Amateur archaeologist Ben Bacon (Ben Bacon) collaborated with British scholars to publish a research report in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal (Cambridge Archaeological Journal), explaining the significance of mysterious marks on cave paintings during the Ice Age.

(The picture is taken from the "Cambridge University Press official website")

[Compilation Guan Shuping/Comprehensive Report] An amateur archaeologist in the UK collaborated with scholars to decipher the "code" of cave murals during the Ice Age about 20,000 years ago, referring to the point or line marks on these murals, which were used by hunter-gatherers at that time A set of lunar calendars used to record animal breeding cycles.

Ancient cave murals discovered in many places in Europe depict wild animals such as deer, fish, and cattle, but the dots, lines and other marks in the paintings have always puzzled archaeologists.

The British "Guardian" and "BBC News" reported on the 5th that Ben Bacon, a furniture restorer in London, spent a lot of time trying to study the "text-like" system of these mysterious marks. The ten-thousand-year mark refers to a lunar calendar system.

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He approached Durham University archeology professor Paul Pettitt, psychology professor Robert Kentridge and an academic at University College London to explain his theory , the two sides cooperated together and published a research report in the "Cambridge Archaeological Journal" on the 5th.

Referring to similar reproductive cycles of modern animals, the study deduced that the number of marks accompanying each animal on the cave paintings was based on the lunar month to record the mating season of the animals, and that the Y-shaped marks appearing on some murals represented the animal's "birth". ".

"The results show that Ice Age hunter-gatherers were the first to use a calendar system and used notations to record information about ecologically important events under that calendar," Petit said. ) and the caves of Altamira, in addition to leaving breathtaking artistic remains, also left a set of early timekeeping records".

Human ancestors, Bacon said, were "much more like us than we used to think, and all of a sudden these people who were separated from us by tens of thousands of years suddenly became closer."