HERE THEY COME AGAIN: Decoding European Palaeolithic Art: Extremely Ancient Knowledge of Precession of the Equinoxes.

Pillar 43 at Gobekli Tepe, Turkey.

Photo from the Internet,

Public domain.

On December 1, 2018, I posted a column titled Astronomy in Rock Art – Decoding Gobekli Tepe? about wild speculation that carvings at Gobekli Tepe can be read, and encode the date of a comet strike on earth that caused the Younger Dryas. This claim was published by Martin B. Sweatman and Dimitrios Tsikritsis of the Engineering Department of the of Edinburgh in a paper titled Decoding Gobekli Tepe With Archaeoastronomy: What Does The Fox Say?, (see References below for complete citation). Now, Sweatman is back with even more sweeping and far-fetched claims. He and new partner Alistair Coombs have published Decoding European Palaeolithic Art: Extremely Ancient knowledge of Precession of the Equinoxes.

To try to prove their case statistically they go through a complicated chain of logic that states that their interpretation has only “around 1 in 100 million” chance of being wrong, or from their Appendix B, “Multiplying all these probabilities together gives a chance of 1 in 300 thousand that Göbekli Tepe does not implicate the Taurid meteor stream in the Younger Dryas impact event.” (Sweatman and Coombs 2019:12) Now I am not a statistician, and if I was really good at mathematics I would probably not be an art historian, but to me this is actually ridiculous. It depends on their having been correct in their suppositions in identifying 12 star constellations/asterisms with carved animals at Gobekli Tepe. I have said before that we do not even know if all of these ancient cultures identified constellations/asterisms in the sky, and if they did we cannot begin to guess what they saw. Yet, this whole construct is built on guessing that their 12 identifications are correct. This is one of those logic chains that starts with a whole bunch of maybes and then uses them to supposedly definitely prove something – you cannot do that.

In my December 1, 2018, column Astronomy in Rock Art – Decoding Gobekli Tepe? I presented Sweatman’s theory that the vulture pillar at Gobekli Tepe is a record of a comet that struck the earth and caused the Younger Dryas climate event (see Sweatman and Tsikritsis 2017). They matched images from the carvings on pillar 43 with constellations (all assumed on their part, there are no records proving any connection). They then used their relative positions to calculate a date which they presented as the date of the cosmic catastrophe.

Shaft scene at Lascaux cave,

France. Photo from the

Internet, Public domain.

Now, using the same logic(?), they have expanded their studies to Paleolithic Europe. “The final piece of the logic puzzle is provided by the famous Shaft Scene at Lascaux which has an almost identical interpretation to the Vulture Stone at Gobekli Tepe. They differ only in the date of the catastrophe memorialized and the recorded radiant of the cometary strike.” (Sweatman and Coombs 2019:6)

“Another clue to the meaning of the shaft scene is provided by the fact that only four different animal symbols are displayed here; a bison/aurochs, duck/goose, and rhinoceros (to the left of the falling/dying man) on the main wall with a horse on the rear wall. -  The horse on the back wall is not often described as being part of this scene, but it is central to the interpretation described next.

Similarities with Gobekli Tepe’s Vulture Stone are striking. Both display a man, possibly dead or dying and both display four prominent animal symbols. At Gobekli Tepe the four animals are the vulture/eagle, bear, ibex/gazelle and tall bending bird corresponding to the four solstices and equinoxes at the date of the Younger Dryas event. It is therefore sensible to enquire whether the Shaft Scene at Lascaux is equivalent to the Vulture Stone of Gobekli Tepe and can therefore be decoded using the same method.” (Sweatman and Coombs 2019:6)

“Noting the bison/aurochs and duck/goose symbols in the Shaft Scene, and using Table 1 and Stellarium we immediately find the following;

• Bison/aurochs = Capricornus = summer solstice between 15,350 and 13,000 BC
• Duck/goose = Libra = spring equinox between 15,700 and 14,100 BC

Therefore, this scene might represent a date anywhere between 15,350 and 14,100 BC. To narrow down this range we need to consider the other two animal symbols. Unfortunately, neither of these symbols has previously been decoded. But logically, they are unlikely to correspond to constellations that have already been decoded. When we consider this date range we see the following possibilities;

• Autumn equinox: Taurus 15,350 to 14, 950 BC, or Aries 14,950 to 14,100 BC
• Winter solstice: Leo 15,350 to 14,800  BC, or Cancer 14,800 to 14,100 BC
  

Given that in Tables 1 and 2, Aries is represented by the ram and Cancer is represented by a large feline, and that rams and felines are recorded in Palaeolithic art, it is likely the date range is limited to between 15,350 and 14,950 BC, and therefore the rhinoceros and horse likely represent Taurus and Leo. When we consider these constellations at sunset (see Table 3), which is the convention for this system (1), we find that the rhinoceros and horse are good fits to their respective constellations (Taurus and Leo), which provides further confidence in this interpretation. We therefore suggest that the Shaft Scene encodes the date 15,150 ± 200 BC, and we have now completed our ancient zodiac.” (Sweatman and Coombs 2019:6-7)

They have identified 12 constellations in this ancient zodiac. Perhaps a natural assumption considering that our zodiac has 12 constellations in it, we are pre-programmed to think that is the correct number (and please don’t come back to me with comments about how the phases of the moon in a lunar year determine the number and it’s rising month by month mark the constellations). But, we have no way of actually knowing what constellations the ancient Europeans who painted Lascaux, or the ancient Anatolians of Gobekli Tepe, thought they saw in the sky, let alone the number (if any) that they identified.

“Now that we have a date, we can try to interpret the scene. What should we make of the falling/dying man and the speared/dying bison. Given that the Vulture Stone at Gobekli Tepe very likely refers to the Younger Dryas event and, according to Napier and Clube’s theory of coherent catastrophism, this is unlikely to be an isolated incident, could the Shaft Scene represent another encounter with the Taurid meteor stream? At Gobekli Tepe, the fox featured on the largest central pillars of the largest enclosure yet uncovered, indicating the event dated by the Vulture Stone refers to a cosmic event from the direction of northern Aquarius. Instead, the Shaft Scene displays an injured aurochs, representing Capricornus, not a fox. Is the aurochs here equivalent to the fox at Gobekli Tepe? To answer this we need to consider the precession of the Taurid meteor stream.

As described earlier, the longitude of the ascending node of the Taurid meteor stream is expected to precess at the rate of one zodiacal sign every six thousand years. Today the Taurid meteor stream radiant is centered (and hence maximal) over Aries. Therefore, at the time of the Younger Dryas event, around 13 thousand years ago, it would have been certered over Aquarius, described at Gobekli Tepe in terms of the fox. On the date depicted by the Shaft Scene, around 17 thousand years ago, its center would have been over Capricornus. Therefore, the injured aurochs in the Shaft Scene is consistent with its interpretation as a Taurid meteor strike from the direction of Capricornus. Hence the injured or dying man might indicate a catastrophic encounter with the Taurids, as for the Vulture Stone of Gobekli Tepe.”  (Sweatman and Coombs 2019:7)

Remember, above I quoted their claim that their interpretation has only “around 1 in 100 million” chance of being wrong.” Looking at all of their suppositions and the maybes/mights/possibly/perhapses it took them to reach their conclusion, how realistic do you think this claim sounds now?

Here at RockArtBlog, I really do not like to write attacks on people’s beliefs. I would much rather act as a cheerleader for a wonderful new theory or project. But, since these authors have academic credentials they get away with this, and this kind of nonsense needs to be called out. Go back and read their papers for yourselves. I could not find a single conclusion of theirs that is actually based upon provable fact. My own calculation on this says that they have about a 1 in 50,000 chance of being correct, but like I said, I am not a mathematician. If they had only learned the use of the words “maybe” and “perhaps” I could accept their work as interesting speculation, but never as proven fact. I do, however, invite you to check and decide for yourself.

NOTE: Images in this posting were retrieved from the internet with a search for public domain photographs. If any of these images are not intended to be public domain, I apologize, and will happily provide the picture credits if the owner will contact me with them. For further information on these reports you should read the original reports at the sites listed below.

REFERENCES:

Faris, Peter
2018 Astronomy in Rock Art – Decoding Gobekli Tepe?, December 1, 2018, https://rockartblog.blogspot.com/2018/12/astronomy-in-rock-art-decoding-gobekli.html

Sweatman, Martin B., and Dimitrios Tsikritsis,
2017 Decoding Gobekli Tepe With Archaeoastronomy: What Does The Fox Say?, p. 233-50, Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry (open access), Vol. 17, No. 1.

Sweatman, Martin B., and Alistair Coombs,
2019 Decoding European Palaeolithic Art: Extremely Ancient Knowledge of Precession of the Equinoxes, Athens Journal of History, Vol. 5, No. 1, pages 1-30.