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TThe Greek astronomer Hipparchus, who lived around 120 BC, generally has the merit of discovering the equinoxes and their relation to the constellations of the zodiac. But in a controversial new study, the researchers point out that ancient rock paintings are proof that people who lived nearly 40,000 years ago already possessed this advanced knowledge of astronomy. If true, this theory would radically change the chronology of humanity's understanding of the natural world.
The first author Martin Sweatman, Ph.D., is convinced that his article can radically alter our understanding of the ancient world and modern academic principles. in the Athens Journal of History The journalist and his co-author Alistair Coombs claim that the depiction of animals in ancient and well-studied rock paintings in France and Spain proves that Hipparchus was late by tens of thousands of years in the game of astronomy.
"Basically, we have defined a new area of research: the evolution of an ancient zodiac," says Sweatman. reverse. "It also has implications for the origins of writing, science, mathematics and astronomy, of course. This has implications for the origin and the evolution of religion. "
Other scientists are not convinced.
David Pearce, Ph.D., director of the Rock Art Research Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand, said reverse Paul Pettitt, Ph.D., professor at the University of Durham and specializing in Paleolithic art, says that these statements "seem a little risky". reverse that the study is "embarrassing of poor quality".
Used as a reader in chemical engineering at the University of Edinburgh, Sweatman's research nevertheless extends to archeology. In 2017, he co-authored an article claiming that the Turkish archaeological site Göbekli Tepe is a memorial of a mini-ice age known as the Dryas Younger period. His interest in other sites with ancient animal symbols led to the new publication.
Sweatman and Coombs argue that their conclusions and methodology are virtually infallible:
Our statistical result is so important that, unless there is a significant flaw in our methodology, it would be irrational to doubt our hypothesis. It follows that any proposal for these works that is inconsistent with our hypothesis can automatically be rejected – it is certainly false, since our hypothesis is almost certainly correct. "
The recognized history of the equinoxes and the zodiac maintains that, in ancient Greece, Hipparchus discovered that the equinoxes move along the plane of the Earth's orbit. This movement, which he called the "precession of the equinoxes" (and gives us the four seasons), causes the equator to cross the center of the sun twice a year, that is, to say when the sun is directly above the equator.
The sun, making a circuit every year, seems to move in the constellations of the zodiac, constellations in the form of animals such as Aries the ram and Leo the lion, generally attributed to the astronomers of ancient Mesopotamia.
Sweatman and Coombs argue that men living in the caves that made art in the Chauvet Cave of northern Spain, at the site of Lascaux in France and in Neolithic sites like Göbekli Tepe, had discovered the equinox and the constellations well before Hipparchus and the Babylonians.
"Our work essentially proves that animal symbols used in Paleolithic rock art represent star constellations," says Sweatman. "We know this because when we compare the dates of this art, determined by the radiocarbon method, with our predictions based on our zodiacal method, we find an extraordinary level of concordance for all European Paleolithic art."
They claim that the rock art of Chauvet, Lascaux and Göbekli Tepe does not represent only animals: it represents animals in the form of constellations, the same as Hipparchus spotted in 120 BC. the The Lascaux well scene, for example, shows four animal figures and three geometric shapes and dates from around 15 200 BC. In the journal, Sweatman says that this scene actually shows four animal-shaped constellations corresponding to the solstices and equinoxes – and could also commemorate a comet strike.
In Sweatman's "zodiacal method," Coombs and he compare the date of ancient art with radiocarbon to the position of constellations in the sky at the time of creation of rock art. To do this, they used a software called Stellarium, which calculates the position of stars at earlier times. They also applied this method to the Lion-Man of Holenstein-Stadel Cave, a half-man half-fantastic beast considered the oldest sculpture in the world.
"His radiocarbon date is 37,800 BC. BC with an uncertainty of 680 years at a 95% confidence level, "says Sweatman about Lion-Man. "Our zodiacal method predicts that its age is between 38,150 and 39,150 BC. J. – C., which corresponds to Caner [the lion symbol] at the winter solstice. Since these date ranges overlap, the Lion-Man is consistent with our theory. "
According to their theory, the overlap of these dates and the creation of animal rock art mean that ancient humans used the constellations of the zodiac to record dates and understand the passing time. Sweatman believes that people might have set dates in a 250-year accuracy window. If this were the case, it would be an unprecedented level of human sophistication for such an early stage of our evolution.
Regardless of the researchers' belief in their claims, one thing is clear: much more convincing evidence will be needed before this bold new theory is accepted by the general public.
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