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| Taurus and Pleiades hang low on the western skies. Seen from my backyard in March, 2023 |
19,000 Years Ago
The darkness in the cave, was near perfect. In a little pool of light made by the faint glow of a tallow lamp, stood a man. In his hand was a piece of charcoal. His weathered fingers scratched the charcoal against the cave wall repeating strokes that created the outlines of the neck of an animal. Slowly, in the flicker of the lamp, the shape of a bull began to emerge. The horns, the eye, the hump. The air was filled with the odor of burning animal fat and strange sounds of men working on similar imagery. The distant sound of underground flowing water echoed through the cavernous tunnels some 50 feet underground - in Lascaux Caves, near the village of Montignac, modern day France.
Some nineteen thousand years before present day, this would have been the creation scene of one of the most famous examples of upper paleolithic art. Other panels depicting larger than life imagery of horses, deer, bisons, birds and humans that decorated the walls have fascinated researchers since their serendipitous discovery in 1940s. The artistic sophistication of these works from our ancestors rendered in charcoal and ochre have intrigued men. But even among this unique collection of ancient figures, bull number four in the Hall of the Bulls stands out. On the back of the animal, there are six dots that look remarkably like a familiar shape in the night sky. The asterism Pleiades that is visible to the naked eye from all parts of the world. Placed above the hump of the bull it completes the picture of the star field in the modern constellation of Taurus.
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| Bull No. 4, Hall of Bulls, Lascaux, France |
Ice Age Star Maps?
However a few researchers have proposed that the cave paintings were not just art but the most ancient star maps made by man. German researcher Dr. Michael Rappenglueck, of the University of Munich is the foremost among the proponents of this theory. According to him "It is a map of the prehistoric cosmos," ... "It was their sky, full of animals and spirit guides". In fact similar star maps have been discovered in ancient cave art in Spain, in Cueva di El Castillo cave, in the mountains of Pico del Castillo Dr. Rappenglueck has identified more constellations such as the Northern Crown. Many agree his findings and postulates are reasonable.
So what was going on in the minds of these ancient artists of the ice age? Were the caves spiritual places like temples? Or were they planetariums of sorts? Regardless of purpose, these ancient caves left their first explorers enthralled by a profound experience of reaching across time. In the words of the first explorers the Chauvet Cave in Ardeche France:
"...Alone in that vastness, lit by the feeble beam of our lamps, we were seized by a strange feeling. Everything was so beautiful, so fresh, almost too much so. Time was abolished, as if the tens of thousands of years that separated us from the producers of these paintings no longer existed. ... Deeply impressed, we were weighed down by the feeling that we were not alone; the artists souls and spirits surrounded us..."We may never fully know their minds. But if these were indeed star maps, and since constellations are figments of human imagination, bull number 4, in the Hall of the Bulls in Lascaux, may well have been Taurus, the first constellation to be ever recorded in the history of mankind. And today when we stand in our backyards and gaze at these enormous figures in the sky - we may feel a sense of kinship with early humans that once walked the earth..
Reference
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Ice Age star map discovered from BBC March, 2000
