The illustrations on this page have been compiled from a variety of sources. If advised that copyright has been infringed I will immediately remove the particular illustration(s).
A Great Bull painted image (#18 (fourth bull), main hall, right wall) in the "Hall of Bulls" in the Lascaux cave in France. (The Lascaux cave in southwest France was discovered by children in 1940.) Upper Palaeolithic cave art was first discovered in 1856 in the cave of Niaux in France. Palaeolithic cave art remained largely ignored, even suspected by some as a hoax because of its sophistication, until the first decade of the 20th-century. The discovery of the Altimara cave in northern Spain in 1879 initiated 15 years of controversy before the acceptance of the cave paintings as Paleolithic art.
Some of the most splendid Paleolithic cave art locations are Lascaux (discovered in 1940), Altamira (discovered in 1879 and only fully explored in the 1950s), Chauvet (near Marseilles) (discovered in 1994), and the (now) underwater cave Cosquer (also near Marseilles) (discovered in 1991).
The Lascaux cave contains some 600 paintings and 1500 engravings dating from the Palaeolithic Period. The very few symbols are limited to isolated or grouped dots (mostly black) and to variously coloured dashes. The animals depicted on the cave wall are horses, bulls, and deer. The "Hall of Bulls" mural is dated circa 15,000 BCE. (The radiocarbon dating of charcoal recovered from the cave floor indicates occupancy circa 15,000 BCE to 14,000 BCE.) Lascaux's Hall of Bulls is approximately 18.5 metres long, 7 metres wide, and 6.5 metres high. The largest painted bulls are approximately 6 metres long. Several researchers have offered an astronomical interpretation of Great Bull #18. (The bulls are actually aurochs, a large species of wild cattle.)
There are 2 sets of painted dots closely associated with this bull. One set of dots is placed above the shoulder of the bull and the other set of V-shaped dots are located on the bull's face. Also, there is a row of 4 painted dots to the left of this bull.
The Spanish researcher Luz Antequera Congregado in her doctoral thesis "Arte y astronomia: evolución de los dibujos de las constelaciones" (1992) first set out the astronomical interpretation that the dots above the shoulder of the bull depict the Pleiades open star cluster and the dots on the bull's face depict the Hyades open star cluster. In her later paper "Altamira: Astronomía y religión en el Paleolitico" (1994) she interpreted the row of 4 dots to the left of Great Bull #18 as the stars of the belt of the constellation Orion. (Luz Antequera Congregado has also investigated Palaeolithic art in other European caves from an astronomical perspective. See her essay: "Practicas Astronomicas en la Prehistoria de la Peninsula Iberica y los Archichipielagos Balear y Canario" (1994).)
Wheston Price (at a date that I have not yet been able to identify) also made the identification of 10 painted dots on a Neanderthal cave painting with the Pleiades. (However, there is no indication of any firm methodology being used.)
Some people believe that the #18 Lascaux auroch with the two associated sets of dots represents the constellation Taurus. This idea was firmly set out by the American astronomer Frank Edge in his 35-page booklet "Aurochs in the Sky" (1995) and later article "Taurus in Lascaux" (1997). (He began his studies in this area in 1991.) Frank Edge holds that at least one of the Great Bull images (#18) in the "Hall of Bulls" in the Lascaux cave can be identified as celestial by the simple comparison of the associated dot markings with two particular star groupings as they were viewed on the horizon circa 15,000 BCE. Specifically that a group of 6 dots painted above the shoulder of auroch #18 represents the Pleiades open star cluster, and that another group of V-shaped dots painted on the auroch's face represents the Hyades open star cluster.
The German scholar Michael Rappenglüeck, University of Munich, believes the art of the Lascaux cave not only involves the depiction of constellations but is also a cosmographic depiction by Palaeolithic shamans. His idea that the Pleiades were depicted in the Lascaux cave were first presented at an astronomy conference in 1996 and later published in his essay "The Pleiades in the "Salle des Taureaux" Grotte des Lascaux" (1997). (He has worked on the subject of "Paleoscience" since 1984.) His ideas that the Lascaux cave paintings depict shamanistic cosmography were first set out in his doctoral thesis "Eine Himmelskarte aus der Eiszeit?" (1998). (Michael Rappenglüeck has also investigated Palaeolithic art in other European caves from an astronomical perspective i.e., the Cueva di El Castillo in Spain. The art in this cave is dated circa 12,000 BCE.)
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. 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. However, the main proponents remain Luz Antequera Congregado, Frank Edge, and Michael Rappenglüeck. All were involved in independent and lengthy research prior to their first publications. 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 Rappenglüeck applies a wider interdisciplinary methodology.
To date none of the arguments attempting to show the existence of some sort of Palaeolithic astronomy can be considered convincing.
Many researchers have believed that the animals painted by the Ice-age hunter-gatherers at Lascaux (the Magdalenian culture) were simply those that they hunted. Certainly the animals they depicted comprise the most dangerous in the world of the Ice-age hunters and were both prey and food. The painted dots are thought by some persons to be perhaps no more than a tally of hunting kills. However, the concepts of hunting magic and hunting tallies would seem to be wrong. The hunted animal remains on the cave floor were largely reindeer yet reindeer are entirely unrepresented in the cave art. (Some recent investigations suggest that beliefs involving connection to the spirit-world, through trance and hallucination, are perhaps the key to understanding the cave paintings (including the dot patterns). See especially the remarkable book The Mind in the Cave by David Lewis-Williams (2002).) Professor R. Dale Guthrie (Emeritus Professor in the Institute of Arctic Biology at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks; and author of The Nature of Paleolithic Art) proposed in 2006 that the art was largely produced by adolescent males and is somewhat akin to modern teen graffiti.
[I am indebted to the German researcher Michael Rappenglüeck for some corrections and for generously sharing his biographical knowledge of the earliest persons to speculate on the possibility of Palaeolithic constellations and also constellations being represented in the Lascaux cave art.]
Copyright © 2001-2006 by Gary D. Thompson
This Web Page was last updated on: Friday, May 5, 2006, 11:00 pm.
This Web Page was created using Arachnophilia 4.0 and FrontPage 2003.
You can reach me here by email: 