In 2023, furniture conservator Bennett Bacon proposed that dots and lines beside Ice Age animals encoded mating seasons as a lunar calendar — with a Y-sign meaning "gives birth." That would predate Sumerian writing by roughly 20,000 years! But within months, specialists published a formal rebuttal saying the statistics don't hold up.
Bennett Bacon proposes Ice Age signs encoded animal mating seasons as lunar calendar
Key facts
- In 2023, London furniture conservator Bennett Bacon, working with academics from Durham and UCL, published a paper in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal
- The paper argued that dots and lines painted beside animals record the animals' mating season, counted in lunar months
- A Y-shaped sign was proposed to mean 'gives birth'
- Within months, Paleolithic specialists published a formal rebuttal arguing the statistical case doesn't hold up and that the interpretation relies on unverifiable assumptions about Ice Age animal behavior
- The proposed calendar would predate Sumerian writing by approximately 20,000 years
Sources
bradshawfoundation.com
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nationalgeographic.com
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nationalgeographic.com
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ted.com
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ucl.ac.uk
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Amateur archaeologist uncovers ice age 'writing' systemtheguardian.com
20,000-year-old markings were a form of lunar calendar. Ben Bacon spent countless hours trying to decode the “proto-writing” system, by at ...
An Upper Palaeolithic Proto-writing System and Phenological ...durham-repository.worktribe.com
Phenological Calendar Bacon, Bennett; local phenological/meteorological calendar beginning in spring and recording time from this point in ...
Evaluating the Evidence for Lunar Calendars in Upper ...academia.edu
In this paper, we examine the lunar calendar interpretation to evaluate whether it is a viable explanation for the production of Upper Palaeolithic parietal ...
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