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A: Palaeolithic European Constellations
1: Ice-age star maps?
A Great Bull painted image (#18 (fourth bull), main hall, right wall) in the "Hall of Bulls" in the Lascaux cave in France.
The Lascaux cave in southwest France was discovered by children in 1940. Upper Palaeolithic cave art was first discovered in 1856 in the cave of Niaux in France. Palaeolithic cave art remained largely ignored, even suspected by some as a hoax because of its sophistication, until the first decade of the 20th-century. The discovery of the Altimara cave in northern Spain in 1879 initiated 15 years of controversy before the acceptance of the cave paintings as Paleolithic art.
Some of the most splendid Paleolithic cave art locations are Lascaux (discovered in 1940), Altamira (discovered in 1879 and only fully explored in the 1950s), Chauvet (near Marseilles) (discovered in 1994), and the (now) underwater cave Cosquer (also near Marseilles) (discovered in 1991).
The Lascaux cave contains some 600 paintings and 1500 engravings dating from the Palaeolithic Period. The very few symbols are limited to isolated or grouped dots (mostly black) and to variously coloured dashes. The animals depicted on the cave wall are horses, bulls, and deer. The "Hall of Bulls" mural is dated circa 15,000 BCE. (The radiocarbon dating of charcoal recovered from the cave floor indicates occupancy circa 15,000 BCE to 14,000 BCE.) Lascaux's Hall of Bulls is approximately 18.5 metres long, 7 metres wide, and 6.5 metres high. The largest painted bulls are approximately 6 metres long. Several researchers have offered an astronomical interpretation of Great Bull #18. (The bulls are actually aurochs, a large species of wild cattle.)
There are 2 sets of painted dots closely associated with this bull. One set of dots is placed above the shoulder of the bull and the other set of V-shaped dots are located on the bull's face. Also, there is a row of 4 painted dots to the left of this bull.
The Spanish researcher Luz Antequera Congregado in her doctoral thesis "Arte y astronomia: evolución de los dibujos de las constelaciones" (1992) first set out the astronomical interpretation that the dots above the shoulder of the bull depict the Pleiades open star cluster and the dots on the bull's face depict the Hyades open star cluster. In her later paper "Altamira: Astronomía y religión en el Paleolitico" (1994) she interpreted the row of 4 dots to the left of Great Bull #18 as the stars of the belt of the constellation Orion. (Luz Antequera Congregado has also investigated Palaeolithic art in other European caves from an astronomical perspective. See her essay: "Practicas Astronomicas en la Prehistoria de la Peninsula Iberica y los Archichipielagos Balear y Canario" (1994).)
The American dentist and pseudo-nutritionist Weston Price (1870-1948) (at a date that I have not yet been able to identify) also made the identification of 10 painted dots on a Neanderthal cave painting with the Pleiades. (However, there is no indication of any firm methodology being used. The identification was linked to his assertions of the benefits of early human diets - keen eyesight being one of them.)
Some people believe that the #18 Lascaux auroch with the two associated sets of dots represents the constellation Taurus. This idea was firmly set out by the American college teacher Frank Edge in his 35-page booklet "Aurochs in the Sky" (1995) and later article "Taurus in Lascaux" (1997). (He began his studies in this area in 1991.) Frank Edge holds that at least one of the Great Bull images (#18) in the "Hall of Bulls" in the Lascaux cave can be identified as celestial by the simple comparison of the associated dot markings with two particular star groupings as they were viewed on the horizon circa 15,000 BCE. Specifically that a group of 6 dots painted above the shoulder of auroch #18 represents the Pleiades open star cluster, and that another group of V-shaped dots painted on the auroch's face represents the Hyades open star cluster.
The German scholar Michael Rappenglück, University of Munich, believes the art of the Lascaux cave not only involves the depiction of constellations but is also a cosmographic depiction by Palaeolithic shamans. His idea that the Pleiades were depicted in the Lascaux cave were first presented at an astronomy conference in 1996 and later published in his essay "The Pleiades in the "Salle des Taureaux" Grotte des Lascaux" (1997). (He has worked on the subject of "Paleoscience" since 1984.) His ideas that the Lascaux cave paintings depict shamanistic cosmography were first set out in his doctoral thesis "Eine Himmelskarte aus der Eiszeit?" (1998). (Michael Rappenglüeck has also investigated Palaeolithic art in other European caves from an astronomical perspective i.e., the Cueva di El Castillo in Spain. The art in this cave is dated circa 12,000 BCE.)
A somewhat recent proponent of an astronomical interpretation of the Lascaux cave paintings is the independent French researcher Chantal Jčgues-Wolkiewiez who has a PhD in Humanities. Her investigations first began in 1992 with the Chalcolithic period cave engravings in the Vallée des Merveilles. In 1998, in partnership with Jean-Michel Geneste, she began studying the caves and Paleolithic ornamented shelters in France. The particular research study was conducted in 1999-2000. From this she believes she has uncovered evidence to demonstrate that the Paleolithic painters were astronomers. At the 2000 international conference on cave art in Val Camonica, Italy she made the claim that the people who painted the Lascaux cave were astronomers and that they also painted a zodiac on the walls of the cave. ("Lascaux, View of the Magdalenian Sky." by Chantal Jčgues-Wolkiewiez (Symposium of Cave Art, Val Camonica, Italy, 2000.) The study was based on a series of astronomical measurements. They used astronomical software to recreate the night sky at Lascaux 17,000 years ago, and models of the modern Western constellations. They made measurements of the astronomical alignments of the cave paintings and also compared the outlines of the paintings in the Hall of the Bulls with the night sky in Magdelenian times. (For a (French-language) summary of her work and conclusions see: "Lascaux planetarium prehistorique?" by Pedro Lima (Science & Vie, Number 999, December, 2000.)
Interestingly, during the first decades of the 20th-century the French prehistorians Marcel Baudouin and Henri Breuil speculated about the possibility of constellations being represented in prehistoric art. During the last decades of the 20th-century they were followed by the Swiss engineer Amandus Weiss, the astronomer Heino Eelsalu, and the German art historian Marie König who considered the possibility of constellation representation in the Lascaux cave art. Also, the eccentric German ethnologist Leo Frobenius in his book Kulturgeschichte Africas (1934) conjectured that the animals painted in the Magdalenian caves of Southern France and Northern Spain represented stars. However, the main proponents remain Luz Antequera Congregado, Frank Edge, and Michael Rappenglück (and more recently Chantal Jčgues-Wolkiewiez). All were involved in independent and lengthy research prior to their first publications. Luz Antequera Congregado largely bases her ideas on the application of the art-historical approach and does not employ archaeological or astronomical analysis. Frank Edge also utilises art-historical and psychological approaches as well as simple constellation projections onto particular paintings. Michael Rappenglück applies a wider interdisciplinary methodology. Chantal Jčgues-Wolkiewiez uses multiple methods of astronomical analysis (including astronomical measurements and constellation projection).
To date none of the arguments attempting to show the existence of some sort of Palaeolithic astronomy can be considered convincing. No research into prehistoric European cave art has led to the definitive identification of astronomical information of any kind. All of the various hypotheses put forward identifying astronomy in prehistoric European cave art ultimately lack objective scientific evidence to support them. The positions of the cave drawings plus the numerous signs that exist do not appear to readily correspond to any particular stars or constellations. It is possible to 'prove' almost anything by selectively choosing sets of dots or a particular drawing. There are simply many sets of dots existing within European caves containing prehistoric art. It is more meaningful to look at the totality of drawings and signs within prehistoric caves and identify whether there are patterns which are repeated throughout different caves. There are numerous prehistoric European caves containing, overall, a large number of, and variety of, animal drawings and signs. In his recent book The Cave and the Cathedral (2009) Amir Aczel has emphasised: "It is important to adopt some form of statistical reasoning here; otherwise, anyone can claim almost anything. A systematic order must be evident in a majority of locations in order to have statistical and logical significance."
The problem of the enormous chronological gap and passage of knowledge quite accurately through some 600 generations and across cultures remains.
Many researchers have believed that the animals painted by the Ice-age hunter-gatherers at Lascaux (the Magdalenian culture) were simply those that they hunted. Certainly the animals they depicted comprise the most dangerous in the world of the Ice-age hunters and were both prey and food. The painted dots are thought by some persons to be perhaps no more than a tally of hunting kills. However, the concepts of hunting magic and hunting tallies would seem to be wrong. The hunted animal remains on the cave floor were largely reindeer yet reindeer are entirely unrepresented in the cave art. (Some recent investigations suggest that beliefs involving connection to the spirit-world, through trance and hallucination, are perhaps the key to understanding the cave paintings (including the dot patterns). See especially the remarkable book The Mind in the Cave by David Lewis-Williams (2002).) Professor R. Dale Guthrie (Emeritus Professor in the Institute of Arctic Biology at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks; and author of The Nature of Paleolithic Art) proposed in 2006 that the art was largely produced by adolescent males and is somewhat akin to modern teen graffiti.
Appendix
There is also archaeological evidence that the big dipper stars were anciently recognised as a constellation. In her 1954 article on "Astronomy in Primitive Religion." (The Journal of Bible and Religion, Volume 22, Number 3, July, Pages 163-171) the noted astronomer Maud Makemson (relying on the work of the pioneer French archaeoastronomer Marcel Baudouin (1860-1941, Secretary of the Societe Prehistorique Francaises) published in 1912 and 1913) reproduced what she believed was a representation of stars in Ursa Major and Boötes incised on a fossilised and silicified sea-urchin (Echinus) on an amulet from stone-age northern Europe. Her further interpretation of the amulet included: (1) that the engraver had taken care to indicate the differences in brightness of the stars by varying the sizes of the cavities, and (2) the depicted configuration of the big dipper stars indicated a high age for the origin of the amulet. (I have never seen this amulet and its astronomical interpretation discussed elsewhere.
[I am indebted to the German researcher Michael Rappenglück for some corrections and for generously sharing his biographical knowledge of the earliest persons to speculate on the possibility of Palaeolithic constellations and also constellations being represented in the Lascaux cave art.]
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