A 2023 paper in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal proposes that European cave art from roughly 37,000 years ago contains a proto-writing system tied to seasonal tracking. Lead author Bennett Bacon, an amateur craftsman, worked with Paul Pettitt (Durham) and Tony Fre (UCL) on the study. What a fascinating example of citizen science meeting academia!
2023 paper identifies Upper Paleolithic proto-writing calendar system in European cave art
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Key facts
- Paper titled "An Upper Paleolithic Protowriting System and Phenological Calendar" published in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal in 2023
- Lead author Bennett Bacon is an amateur craftsman with no university affiliation
- Co-authors include Paul Pettitt of University of Durham and Tony Fre of University College London
- From 37,000 years ago, European cave art combined symbolic marks with figurative depictions
Site mentioned
Sources
An Upper Palaeolithic Proto-writing System and Phenological ...durham-repository.worktribe.com
The purpose of this system of associating animals with calendar information was to record and convey seasonal behavioural information about specific prey taxa.
(PDF) Discussion: “An Upper Palaeolithic Proto-writing ...researchgate.net
A recent work by Bacon et al. (2023) proposes to interpret a large part of Palaeolithic art as an ethological calendar.
(PDF) An Upper Palaeolithic Proto-writing System and ...academia.edu
The Upper Palaeolithic system utilized notational marks to convey ethological information about animal behavior and seasons. Three common signs—lines, dots, and ...
[PDF] An Upper Palaeolithic Proto-writing System and ...semanticscholar.org
The alleged phenological calendar in Palaeolithic art: critical analysis from the viewpoint of statistics and cultural astronomy · The Engraved Slate Plaques of ...
Thoughts on 'proto-writing' in the Upper Palaeolithicbravenewwords.info
There's a lot of buzz about the recent paper by Bacon et al 'An Upper Palaeolithic Proto-writing System and Phenological Calendar'.
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