Briton solves mystery of 20,000-year-old Ice Age drawings

London furniture restorer Ben Bacon did An important discovery that helped to better understand the cave paintings of Ice Age hunter-gatherers. In his opinion, special marks on the drawings helped people of that time to maintain a lunar calendar.

Rock paintings of animals such as reindeer, fish and cattle have been found in caves throughout Europe. However, archaeologists for a long time could not understand the meaning of individual dots and other signs in these images.

Ben Bacon spent many hours on the Internet and in the British Library, referring to images of rock paintings. He tried to collect as much data as possible and looked for repeating patterns.

In particular, he examined the "Y" sign in some of the images, which he thought could be a "birth" symbol, as it showed one line growing out of another.

As his research progressed, he attracted friends and some scientists. They asked him to continue the work despite the fact that Mr. Bacon was "virtually a man in the street".

Ben subsequently collaborated with a panel of experts that included two professors from Durham University and one from University College London. With their help, it was possible to find out that the number of marks on the rock paintings means lunar cycles and mating periods of animals.

The group's findings were published in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal.

Mr. Bacon added that our ancestors are much more like us than we previously thought. “These people, separated from us by many millennia, suddenly became much closer.”