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Ancient rock art suggests that humans understood complex astronomy 40,000 years ago (Representative Image) Some of the world's oldest cave paintings, found on sites in Europe , reveal that human ancestors may have had advanced knowledge of astronomy as 40,000 years ago, a study found. According to researchers from the University of Edinburgh in the United Kingdom, animal symbols of the work illustrate constellations of stars in the night sky and are used to represent dates and mark dates. events such as comet strikes. They reveal that, perhaps as early as 40,000 years ago, humans followed the evolution of time using knowledge about how the position of stars evolved slowly over thousands of years.
The study published in the Athens Journal of History suggests that the old people understood an effect caused by the gradual shift in the axis of rotation of the Earth. The discovery of this phenomenon, called the precession of the equinoxes, was previously attributed to ancient Greeks. Around the time Neanderthals disappeared, and perhaps before humanity settled in Western Europe, people could set dates less than 250 years ago. The results indicate that the astronomical knowledge of the ancient peoples was much greater than previously thought. According to their researchers, their knowledge may have facilitated navigation on the high seas, which has impacted our understanding of prehistoric human migration.
The team studied details of Paleolithic and Neolithic art featuring animal symbols on sites in Turkey, Spain, France, and Germany. They discovered that all sites used the same method of dating based on sophisticated astronomy, even if the art was separated in time by tens of thousands of years. The researchers clarified the results of a study on the stonecutting of one of these sites – Gobekli Tepe in today's Turkey – interpreted as a memorial to a devastating comet strike around 11,000 BC It was thought that this strike had initiated a mini ice age known as the Younger Dryas Period. They also decoded what is probably the most well-known work of ancient art – the scene of the Lascaux well in France. The researchers suggest that the work, which features a dying man and several animals, could commemorate another comet strike around 15,200 BC. J.-C.
The team confirmed the results by comparing the age of many examples of rock art – known from the chemical dating of the paintings used. – with the positions of stars in ancient times as predicted by sophisticated software. The oldest sculpture in the world, the lion-man of the Hohlenstein-Stadel cave, dating back to 38,000 BC, also proved to be in keeping with this ancient timekeeping system. "Early rock art shows that people had advanced knowledge of the night sky during the last ice age. Intellectually, they hardly differed from us today, "said Martin Sweatman, of the University of Edinburgh, who led the study. "These results corroborate the theory of multiple impacts on comets during human development and are likely to revolutionize the way prehistoric populations are perceived," said Sweatman. , calculate your tax using the income tax calculator, know the winning funds, winners, losers and the best equity funds in the market. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter .
