No Bull – Taurus in Lascaux caves

  

 

“Chantal Jègues-Wolkiewiez … has proposed that the [Lascaux] cave paintings

record the constellations of a prehistoric version of the zodiac

which also included solstice points and major stars”.

 

 

 

At: https://grahamhancock.com/glynjonesw1/ we read:

 

….

The possibility that constellations, specifically Taurus and the Pleiades, were represented in the artwork of the Lascaux caves has been suggested before. Luz Antequera Congregado first suggested in her doctoral thesis in 1992 that the dots above the shoulder of this bull depict the Pleiades (and that the dots on the bull's face are the neighbouring Hyades).

 

Keeping this in mind we may then go to another theory about Lascaux art, and the leaning bird-man image to be specific, which suggests that he and his bull represent the old myth of Yima and the Primordial Bull. Mary Settegast in Plato Prehistorianmakes this brilliant suggestion. This Yima figure is found in Hindu India as Yama, Persia as Yima, Norse lands as Ymir, and always there are the associations of the primordial bovine, the identity of Yima as a first ancestor, and as the lord of the dead, and usually there is the creation of the world from his body. The Indo-European root of this name means "Twin", and Gemini ("twins") is from this same root. This is where I fuse the two aforementioned theories into one, and an increasingly solid hypothesis begins to reveal itself.

 

The Twins constellation, Gemini, is located next to Taurus, the Bull. Gemini consists of two long straight lines leaning at a 45-degree angle with respect to the ecliptic, while the majority of Zodiac figures stand upright at culmination. The Bird Man also leans at this angle, and is drawn from two long straight lines. He is certainly in the right position relative to the Bull.

 

The Rhino in the painting (believed my Mary Settegast to represent the Death Principle in the myth) is in the location of Leo, and with some delight we observe that the back parts of the Rhino map perfectly onto the formation of this constellation. ….

 

 

And, at: http://members.westnet.com.au/gary-david-thompson/page11-1.html

there is this intriguing article:

 

Episodic Survey of the History of the Constellations

 

….

A somewhat recent proponent of an astronomical interpretation of the Lascaux cave paintings is the independent French researcher Chantal Jègues-Wolkiewiez who has a PhD in Humanities. (Like all persons who make any type of study of this nature she is termed an archeoastronomer/ethnoastronomer.) Her investigations first began in 1992 with the Chalcolithic period cave engravings in the Vallée des Merveilles. In 1998, in partnership with Jean-Michel Geneste (Curator of Lascaux cave), she began studying the caves and Paleolithic ornamented shelters in France. The particular research study was conducted in 1999-2000.

 

From this she believes she has uncovered evidence to demonstrate that the Paleolithic painters were astronomers. (Over a wider period of 7 years, Jègues-Wolkiewiez visited 130 cave sites featuring Paleolithic drawings, identifying believed solar alignments throughout the seasons, and leading to her claim that 122 of the 130 sites had optimal orientations to the solstitial horizons.) At the 2000 international conference on cave art in Val Camonica, Italy she made the claim that the people who painted the Lascaux cave were astronomers and that they also painted a zodiac on the walls of the cave. She has proposed that the [Lascaux] cave paintings record the constellations of a prehistoric [sic] version of the zodiac which also included solstice points and major stars. I think that Frank Edge also claimed that Lascaux's Hall of Bulls pictured the stars of the ecliptic. ("Lascaux, View of the Magdalenian Sky." by Chantal Jègues-Wolkiewiez (Symposium of Cave Art, Val Camonica, Italy, 2000.) The study was based on a series of astronomical measurements. They used astronomical software to recreate the night sky at Lascaux 17,000 years ago [sic], and models of the modern Western constellations. They made measurements of the astronomical alignments of the cave paintings and also compared the outlines of the paintings in the Hall of the Bulls with the night sky in Magdelenian times. (For a (French-language) summary of her work and conclusions see: "Lascaux planetarium prehistorique?" by Pedro Lima (Science & Vie, Number 999, December, 2000.) Her central claim is the Great Hall figures comprise a prehistoric zodiac. ….

 

Interestingly, during the first decades of the 20th-century the French prehistorians Marcel Baudouin and Henri Breuil speculated about the possibility of constellations being represented in prehistoric art. (To a considerable extent Alexander Marshack and his ideas of Palaeolithic lunar calendars (developed during the 1970s) fostered renewed interest in the possibility of Palaeolithic constellations.) During the last decades of the 20th-century they were followed by the Swiss engineer Amandus Weiss, the astronomer Heino Eelsalu, and the German art historian Marie König who considered the possibility of constellation representation in the Lascaux cave art. Also, the eccentric German ethnologist Leo Frobenius in his book Kulturgeschichte Africas (1934) conjectured that the animals painted in the Magdalenian caves of Southern France and Northern Spain represented stars. Largely forgotten are the proponents of astral theories, Morris Spivack (Morris J. (Redman) Spivack) (1903-?) (Cosmic Dance at Lascaux: New Theory of Paleolithic Art and Religion, 13-page hand-typed manuscript filed in the Library of Congress, 1961, but also published in French and English), and Elaine Mills (The Prehistoric Puzzle and the Key to Paleolithic Art, unpublished Junior Honors Project in Anthropology, May 1972 - August 1973, Sweet Briar College). However, the main proponents remain Luz Antequera Congregado, Frank Edge, and Michael Rappenglück (and more recently Chantal Jègues-Wolkiewiez). All were involved in independent and lengthy research prior to their first publications.

 

Luz Antequera Congregado, Frank Edge, Michael Rappenglück, and Chantal Jègues-Wolkiewiez converge on some similar ideas. However, each of them utilises a different level of speculation. Luz Antequera Congregado largely bases her ideas on the application of the art-historical approach and does not employ archaeological or astronomical analysis. Frank Edge also utilises art-historical and psychological approaches as well as simple constellation projections onto particular paintings. Michael Rappenglück applies a wider interdisciplinary methodology. Chantal Jègues-Wolkiewiez uses multiple methods of astronomical analysis (including astronomical measurements and constellation projection). ….

Part Two:

Dr. Michael Rappenglück’s views

 

 

“Painted on the wall was a bull, a strange bird-man and an enigmatic bird on a stick.

Dr Rappenglück realised to his amazement that these outlines form a map of the sky!

The eyes of the bull, bird and bird-man represent … Vega, Deneb and Altair”.

 

At: https://www.buckinghamcovers.com/celebrities/view/371-.php where we learn about the research of Dr. Rappenglück, we might be surprised to read - in light of our Part One:
https://www.academia.edu/39307461/No_Bull_-_Taurus_in_Lascaux_Caves - the article’s claiming that: “It wasn’t until 2000 that the world realised there might be more to these paintings than first met the eye”.
This might remind one of the claim in the flyleaf one of David Rohl’s books that he was the first to have conceived of a revised ancient chronology.

It was well before 2000, and before Dr. Rappenglück, that such conclusions were being drawn.
Anyway, the article tell this of Dr. Rappenglück’s conclusions:

….
16,000 years ago [sic], our ancestors painted spectacular drawings of Ice Age animals on the walls of their cave dwellings in Lascaux, central France.

When archaeologists first found the paintings back in 1940, it was a hugely exciting discovery. But they didn’t know then the full extent of what they had unearthed.

It wasn’t until 2000 that the world realised there might be more to these paintings than first met the eye. German researcher, Dr Michael Rappenglück believes that the paintings were more than just decorations. The caves could also be a prehistoric planetarium, where mankind first charted the stars.

He stumbled on this while exploring one region of the Lascaux caves known as the Shaft of the Dead Man. Painted on the wall was a bull, a strange bird-man and an enigmatic bird on a stick. Dr Rappenglück realised to his amazement that these outlines form a map of the sky! The eyes of the bull, bird and bird-man represent three prominent stars: Vega, Deneb and Altair.

Put together, these three stars are known as the Summer Triangle because they are so incredibly bright during the summer months. During the Ice Age, the Summer Triangle would never have set below the horizon and would have shone even brighter than today. It’s no wonder our ancestors were captivated. "It was their sky, full of animals and spirits", says Dr Rappenglück. So on the walls of their cave, it seems, they drew a map of the prehistoric cosmos.

That wasn’t all. Dr Rappenglück went on to find another Ice Age animal in the stars. Nearer the entrance of the Lascaux cave complex is a splendid painting of a bull. Dr Rappenglück says this too holds secrets to the sky. Hanging over the bull's shoulders, is what genuinely looks like a map of the cluster of stars called the Seven Sisters (Pleiades). And then, inside the bull itself, there are spots that seem to represent other stars. Incredibly, this part of the sky today is the constellation of Taurus, the Bull. It seems our Ice Age ancestors were the first to recognise the bull within the stars.

Dr Rappenglück found another star map in Spain, on the walls of the Cueva di El Castillo cave in the mountains of Pico del Castillo. A long-ignored curved pattern of dots on one wall appears to be a map of the Northern Crown constellation.

He may even have found a link between Far Eastern festivals of stars and the caves of the Ice Age. Rappenglück noticed a series of pits on the floor of a cave at La Marche, France which seems to be in the shape the Seven Sisters star cluster. He wonders if the small holes were filled with animal fat and set alight to mimick the flickering stars in the sky. That set him thinking. "Perhaps this is the origin of the candlelit festivals of the Far East where lighted candles are held in the shape of the Pleiades. Perhaps it is a tradition that stretches back tens of thousands of years into our Stone Age past".

The world is amazed and excited with Dr Rappenglück's research. Archaeologists who looked at his conclusions agreed that they are reasonable. It seems Dr Michael Rappenglück is the man to have uncovered the earliest evidence of human interest in the stars.
 

 

Lost Culture of the Chaldeans. Part Two (ii)

 

Part Two (ii):

A reader’s “different” version

 

 

by

 

Damien F. Mackey

 

 

 

 

“… as we extrapolate the observations into the past we immediately step out of the scientific method and into the area of historical assumption. This is not science but mere reasoned conclusions, however acceptable they may be to one’s reason”.

 

Dr. John Osgood

 

 

 

 

In response to my article:

 

Lost Culture of the Chaldeans. Part Two: Related to Sinites (Chinese)?

 

https://www.academia.edu/23543490/Lost_Culture_of_the_Chaldeans._Part_Two_Related_to_Sinites_Chinese_

 

arguing for the origins of the Chinese with the (Hamitic-Canaanite) “Sinites” of Genesis 10:17, a reader has offered his alternative (‘book’), “different [heretical] account”, as he calls it. “The lords made the two Great Lights but before turning them on they instructed everyone to disperse to the ends of the earth..as far away as possible from Babylon”.

 

The ‘book’ is a presumed “history of man from 10,000 BCE”, which date the author sets as “the Pleistocene-Holocene boundary”.

I take this ‘book’ to be largely humorous, playful and light-hearted.

But since it follows the usual evolutionary-based dating system for supposed prehistory and even for Egyptian dynastic history, some comments may be in order.

 

It is this sort of methodology that I would query.

 

Whether or not the ‘book’ is “heretical”, it is, I believe, inherently incredible. It follows a typically evolutionary a priori pattern of approach, in which human history is stretched out in an ‘Indian file’ fashion, which does not accord with how things really are.

Dr. John Osgood has a lot to say about the fallacy of this sort of approach and of the so-called “Dating Techniques” (“A Better Model for the Stone Age”: https://creation.com/a-better-model-for-the-stone-age):

 

The scientific method can only work in the present, for it only has its artifacts in the present with which to experiment and to investigate. Reasonable scientific conclusions can be reached about those artifacts in the framework in which we find them, whether these be tools or cities or fossils. However, as we extrapolate the observations into the past we immediately step out of the scientific method and into the area of historical assumption. This is not science but mere reasoned conclusions, however acceptable they may be to one’s reason.

 

It follows naturally that if the scientific method cannot work in the past and conclusions about the past must rest on assumptions, then there is not today a dating method that can be scientifically substantiated as being correct, for every method will have built into it an assumption. Now when we come to the practical application of this theory we discover in fact that this holds true. ….

 

In reality, a primitive desert, or forest, people can be contemporaneous with – but perhaps even unknown to – a highly sophisticated modern civilisation.

 

Now, an evolutionary-minded palaeontologist or archaeologist in, say, a 1000 years’ time, would instinctively separate these two contemporaneous societies by tens, or even hundreds, of thousands of years in time.

Osgood again:

 

A society that is forced to hunt and gather because of insufficient time to plant crops will then be called a hunter/gatherer society. It will exhibit the tools of that trade. It is likely, therefore, in most cultures in new places, that the first stage would be a hunter/gathering society in order to gather whatever is available to survive and live. As they were able to come to terms with their environment, they would begin to farm and to herd animals. It would be assumed by the archaeologists later excavating such a site that there had been a development of culture. But this is not necessarily the case, for this particular society would have had all that culture available to them right from the start. The difficulties would simply have been those of making it a reality in their environment, until sufficient leisure allowed them to do so.

….

However, if a person or society had been driven only a short distance from Mesopotamia and had sufficient ability to take many of their cultural niceties with them, such as the implements and tools for metal making and metal culture, then they would possibly be able to enjoy culture from a much earlier time. This would result in the later excavation of a Chalcolithic type of culture. It would, of course, be assumed to be later than the Paleolithic hunter/gatherer society or the Neolithic farming society discovered in a more outlying region. However, this would not necessarily be the case. The Paleolithic, Neolithic and Chalcolithic could well be contemporary, and might simply be an indication of the different conditions and the different environment and distance from the centre point available to each of the different [cultures]. ….

 

Evolution, of necessity, needs long periods of time.

That a priori mentality has affected the arrangement of the Geological Ages; the Stone Ages; the Archaeological Ages. The sort of mentality has even affected ancient Chinese and Egyptian history, whose dynasties have been stretched out in a single file that does not accord with reality, or with such ancient testimony that - in the case of Egypt - tells of some simultaneous dynasties.

Dr. John Osgood will give evidence for at least the late Stone Ages to have overlapped.

And the same may need to be done for the Geological Ages, with the great Flood being a handy unifying factor, I would suggest, for the geology of the Fertile Crescent region of the world.

 

The massive Black Sea Flood had originally been dated to 5600 BC, but today 7400 BC is the preferred date.

That is a big shift.

But it is nothing compared to palaeontological shiftarounds.

For supposed pre-history, ‘Mungo Man’ in Australia, initially dated to 60,000 BC, was soon shifted (about a week later, in fact) to 40,000 BC. No one seemed to bat an eyelid about such an extraordinary situation. The unthinking just seem to fall in line with the new ‘expert’ dating.

What does this all mean?

It means that palaeontologists, in this regard, don’t have a clue!

 

The over-extension of the Egyptian dynastic history has made of it such an unwieldy beast that, for it now to be compatible with other nations, such as the Hittites or the Greeks, centuries of ‘Dark Ages’ (1200-700 BC) must be fudged in to the latter histories to force them to fit - even though these other civilisations exhibit a perfect sequential progression in art, architecture, laws, etc. either side of the supposed ‘Dark’ divide.

See e.g. P. James et al., Centuries of Darkness, 1990, for further enlightenment on all of this.

 

 

Sumerians merge into Chaldeans

Lost Culture of

the Chaldeans

 

Part One (ii):

Sumerians merge into Chaldeans

 

 

by

 

Damien F. Mackey

 

“Why Berossos [Berossus] would draw on sources of the “Sumerians” to tell

Chaldean history remains as mysterious as the bewilderingly wanting scholarly and astronomical/astrological texts of the Chaldaeans whose erudition is famous all over Antiquity and “from whom the Greek mathematicians copy” (Flavius Josephus)”.

 

Gunnar Heinsohn

 

 

 

In this series, I am following Dr. John Osgood’s most helpful synchronization of the ‘erudite’ Chaldean people, “famous all over Antiquity”, with the ‘Ubaid culture of archaeology.

Dr. Osgood wrote tellingly, in “A Better Model for the Stone Age Part 2”:

https://creation.com/a-better-model-for-the-stone-age-part-2

 

1.     Arphaxad - Al Ubaid, the Early Chaldees

 

Josephus¹³ identifies the descendants of Arphaxad as the Chaldeans and this seems to be consistent with the biblical statements concerning them, for Abraham was a descendant of Arphaxad (Genesis 10 verse 24 and 11 verses 10-31). Abraham left Ur of the Chaldees to eventually travel to the land of Canaan.

 

Now Ur of the Chaldees, that is, the southern Ur found in the region south of the Euphrates River, has been excavated by Woolley. Woolley found that the earliest layers in Ur were built by the Al Ubaid people. (Al Ubaid is the early pottery culture of this region.)

 

Now if the Al Ubaid people built Ur, then Ur would be an Al Ubaid city originally, and as it was known as Ur of the Chaldees, this allows us to equate the Chaldees with the Al Ubaid people. This fits what we know of the Chaldean people. Certainly, it was in that region of the world that the later Chaldeans were known to live. It is also clear that this area had an influence on the north by the naming of such cities as Harran associated with the same religions that were known in the region of Ur of the Chaldees.

 

It is certain that Joan Oates has shown the contemporaneity of northern Halaf and southern Ubaid, a fact that bears well with the Table of Nations in Genesis 10.¹⁴

 

The Al Ubaid culture of Southern Mesopotamia was centred around the cities of Ur and Eridu, and its earliest [manifestation] … the Hajj Muhammad pottery, appears to be the first culture on the soil of this area of southern Iraq:

 

‘At all sites so far investigated in the South the Ubaid rests directly on virgin soil, and there seems little doubt that the people who bore this culture were the first settlers on the alluvium of whom we have any trace.’¹⁵

 

From this region at a later epoch came the now famous Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon, the Chaldean. ….

[End of quotes]

 

Professor Gunnar Heinsohn has added a further important (cultural) dimension to the Chaldean peoples by identifying them with the most ancient, and enigmatic, Sumerians:

http://www.cais-soas.com/CAIS/History/empires_lost_found.htm

  

Classical Historiography confirmed

 

The Chaldaean priest Berossos, around 278-290 B.C.E., writes, in Greek, a history of his homeland for the Macedonian/Seleucid king Antiochus I Soter (281 -261). The work becomes known under the title Babyloniaka of which fragments are preserved in ancient Greek writings. In his section on the Deluge, Berossos, surprisingly, calls the flood hero Xisuthros (Alexander Polyhistor) or Sisithrus (Abydenus). This is a Greek transliteration of Ziusudra. Yet, Ziusudra is the protagonist of the “Sumerian” version of the Flood. That Berossus does not leave us the Chaldean name of the flood hero has never stopped to stun Orientalists. After all, Berossos tells us nothing about the “Sumerians” who, since Jules Oppert’s coining of the term 1868, are thought to have created mankind’s first civilization in his very homeland. All ancient Greek writers who cite Berossos take him for a Chaldaean expert of Chaldean history.

Therefore, they list his records under headings like “Chaldaean History” (Alexander Polyhistor), “Of the Chaldaean Kings” (Apollodorus) or “Of the Chaldaean Kings and the Deluge” (Abydenus).

 

Like Berossos, ancient Greek authors never give the slightest hint of a “Sumerian” civilization though Greek transliterations of cuneiform texts, called “Sumerian” by modern scholars, are produced as late as the 2^nd or even 3^rd century AD (so called Graeco-Babyloniaca). Thus, ancient Greeks are able to read and write “Sumerian” for nearly half a millennium but fail to recognize the “Sumerian” people not to speak of a “Sumerian” cradle of civilization. What they know is a Chaldean civilization with some 900 larger and smaller settlements which supposedly did not leave a single grave, brick or even potsherd.

 

Why Berossos would draw on sources of the “Sumerians” to tell Chaldean history remains as mysterious as the bewilderingly wanting scholarly and astronomical/ astrological texts of the Chaldaeans whose erudition is famous all over Antiquity and “from whom the Greek mathematicians copy” (Flavius Josephus). This enigma is aggravated by the fact that the “Sumerians” themselves, who have left countless astronomical/astrological texts, never employ the word “Sumer” or “Sumerians”. In their own cuneiform writing they call their country Kalam (e.g., Sumerian Kinglist) and its inhabitants people of Kalam (e.g., the Nippur poem Praise of the Pickax).

 

Yet, not only the term Kalam fits Chaldea well—as do the Mitanni fit the Medes or the Martu the Mardoi­—but also its stratigraphic location just two strata groups below Hellenism where one would look for the predecessors of the Akhaemenids in Babylonia. ….

 

Damien Mackey’s comment: For my own take on Medo-Persian (or Achaemenid) archaeology, see my article:

 

Persian History has no adequate Archaeology

 

https://www.academia.edu/31113083/Persian_History_has_no_adequate_Archaeology

 

Professor Heinsohn continues:

 

Therefore, beginning in 1987, this author has been suggesting that certain empires of the ancient near east did not really exist, and should therefore be removed from modern textbooks (in English see Heinsohn 1991. 1996 and 1998).  At the same time realms and empires well-known since antiquity should be restored to the place they once held in the history and chronology of the ancient world.   

 

Damien Mackey’s comment: Sometimes Heinsohn goes rather too far in all this I believe.

He continues, here beginning with a very true and important statement:

 

The logical basis for this proposal is that in order for great empires and civilizations that appear in modern textbooks to be accepted as genuine there must be evidence of their existence in the archaeological layers of the earth. 

If textbook empires are without such layers, then there are two possibilities: (1.) these empires should disappear from the pages of modern textbooks. (2.) the existence of these empires must be affirmed by using archaeological layers that are currently assigned to other empires, thus causing these latter empires to disappear.  

 

The author prefers a conservative solution, i.e. possibility 2. Otherwise we would have to throw out teachings and empires that have dominated historical writings for two and a half millennia.  We would have to punish thus countless authors of antiquity—Jews, Greeks, Romans and Armenian—by calling them liars, without being able to explain why, in their own time, they had no doubt that the realms described by them were real.  Despite their rather quarrelsome dispositions they were united in agreement about the imperial succession—starting, quite in tune with proven Chinese chronology, around -1000—of Assyrians, Medes (with Chaldeans and Scythians), Persians and Macedonians: "Assyrii principes omnium gentium rerum potiti sunt, deinde Medi, postea Persae, deinde Macedones” (Aemilius Sura, -2^nd century). ….

 

…. The 2nd option produces the following results:

 

….

(C)  The more than 900 cities and towns of Chaldaea, known to the Greeks as "the cradle of civilization" but seen as non-retrievable by modern Assyriologists, returns to the textbooks.  To Chaldaea are given the archaeological layers that not until 1868 began to be called "Sumer" (albeit Kalam in its own language), which disappears accordingly.

…..