture<\/picture><\/span>Image source, <\/span>Durham University\/PA<\/span><\/p>

Image caption, <\/span><\/p>\n

Furniture conservator Ben Bacon made the initial discovery<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

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A London furniture conservator has been credited with a crucial discovery that has helped understand why Ice Age hunter-gatherers drew cave paintings.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Ben Bacon analysed 20,000-year-old markings on the drawings, concluding they could refer to a lunar calendar. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It led to a specialist team proving early Europeans made notes about the timing of animals’ reproductive cycles. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Mr Bacon said it was “surreal” to work out for the first time what hunter-gatherers were saying.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Cave paintings of animals such as reindeer, fish and cattle have been found in caves across Europe. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But archaeologists had been stumped by the meaning of dots and other marks on the paintings. So Mr Bacon decided he would try and decode them. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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<\/span><\/span>Image source, <\/span> Henri Breuli\/Durham University\/PA Wire<\/span><\/p>

Image caption, <\/span><\/p>\n

Dots like these from 23,000 years ago helped Ice Age hunter-gatherers survive<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

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He spent numerous hours on the internet and in the British Library consulting pictures of cave paintings and “amassed as much data as possible and began looking for repeating patterns”. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In particular, he examined a ‘Y’ sign on some paintings, which he felt might be a symbol for “giving birth” because it showed one line growing out from another.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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<\/span><\/span>Image source, <\/span>Neanderthal Museum, Mettmann\/Durham University\/PA <\/span><\/p>

Image caption, <\/span><\/p>\n

These hand stencils and wild horses were created about 30,000 years ago<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

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With his research advancing, he brought in friends and senior academics. They encouraged him to continue with his investigations despite Mr Bacon being “effectively a person off the street”. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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He collaborated with a team including two professors from Durham University and one from University College London and, by working out the birth cycles of similar present-day animals, they deduced that the number of marks on the cave paintings was a record, by lunar month, of the animals’ mating seasons. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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<\/span><\/span>Image source, <\/span>Berenguer, M\/Durham University\/PA Wire<\/span><\/p>

Image caption, <\/span><\/p>\n

Dots and other markings were used to record animals’ reproductive cycles<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

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The team’s findings were published in the Cambridge Archeological Journal.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Prof Paul Pettitt, of Durham University, said he was “glad he took it seriously” when Mr Bacon contacted him. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“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.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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<\/span><\/span>Image source, <\/span>Neanderthal Museum, Mettmann\/Durham University\/PA <\/span><\/p>

Image caption, <\/span><\/p>\n

These drawings and markings were made 15,000 years ago<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

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He added: “In turn, we’re able to show that these people, who left a legacy of spectacular art in the caves of Lascaux [in France] and Altamira [in Spain], also left a record of early timekeeping that would eventually become commonplace among our species.” <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Mr Bacon said our ancestors were “a lot more like us than we had previously thought. These people, separated from us by many millennia, are suddenly a lot closer”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Follow BBC London on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter <\/a>and Instagram<\/a>. Send your story ideas to he************<\/span>@****<\/span>co.uk<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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More on this story<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n<\/section>\n
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Related Topics<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read More<\/a>
\n Gaylene Guillemette<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Image source, Durham University\/PAImage caption, Furniture conservator Ben Bacon made the initial discoveryA London furniture conservator has been credited with a crucial discovery that has helped understand why Ice Age hunter-gatherers drew cave paintings.Ben Bacon analysed 20,000-year-old markings on the drawings, concluding they could refer to a lunar calendar. It led to a specialist team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":594171,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[117650,24153,46],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-594170","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-londoner","8":"category-solves","9":"category-technology"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=594170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594170\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/594171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=594170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=594170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=594170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}