Already in the Stone Age, people thoroughly studied the starry sky and reflected in works of art not only the zodiacal constellations, but also meteor showers and even the effect caused by vibrations of the earth's axis. And also the ancient artists recorded at least two large meteorites falling to the Earth.
Such conclusions are made in a scientific article, the preprint of which is posted on the site arXiv.org by Martin Sweatman of the University of Edinburgh and Alistair Coombs of the University of Kent.
Science Detective began with work by other authors published in 2012. It stated that about 13 thousand years ago, at the beginning of the Late Dryassic era, a large meteorite fell on the Earth, and because of this, a noticeable climate change occurred on the Earth. However, some experts disputed this point of view.
In a 2017 work, Sweetman, in collaboration with another scientist, presented his interpretation of images on stone 43 from the Göbekli Tepe complex in what is now Turkey. The authors concluded that this megalith is a kind of monument to the fall of the mentioned meteorite. In particular, a very good coincidence of the date of creation of this artifact and the time of the cataclysm led them to such an idea.
In the current study, the same 43 stone served as the key to the astronomical puzzle. The authors directly compare it with the Rosetta stone, which, as you know, helped to decipher the Egyptian hieroglyphs due to the fact that the same text was written on it in the letter of the land of the pharaohs and in ancient Greek well known to historians.
Scientists drew attention to the mutual arrangement of the images on stone 43, stone 18 and stone 2. In their opinion, it reproduces the mutual arrangement of the twelve constellations of the then zodiac, which was somewhat different from the present one. Recall that the zodiac includes the constellations through which the Sun, Moon and planets pass in their annual apparent motion across the sky.
Some of the constellations are even marked the same as now. For example, the constellation Scorpio corresponds to the scorpio, and the constellation Wolf corresponds to the wolf (or the dog, since it is difficult to distinguish these animals performed by ancient artists). Libra corresponds to the image of a duck (or goose), Virgo - a bear, and so on.
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In addition, on stone 2, the authors discerned an image of the taurid meteor shower, also oriented relative to the constellations in a manner that was appropriate for its time.
According to statistical calculations of scientists, the probability that all this is a coincidence is 1 in 300 thousand, and taking into account the same images on other megaliths, it is even 1 in 10 million.
The authors find the same system of depicting constellations with the help of animals on other monuments, including such famous ones as Chatal Huyuk (7000 BC), Lasko (15000 BC) and Altamira (14000 BC) … Researchers have discerned the same motives even in one of the oldest known sculptures - the famous man-lion from Holenstein (34,000 BC).
Although these examples of ancient art are undoubtedly created by different cultures, scientists believe that they all reflect knowledge about the starry sky.
Moreover, studying some artifacts, researchers came to the conclusion that already in the Stone Age, people knew about the anticipation of the equinox. This is the name of the slow displacement of the moment of the equinox from year to year. As we now know, it is caused by the precession of the earth's axis and repeats with a period of about 26 thousand years. Earlier, the discovery of the anticipation of the equinox was attributed to the ancient Greek scientist Hipparchus.
The authors speculate that people with such an accurate knowledge of astronomy could have been skilled navigators. This fact is indirectly confirmed by some data on ancient migrations.
In addition, scientists came to the conclusion that the famous images from Lascaux, which for a long time were considered the oldest known drawings (now this status has already been disputed), reflect the fact of the fall of another large meteorite about 17 thousand years ago. Traces of this event are preserved in the ice of Greenland.
“Early cave art shows that humans became familiar with the night sky during the last ice age. Intellectually, they hardly differed from us today,”says Sweetman.
The considerations expressed by the authors are tempting, but, of course, must be verified by independent experts. Recall that the article by Sweetman's group is still only a preprint, but it has been accepted for publication in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Athens Journal of History.