Archeoastronomy - Lunar Timekeeping - European Society for Astronomy in Culture (SEAC) Conf - 2022

Academia.edu PDF: https://www.academia.edu/92966160/Lun...
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Anthropological and ethnographical surveys of hunter-gatherers and pastoral peoples from Siberia and North America during the early 1900’s recorded wide-spread use of lunar calendars for the observation and harvesting of terrestrial and aquatic animals as well as general timekeeping. Volumes of evidence in the fields of chronobiology and wildlife biology followed throughout the 20th century that record animals across the biological spectrum in both aquatic and terrestrial environments as being cued by the sun and dark/light phases of the moon (Endres, KP and Schad, W. 1977).

In the latter part of the 20th century, the American scholar Alexander Marshack investigated engravings and paintings on Upper Paleolithic portable objects and cave walls in Europe, proposing that many of them were a count of moon phases and that Upper Paleolithic peoples understood the inter play between the moon annual cycle and seasonal changes (Marshack, A. 1972). Many of the proposed lunar notations that Marshack studied were marked before or during early Beringian migrations. This greater migration period offers the possibility for lunar timing knowledge to have been held by Upper Paleolithic peoples in Europe and then transferred to both sides of the Pacific Rim during pre-Columbian migrations and interactions.

This study explored the possibility of and demonstrated that repeating geometric patterns accompanying depicted animals in the Upper Paleolithic Franco-Cantabrian archaeological record, lunar calendars of hunter-gatherers and pastoral peoples as recorded in the anthropological and ethnographical surveys, and the light/dark lunar cued biological behavior of significant animals presented can be correlated. These relationships support the idea that the knowledge of lunar calendars as a means to monitor the biological activity of significant animals was utilized before early Beringian migrations and that this knowledge proved to be important in hunting, gathering and general timekeeping success on the European, Asian and American continents (Taylor, B. 2022).
Further, the geometric lunar notations accompanying depicted animals at Upper Paleolithic Franco-Cantabrian sites could tell us a great deal about the lives and belief systems of these hunter-gatherer artists. In the minds of these animists, the depicted animals could have appeared to be orchestrated by supernatural cosmic forces, visible on the terrestrial plane, in connection with the sky world, and in the cave underworld medium of the artists at the same time. Such belief systems may have emanated across continents during pre-Columbian migrations and interactions.

REFERENCES:

Endres, Klaus-Peter and Schad, Wolfgang. 1997. Moon Rhythms in Nature: How Lunar Cycles Affect Living Organisms. Floris Books.

Marshack, Alexander. 1972. The Roots of Civilization. McGraw-Hill Book Company.

Taylor, Bernie, 2022. Lunar Timekeeping in Upper Paleolithic Cave Art. Praehistoria. New Series 3
https://www.academia.edu/86645040/Lun...

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