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Cave Paintings That Tracked the Stars · The Last Observer: Science and Beyond

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: I want you to try and picture something for a second.
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Just imagine you are standing deep inside a damp, pitch
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: black limestone.
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: Cave right like, completely cut off from the outside world exactly.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: We're talking somewhere in western Europe, and you are tens
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: of thousands of years in the past. It is completely dark.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: And silent too, well, except maybe for the sound of
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: water dripping somewhere away off in the distance.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that hollow dripping sound. And the air is cold,
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: it's heavy, with that intense smell of wet earth and minerals.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: It's an oppressive environment, really it is.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: But then imagine a flickering flame from this little animal
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: fat lamp just suddenly illuminates the rock right above you,
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: and suddenly the walls are completely alive.
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it's just breathtaking when you think about it.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: They are covered in these massive, vibrant paintings. You've got
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: galloping horses, You've got fierce orocs, which are these enormous
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: extinct to cattle, and wounded bison, all painted in these
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: deep rich reds and charcoal blacks.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: And for generations. The story we've been to about this
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: exact moment, about these specific images is that it's just
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: well primitive art, right.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: Or they call it hunting magic, you know, like it's
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: just the scribblings of early humans who are just trying
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: to manifest their next meal.
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the old menu theory exactly.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: But what if we have been looking at this through
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: a completely wrong lens this entire time. What if this
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: isn't just some early artistic expression.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: Which is the big question right now, Yeah, because what
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: if you are actually looking at the earliest known evidence
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: of advanced astrophysics.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: And that idea just it forces a complete rewrite of
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: the timeline of human intellect. I mean, it completely breaks it.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: It really does. When we analyze these ice age cave paintings,
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: and I'm talking specifically about sites like Glascow and France,
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: Altemir in Spain, the Chouve Cave, we are not looking
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: at arbitrary hunting scenes or.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: Just basic decorative art to make the cave look nicer, right.
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: No, The realization that is just sweeping through ourchaeostronomy and
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: cognitive archaeology right now is that these spaces function as
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: highly sophisticated starmaps.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: Stara wraps painted on cables.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: Literally star maps. They are seasonal calendars, and they're meticulously
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: engineered timekeeping systems that were created anywhere from fifteen thousand
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: to forty thousand years.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: Ago, which I mean, let's just pause on that number,
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: because it places this on a timeline that is almost
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: difficult for me to even conceptualize.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: It's staggering.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: It is because when we talk about ancient astronomical wonders,
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: I feel like the mind immediately goes to, you know,
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: the Pyramids of Giza.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: Sure, which were built around twenty five hundred BCE.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: Right, Or we think of Stonehenge and it's brilliant solstice alignments,
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: which is roughly what three thousand BCE.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: Your take care.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: But here we are discussing a period that predates those
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: monuments by tens of thousands of years, long.
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: Before human beings were even planting crops.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: Exactly before the whole Neolithic agricultural revolution. Upper Paleolithic humans
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: were already systematically tracking complex celestial movement.
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: And not just tracking them, translating that really abstract data
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: into a permanent visual language.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: So we need to understand who we're talking about here.
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: Right, because we are dealing with anatomically and cognitively modern humans.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: These are people with the identical brain structure, that you
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: and I.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: Have, same prefrontal cortex, same capacity for abstract reasoning.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: Exactly the same. But there's this historical bias against them,
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: this deeply ingrained kind of arrogant evolutionary assumption that human
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: progress is just this strictly linear slope.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: Like from grunting cavemen directly up to modern scientists, with
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: nothing complex in between.
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: Yes, and that bias is exactly what blinded the scientific
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: community to their brilliance for over a century.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: So let's pull apart that historical bias. Because the scientific
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: establishment didn't just casually overlook this stuff. They actively fought
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: the idea that early humans were capable of complex thoughts.
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: Well, they fought it tooth.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: And now, if we rewind to eighteen seventy nine, to
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: the discovery of the Altimura Cave in northern Spain, you
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: see this arrogance on full display.
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: Take a classic example.
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: So you have Marcelino Sansta Sosuola, who was a Spanish
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: landowner and an amateur archaeologist. He was exploring the cave
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: and his young daughter Maria. She was actually the one
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: who looked up and saw the painted ceiling first.
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: Right, a little girl was the one to spot it.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and we are talking about a ceiling covered in
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: these incredibly vibrant, lifelike perspective accurate bison. But when Satwala
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: presented these findings to the experts, the scientific community didn't
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: just debate his dating methods.
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: No, they went straight for the throat. They essentially accused
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: him of being a.
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  Speaker 1: Fraud, which is so wild.
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: Well, you have to remember the scientific establishment of the
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: late nineteenth century was completely entrenched in this very specific,
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: newly minted Darwinian worldview.
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: Right, Darwin was the new gospel exactly, and they point
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: blank refused to believe that upper Paleolithic humans had the
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: mental capacity, or the technical skill.
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: Or even the geometric reasoning required to produce masterful.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: Art like that, because it contradicted their neat little timeline
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: of human evolution.
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: Perfectly said, the prevailing dogma was that early humans were
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: just primitive opportunists. They thought they were barely scraping by
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: on a day to day basis, just entirely consumed by
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: the brutal, bloody reality of survival.
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  Speaker 1: Just hunting, eating and trying not to freeze.
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: Right, So, the idea that people living in the ice
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: age could take the time to grind hematite and ochre,
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  Speaker 2: mix it with complex binders, and create a multicolored, perfectly
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  Speaker 2: proportioned fresco.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: While utilizing the natural three D contours of the rock.
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: By the way, yes, using the bumps in the ceiling
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: to make the bison look three dimensional. To the establishment
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: back then was considered completely absurd.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: They just couldn't fathom it.
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  Speaker 2: The leading French prehistorians of the day, men like Emil Cartilac,
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: they actually declared the altemera paintings to be an elaborate
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: modern forgery.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: It's so sad too, because Sachula actually died before the
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: scientific community finally hadmitted he was right.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: He died a discredited man. Yeah. It wasn't until decades later,
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: as more and more these caves were discovered completely sealed
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: behind solid rock, that they had to face the facts.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: Because you can't fake a painting if the cave has
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: been sealed by a landslide for ten thousand years exactly.
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: Cartioc actually had to publish a paper titled Maya Kulpa
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: of a Skeptic where he admitted he was completely wrong,
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: which is a.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: Great title for an apology paper.
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: Honestly it is. But here's the frustrating part. Even after
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: they accepted the authenticity of the art, the establishment still
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: completely refused to view these humans as analytical observers.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: Right, They couldn't call them frauds anymore, so they just
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: pivoted to calling them superstitious.
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: Yes, they needed a new way to diminish them. And
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  Speaker 2: this is where we get the sympathetic magic.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: Theory, spearheaded by figures like the Abbe andrie Brew.
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  Speaker 2: Right, that's the one, and this sympathetic magic theory it
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: became the dominant lens for most of the twentieth century.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: And what did that argue exactly just for everyone listening.
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: Well, argue that these paintings were essentially ritualistic, literal wishes.
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: The concept was that by drawing a pierced bison or
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: a wounded animal on the wall, the hunter would magically
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  Speaker 2: ensure a successful hunt the next day.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: Ah okay, the whole anthropological concept that like produces life.
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  Speaker 2: Exactly, you draw a dead animal, you magically get a
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: dead animal in real life. It perfectly fit their narrative
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: of a primitive, superstitious people who just didn't understand causality
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: or how the natural world actually operated.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: But the moment you actually apply rigorous statistical analysis to
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: what is actually painted on the walls, that sympathetic magic
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: theory just crumbles, doesn't it.
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: It falls apart completely.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: Because if you're just drawing what you want to eat,
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  Speaker 1: why are the most commonly painted animals often not the
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: ones they were actually eating?
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  Speaker 2: Right, the archaeological record doesn't match the art.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: The bone records in these caves show their diet was
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: heavily reliant on reindeer, yet reindeer are rarely depicted in
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  Speaker 1: the major frescoes.
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  Speaker 2: It makes no sense if it's a menu.
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  Speaker 1: And furthermore, this theory fails entirely to explain the specific,
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  Speaker 1: repeated spatial orientations of the animal species. It doesn't explain
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: why the walls are covered in complex geometric dots and
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  Speaker 1: grids and tally marks placed in highly precise proximity to
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: the animals.
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  Speaker 2: Because hunting magic has no need for a grid pattern.
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  Speaker 1: Right if I want a magic up a stake, I'm
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  Speaker 1: not drawing an Excel spreadsheet next to a cow.
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  Speaker 2: That is a great way to put it. And it
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  Speaker 2: also fails to account for the physical location of the
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  Speaker 2: art itself.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: Yes, the locations are insane.
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  Speaker 2: We aren't talking about paintings at the mouth of the
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: cave where everyone hangs out. These images were painted in deep, inaccessible,
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  Speaker 2: pitch black subterranean chambers.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: You literally have to crawl through tight limestone fissures for
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: hundreds of meters.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, into spaces where daylight has never penetrated.
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  Speaker 1: So if your goal is simply to draw a menu
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  Speaker 1: for tomorrow's dinner to appease some local forest spirit, there
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  Speaker 1: is no pological reason to undertake the massive, highly dangerous
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  Speaker 1: logistical effort of dragging scaffolding and fat lamps and fragile
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  Speaker 1: pigments deep into the earth's crust to do it at all.
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  Speaker 1: It's just like assuming they just drew what they wanted
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: to eat. Is like a future archaeologist finding a modern
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: printed calendar with a picture of a turkey in November
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  Speaker 1: and then assuming twenty first century humans worship turkeys to
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: magically summon a Thanksgiving feast.
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: Oh I love that analogy. It's so true.
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  Speaker 1: It completely mistakes a marker of time a symbolic chronological tool,
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  Speaker 1: for a literal object of worship or a menu item, And.
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  Speaker 2: That analogy perfectly illustrates the failure of the old paradigm
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  Speaker 2: because it just denied the Paleolithic mind the capacity for
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: symbolic timekeeping.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: So if we discard that old bias and we just
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: acknowledge that Ice Age humans possess the exact same observational
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: hardware as we do, the environment they lived in dictates
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: a completely different necessity.
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: Well, just imagine living under a pristine, unpolluted.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: Night sky back then, no street lights, no nothing.
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: Without artificial light or atmospheric pollution, the stars would have
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: been overwhelmingly bright. They formed this dense, highly readable canopy
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: over everything.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: And for nomadic hunter gatherers living in a really harsh
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: Ice Age environment, survival wasn't about wishing for food with magic.
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: No, it was that anticipation right.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: They had to anticipate the migratory patterns of massive herds,
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  Speaker 1: the blooming of seasonal plants, and brutal weather.
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: Shifts, and to predict what was happening on the earth.
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: The most reliable constant data set available to them was
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: the sky.
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: The stars that don't lie, They don't.
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: But mapping stars is one thing, you know. Establishing a
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: system to record and read that data over generations requires
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: a physical.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: Ledger, which brings us perfectly to the Cave of Lascoux,
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: specifically this incredible space called the Hall of the Bulls.
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: Yes, we're talking about an area painted roughly seventeen thousand
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: years ago during the Magdalenian period.
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  Speaker 1: And the scale of this chamber is just staggering. You
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: walk in well if you were allowed, and you are
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: surrounded by these immense, sweeping figures of horses, deer, and
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: these massive bulls.
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  Speaker 2: And it is here on these walls that independent researchers
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: have identified undeniable evidence of Paleolithic astrometry.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: Astrometry the measurement of stars.
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: Exactly the work done here by researchers like doctor Chantalo Jaguwalkybis.
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: And this has been corroborated by analyzes from institutions like
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: the Universities of Edinburgh and Kent. It represents a massive
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: shift in how we read.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: These walls because they stopped looking at the animals as
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: mere biology.
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: Right, They stobseen just a bull and started looking at
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: the abstract marks surrounding them as data points.
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: Okay, so give us the most compelling example of this
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: in Lasco.
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: The best example is the Great Rox, which is referred
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: to in archaeological catalogs as ORROX number.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: Eighteen ORROX number eighteen. Got it.
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: This is a massive, beautiful painted bull, and just above
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: his shoulder there's a very distinct, deliberate cluster of six
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: painted dots.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: Now, wait, anyone who spent even a little bit of
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: time looking up at the night sky might immediately recognize
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: a cluster of six dots hovering close together.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: Oh, for sure, the Pleiades, the Seven Sisters, right the Pleiades.
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: It is a highly visible star cluster. And even though
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: it's called the Seven Sisters, generally six stars are what's
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: most easily distinguishable to the naked eye.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: Okay, so there are six dots over the bull shoulder, and.
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: The positioning of these six painted dots just above that
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: panted bull's shoulder corresponds perfectly geometrically to the position.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: Of the a structural map of stars exactly.
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: The face of the Lasco bowl is delineated with patterns
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: of dots that map exactly to the V shaped star
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: cluster we know today as the.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: Hides and the Hydes forms the face of Taurus in
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: the sky.
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: You got it. Furthermore, the eye of the painted bowl,
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: the literal dot representing the eye sits precisely in the
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: anatomical spot where Aldebaran is located in the sky. Aldebaran
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: the star, Yes, Aldebaran is this really bright red giant star,
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: and it is universally across many later cultures as the
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: fiery Eye at the constellation Taurus.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: That is just too specific to be a coincidence.
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: And it gets better. Just nearby, in the cave wall
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: right next to the bowl, there's a series of geometric
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: alignments and animal postures that mathematically mirror the position of
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: the belt of Orion Ryan. Yeah, and during the Upper
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: Paleolithic period, Oriyon rose in close proximity to Taurus during
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: key seasonal shifts.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: Okay, but I have to play Devil's advocate here, we
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: zoo because the immediate counter argument that comes to mind
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: is peridolia.
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: Right, seeing patterns where there aren't.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: Any Exactly, the human brain is totally hardwired to find
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: familiar patterns in random noise. Is why we see shapes
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: in clouds or faces in rocks. Sure, so, if you
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: stare at a bumpy cave wall that's covered in thousands
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: of painted dots and overlapping animals for long enough, you're
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: going to find a pattern that looks like Taurus.
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: What A that's a very valid critique.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: So how did jagual kiwas and the subsequent researchers statistically
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: disprove confirmation bias? How do we know this is an
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: intentional scaled map and not just a really fortunate coincidence.
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: Well, critical thinking demands we rule out peridolia, as you said,
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: And the researchers did this through rigorous statistical geometry and.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: Astrometry, meaning they crunched the numbers.
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: They really did. They didn't just point at the wall
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: and say, hey, this doc kind of looks like a star.
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: They utilize complex planetarium software like Stellarium to literally rewind
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: the night sky.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: Wait, because the stars move over time, Yes, stares have
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: what we call proper motion.
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: The night sky today does not look exactly as it
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: did seventeen thousand years ago. The stars have drifted relative
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: to each other.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: Oh that's wild. So you can't just use today's sky
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: to check their work exactly.
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: The researchers had to model the exact positions of the Pleiades,
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: the Hyades, and Eldebaran as they would have appeared, specifically
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: the Magdalenian sky. Okay, And when they overlay that specific
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: historical star map onto orox number eighteen. The relative spatial
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: distances aligned perfectly no way. Yes, the spatial distance between
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: the six dots of the Pleiades relative to the V
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: shape of the hides on the face, relative to the
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: exact placement of the Aldebaran eye. It all matches the
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: astronomical proportions of that specific era.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: The actual geometry holds up.
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: The geometric angles hold up statistically. You just don't accidentally
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: splash paint in a perfectly proportional map of the specific
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: constellation while also placing another constellation perfectly proportionate to it
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: just a few feet away.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: Okay, so the scale, the proportionality, and the specific historical
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: dating of the sky itself pretty much proved the intentionality.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: They knew what they were drawing.
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: Yeh, absolutely no.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: But the next question is why Taurus? Why spend so
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: much energy mapping this specific constellation onto a giant bowl
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: on a cave wall.
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: That comes down to what Taurus represented at that specific
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: epoch in time around fifteen thousand to seventeen thousand years ago.
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: These constellations function as a vernal equinox marker.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: The spring equinox.
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: Exactly, and the spring equinox was arguably the most critical
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: turning point in the entire hunter gatherer.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: Year because it signals the breaking of winter, the.
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: Snow melts, the migrating herds return, plant life reemerges. It's
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: the difference between starving and thriving. By mapping this specific
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: constellation on the cave wall, they turn the stone into
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: a functional, readable instrument.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: So it was like a permanent reference guide.
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: Yes, a permanent record of the spring sky. It was
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: a baseline against which they could observe the actual real
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: sky to determine precisely when the seasons were shifting.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: Okay, so mapping the stars that mark the spring equinox
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: makes perfect logistical sense for survival. It does, but the
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: sky is dynamic. If you're a nomadic tribe, a static
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: map of just the spring sky isn't going to cut it.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: You need a dynamic calculator for the summer solstice as well, right,
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: You definitely do, because the peak of summer dictates when
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: certain grazing lands will dry up, when specific herds will move,
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: and when you need to start preparing for the eventual
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: turn toward autumn.
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: Summer is a huge logistical hurdle which.
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: Leads us deeper into life, down a steep, incredibly treacherous
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: drop into an area known as the Shaft of the
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: dead Man.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: Ah. Yes, the Shaft of the dead Man. This is
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: one of the most heavily debated panels in all of
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: Paleolithic art from.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: What I understand. To even reach it, you have to
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: descend a roughly five meter vertical drop. It is a
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: highly secluded, deliberate space.
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: It's not a place you just wander into by accident.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: Right, and the tableau painted down there is visually shocking.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: It depicts a man, but he has the head of
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: a bird.
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: And he appears to be falling backward rigidly straight.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, stiff is a board, and right next to him
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: is this massive bison, and the bison's entrails are literally
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: spilling out of its stomach.
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: It's a very violent, chaotic scene.
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: Extremely and then below the falling man is a bird
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: perched on a stick, and off to the left, kind
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: of separated slightly from the main action, a rhinoceros appears
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: to be walking away.
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: It's so weird, right it is.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, if I'm an early twentieth century archaeologist looking
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: at a birdman spilled into and a rhino in a
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: hidden pit. I am absolutely calling this a shamanic ritual.
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: Most people did.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: It looks like a Chaota mythological nightmare. So how did
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: modern astronomy look at this crazy dramatic narrative and see
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: a geometric map?
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: Well, you're right. For decades, the shamanic tragedy theory was
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: the undisputed interpretation. Everyone viewed it as a mythological story
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: of a hunt gone wrong, or maybe a trance state,
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: some battle steeped in spiritual mysticism.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: Because what else could a birdman in a rhino mean?
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: Right? But archaeo astronomers eventually came in and they applied
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: the exact same geometric methodology here that they used in
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: the Hull of the Bulls.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: Okay, so what do they look for?
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: They stripped away the narrative drama, They ignored the intestines
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: in the feathers, and they looked strictly at the focal
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: points of the composition. Specifically, they looked.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: At the eyes, the eyes of the figures.
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: Yes, and when you draw literal lines connecting the eye
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: of the bird headed man, the eye of the bird
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: on the stick, and the eye of the disembeled Bison.
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: You don't get a random.
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: Scatter, what do you get?
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: You get a perfect distinct triangle.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: A perfect triangle.
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: Yes, and this triangle corresponds to a very specific asterism
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: in the night sky.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: Let me guess it's related to summer.
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: Precisely, that hidden geometree matches the summer.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: Triangle, the summer triangle.
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a prominent asterism formed by three incredibly bright
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: stars Vega, Dneb and Alta. And what is really crucial
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: to understand here is the astrometry of that specific time
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: period because.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: Things were different fifteen thousand years ago, very.
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: Different around fifteen thousand BCE because of the specific axial
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: tilt of the Earth. Back then, this star formation was
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: circumpolar at the latitude of lascow.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: Wait, meaning it never dipped below the horizon. It was
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: just a constant fixture in the night sky.
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: Yes. Unlike other constellations that rise and set seasonally, circumpolar
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: stars circle the celestial pole, meaning they are always visible.
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: They make for highly reliable permanent anchors in the sky.
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: So tracking the rotation and the specific origentation of this
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: summer triangle around the pole was a vital, precise marker
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: for the summer solstice.
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: Exactly. They were using the eyes of these painted figures
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: to lock in the geometry of the summer sky.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: The cognitive brilliance of this is just astounding to me,
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: because they embedded a rigid geometric map into a highly
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: memorable visual narrative.
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: That's the genius of it.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: Because think about it. If you just gave a group
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: of hunter gatherers a list of spatial coordinates, or you
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: tell them to remember a random triangle, the data degrades.
• 20:32
  Speaker 4: Human memory is fallible, the cordons get forgotten in a generation, exactly.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: But if you encode those coordinates into a thrilling, dramatic
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: graphic novel about a birdman, a dying bison, a rhinoceros
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: walking away, that story is sticky.
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: It's incredibly sticky.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: It gets told around the fire for thousands of years.
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: The data survives completely intact because the narrative vehicle carrying
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: it is so compelling.
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: You hit the nail on the head. Yeah, we have
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: to remember we are analyzing an oral culture here. Without
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: a written alphabetical ledger. Human memory is the only hard
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: drive available. It's all they had and narrative, myth, dramatic imagery.
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: These are the most effective, highest fidelity methods for transmitting
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: complex data across generations. The story preserves.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: The geometry that is just brilliant.
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: They were just painting pictures down there in the shaft.
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: They were engineering a visual mnemonic device to ensure their
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: descendants knew exactly how to calculate the summer solstice.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: Okay, so if the Magdalenian cultures at Lasco were doing
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: this seventeen thousand years ago, we really have to ask
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: how far back this continuous scientific tradition goes.
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: Because the system, this complex isn't just invented overnight.
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: Right, this method of encoding timekeeping into animal forms, it
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: was a universal, continent wide scientific language, which means we
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: need to pull back and look at the broader network
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: of cave astronomy. Let's touch on sites like Chauvet and
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: this whole concept of deep time tracking.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: To really understand the true scale of what these early
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: humans achieved, we have to look at the chronological depth
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: of the practice.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: How deep does it go?
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: Well, let's look at the Chouve cave in southeastern France.
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: The artwork here belongs to the urg Nation culture, and
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: it is staggeringly old. It is securely carbon dated to
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: between thirty thousand and thirty six thousand years.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: Ago, so twice as old as Lasco exactly.
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: Yet even here, tens of thousands of years before Lasco,
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: we see specific astronomical alignments related to the constellations of
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: Leo and ursa.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: Major, the Lion and the bear.
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: Yes. And then we look at Altemire in Spain, which
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: is dated between fourteen thousand twenty thousand years ago, where
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: the painted ceiling features autumnal constellations functioning as a highly
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: specific hunting season calendar.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: So we are talking about a continuous, unbroken scientific practice
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: that spanned tens of thousands of years and crossed fast
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: geographical expanses.
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: It's mind boggling when you truly think about the timeline.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: But a continuous traditions spanning twenty thousand years implies they
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: were observing phenomena that take massive amounts of time to unfold.
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: You can't maintain a scientific tradition for that long unless
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: you are tracking deep time cycles.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to the precession of the equinoxes. Now,
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: for those of us who aren't orbital mechanics, how exactly
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: does precession work and why is it so incredibly difficult
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: to observe?
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: The procession of the equinoxes is one of the most
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: complex long term astronomical phenomena visible from Earth. In really
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: simple terms, the Earth doesn't just beIN perfectly straight on
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: its axis.
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: It's tilted.
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: It's tilted, and because the gravitational pull of the Sun
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: and the Moon on the Earth's equatorial bulge, our planet
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: actually wobbles very very slowly, okay, like a top, exactly
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: like a spinning top that is just beginning to lose
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: its momentum. Its axis traces this really slow circle. And
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: because of this slow wobble, the position of the stars
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: in the night sky, specifically the constellations that rise directly
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: behind the Sun on the vernal equinox. They gradually shift
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: over time, but.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: The shift isn't something you'd notice from like year to years.
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: Oh, definitely not. It takes approximately twenty five thousand, eight
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: hundred years for the Earth's axis to complete one single wabble.
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: One full processional cycle takes almost twenty six thousand years.
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: Yes, from the perspective of a human observer on Earth,
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: the background stars shift by roughly one degree every seventy.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: Two years, one degree every seventy two years, barely perceptible
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: a single human life span, and the Upper Paleolithic might
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: have been forty to fifty years if they were extremely
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: lucky and managed to avoid infection or an angry mammoth.
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: Sure so, no single individual could ever observe precession. How
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: does a society latching a formal alphabet even begin to
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: conceive of a twenty five thousand year cycle, let alone
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: track it accurately.
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: This is where we see the absolute peak of Paleolithic
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: cognitive capacity. Observing procession requires the flawless transmission of highly
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: precise astronomical data across hundreds, if not thousands, of generations.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: It's the alt game of telephone.
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: But a game of telephone where the message cannot change.
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: It means an elder pointing to a specific star on
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: the dawn of the spring equinox and passing that exact
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: positional data down.
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: And then dozens of generations later.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: Dozens of generations later, the descendants observed that the star
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: has moved slightly from the position recorded in the oral history.
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: To maintain the fidelity of this data, without written text,
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: comprehensive Studies by researchers like doctor Martin Sweatman at the
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: University of Edinburgh have shown they developed a standardized universal
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: zodiacal animal notation.
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: So they essentially standardized the code across the entire continent.
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: Break down this Ice Age zodiac for us. How did
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: they assign meaning to the different animals?
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: Well across this vast span of time and geography, a
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: really consistent statistical pattern emerges. The choice of which animal
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: was painted was not random, nor was it based on
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: what they were eating.
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: Right out goes the menu theory again exactly.
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: Bison's and massive bowls were systematically associated with the equinoxes,
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: so spring and autumn alignments. When you see a large
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: bovine painted in a dominant position on a cave wall,
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: you are almost always looking at an equinox marker.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: Bovine's equal equinox got up? What about the others?
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: Stags and horses were consistently linked to solstice events, the
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: absolute height of summer and the dead of winter, as
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: well as the transitions between major seasons and.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: The scary stuff the predators.
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: The predators like the fierce lions and bears that you
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: see all over Chauve. They were utilized to represent the
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: major northern sky circumpolar constellations.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: The dangerous powerful stars that circle the pole and never
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: set exactly.
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: It's a highly sophisticated visual taxonomy.
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: It's an information super highway built entirely out of animal totems.
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: A bowl painted in Spain meant the exact same mathematical
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: concept as a bowl painted in France, separated by thousands
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: of years.
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: It was a shared scientific language.
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: But you know, while tracking a twenty five eight hundred
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: year processional cycle is vital for understanding deep time and
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: mitigating long term climate show, it doesn't really solve the
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: immediate problems of tomorrow.
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: No, you can't eat deep.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: Time, right. They couldn't wait seventy two years for a
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: star to move a degree when they needed to know
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: the exact night to hunt a reindeer herd next week.
• 27:12
  Speaker 4: Survival requires immediacy, so for granular day to day survival data,
• 27:17
  Speaker 4: they turn to a completely different kind of notation, which
• 27:20
  Speaker 4: brings us to the lunar calendars of the Ice Age
• 27:23
  Speaker 4: and the really groundbreaking work of Alexander Marshak Ah Marshak.
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: Yes, deep time cosmology is fascinating, obviously, but immediate survival
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: requires localized data beyond the dramatic monumental animal frescoes on
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: the walls the caves, and more importantly, thousands of pieces
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: of portable bone, antler and ivory found in these sites.
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: They are absolutely covered in abstract notation.
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: We're talking about rows of seemingly random dots, vertical strokes,
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: intricate cross hatched grids.
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: And finger floutings just drag through soft clay.
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: And for a very long time, the archaeological community just
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: ignored these marks entirely.
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: They dismissed them as completely irrelevant.
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: They were categorized as background filler or primitive decoration or
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: literal graffiti like the Paleolithic equivalent of someone doodling on
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: a notepad during a boring meeting, right.
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: Just idle scratching.
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: So what did Alexander Marshak do to completely upend the assumption.
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: Well, Alexander Marshak, who was an independent scholar who eventually
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: became affiliated with the Peabody Museum at Harvard, He fundamentally
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: changed cognitive archaeology in the nineteen sixties and seventies by
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: doing what he decided to look closer at these markings,
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: specifically on portable artifacts like the tie plaque, which is
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: this meticulously carved piece of bone. Marshak's methodology was revolutionary
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: because instead of just looking at the overall pattern with
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: the naked eye, he utilized high powered microscopy.
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: He put the bones under a microscope.
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: He examined the interior grooves of the telemarks themselves.
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: Okay, and what does the inside of a scratch on
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: a bone actually tell you?
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: It tells you time, time, time. Think about it. If
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: you or I were just doodling or carving a random
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: geometric pattern for decoration in a single sitting, we would
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: take a flint knife and make twenty.
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: Cuts in a row sure chop, top chop.
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: And under a microscope, those twenty cuts would look virtually identical.
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: They would share the exact same tool signature, the same
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: angle of entry, the same applied pressure, and the same
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: microscopic V shape or U shape profile.
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: Because it's all done in one motion with one tool exactly.
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: But when Marshak looked through the microscope, he discovered that
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: these ancient tally marks were accumulated day by day over
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: long periods of time.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: Wait, they were using different tools for different marks.
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: Yes, the microscopic analysis revealed dozens of different tool signatures
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: on a single piece of bone.
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: That is incredible.
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: One mark was made with a really sharp flint burreend.
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: The very next mark was made with a duller bone
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: point applied from a totally different angle with different torque.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: And on the cave walls.
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: In the caves, similar sequences of dots were painted seeing
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: slightly different mixtures of pigment over time, so.
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: They came back day after day.
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: This proved unequivocally that these were not single session decorations.
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: They were active, maintained ledgers. It was a physical spreadsheet
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: being updated daily.
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: And when Marshak and the subsequent researchers mathematically analyzed these
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: daily entries what pattern actually emerged from the spreadsheets.
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: They found a profound, undeniable mathematical consistency. These sequences of notches, lines,
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: and docks corresponded perfectly to the twenty nine point five
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: day synotic lunar.
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: Month the lunar cycle.
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: Yes, for clarity, the synotic month is the time it
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: takes for the moon to complete one full cycle of
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: phases from new Moon back to new Moon relative to
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: the Sun. These Upper Paleolithic humans were systematically counting the
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: phases of the moon.
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: Tracking the waxing and waning with absolute precision. Yes, okay,
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: let's ground this in the reality of an ice age community.
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: Why is tracking the synotic lunar month a matter of
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: life and death? I mean, we take calendars for granted today,
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: but what taible survival advantage does this provide to them?
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: A highly accurate lunar calendar provided critical logistical advantages. First
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: and foremost illumination right nightlight Exactly if you can mathematically
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: predict exactly when the full moon will occur, you can
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: plan intensive, coordinated night hunts. You take advantage of the
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: maximum visibility to track nocturnal prey or ambush herds while
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: they're resting.
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: That makes total sense.
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: Second advantage is scheduling. These were widely dispersed nomadic communities.
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: They didn't have cell phones to text each other.
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: No, they didn't. So if you need multiple scattered tribes
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: to congregate at a specific river valley for the annual
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: salmon run or to hunt a massive migrating mammoth herd,
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: you can't just say hey, meet here when the weather
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: gets warm.
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: That's way too vague. You'd miss each other by weeks exactly.
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: You need a synchronized clock. You say, meet at the
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: valley on the third full moon after the winter solstice.
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: The moon was essentially the first universal clock.
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: But the tracking and far beyond just scheduling meetups or
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: planning night hunts didn't it because it extended into advanced
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: biological management. And there is a specific example of this
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: back endless goo that I feel like perfectly illustrates how
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: deeply they understood the natural world. Let's talk about the
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: pregnant mare.
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: Oh, this is one of my favorite examples. Deep within
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: Lasco there was a beautifully rendered painting of a wild
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: horse and it is clearly depicted with the swollen, distented
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: belly of a pregnant mare.
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: It's very obviously pregnant, very obviously.
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: But what elevates this from a simple nature study to
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: a scientific document is the abstract notation accompanying it. Painted
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: directly along the spine of this pregnant horse is a
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: highly specific sequence of marks.
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: What kind of marks?
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: There are exactly twenty eight or twenty nine dots painted
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: in a linear sequence right along her back, terminating near
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: the rear of the animal.
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: Twenty eight or twenty nine dots which is the exact
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: length of the lunar month. Yes, so they aren't just
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: drawing a picture of a pregnant horse. They are literally
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: mapping the concept of time onto the biology of the animal.
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: Precisely. They were tracking gestation periods. Wow, the gestation period
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: for a wild horse is roughly eleven months, a bison
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: is about nine point five months. By utilizing these lintallies,
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: they were calculating exactly when these herds would be dropping
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: their young.
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: And why is knowing that so important?
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: Because the spring birthing season is a critical survival window.
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: Newborn animals are highly vulnerable. Prey and nursing mothers behave
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: very predictably. They stay close to water, they don't move
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: as fast. By knowing exactly when the herds would fall,
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: the hunters could position themselves in the right valleys at
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: the right time.
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: They weren't merely wandering the tundra hoping to stumble across food.
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: No, they were biological project managers. They were mathematically scheduling
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: their resource yields eleven months in advance based on the
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: phases of the moon.
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: It just completely dismantles the primitive opportunist myth. The level
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: of forward thinking, biological knowledge and resource management is just
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: it's astounding. So we have vast cosmic star maps charting
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: the equinoxes. We have mnemonic myths encoding solstice geometry into stories.
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: We have twenty five thousand year processional trackers using animal zodiacs,
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: and we have highly detailed lunar biological ledgers.
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: A staggering amount of data.
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: It is, But all of this data collection raises one massive,
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: glaring question for me. If the goal is to track
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: the sky, the sun, the moon, and the stars, why
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: put all this skytracking data deep underground in a pitch
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: black cave where you can't even see the sky?
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: It's the big question.
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: Why not carve it on a cliff face outside where
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: you can actually look at the stars while you read
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: the map.
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: It is the ultimate paradox of Paleolithic cave art, really,
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: and to understand it it requires us to step completely
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: outside our modern utilitarian mindset. We have to attempt to
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: grasp the spiritual philosophy of the Ice age worldview.
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: Okay, so how did they view the cave?
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: For these humans, the cave was not just a convenient
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: dry canvas to store data. The subterranean environment held profound
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: symbolic meaning. It was universally viewed as the womb of
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: the Earth.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: The womb of the Earth, so it was an intensely
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: sacred generative space, highly sacred.
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: In their cosmology, the universe was likely divided into distinct realms.
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: The sky above was the realm of the cosmos, the
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: eternal sweeping cycles of time, weather and ethereal light.
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: And the earth below.
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: The Earth below, specifically the deep subterranean caves, was the
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: realm of birth, generation and the physical emergence of the
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: animals they relied.
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: On, right, because animals live on the Earth, out of
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: the Earth.
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: Yes, So by taking the data of the cosmos, the
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: star maps, the solar and lunar alignments, and physically painting
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: it deep inside the earth, they were creating a ritual synthesis.
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: They were binding the heavens and the Earth together exactly.
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: They were marrying the eternal cycles of the sky with
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: the generative power of the Earth in a sacred sanctuary.
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: But they didn't just walk into any random cave, find
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: a smooth wall and start painting, did they. The physical
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: selection of these sites involves a level of engineering that
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: is almost unbelievable. It really is the caves weren't just canvases.
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: There were astronomical instruments in themselves. Let's talk about the
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: entrances to these caves and how they actually interact with
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: the sun.
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: This is where archaeostronomy intersects with prehistoric optical engineering, which
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: is a wild concept. The entrances to many of these
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: highly decorated caves were not chosen at random. They were
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: purposefully selected, and in some cases, researchers believe the entrance
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: ways were subtly modified or cleared out based on highly
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: specific solar alignments. Solar alignments, yes, studies have shown that
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: on key chronological dates, specifically the dawn of the winter
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: or summer solstice, the rising or setting sun penetrates the
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: exact angle of the cave entrances at sites like Lascow
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: and others across the region.
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: But the sun isn't just lighting up the front porch
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: of the cave right. The light physically travels deep into
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: the system.
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: It travels with stagnant precision. On the exact day of
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: the solstice, this solitary beam of sunlight pierces the darkness
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: of the entrance. It travels down the winding irregular descending
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: subterranean corridors. Wow, it bounces and refracts off the limestone walls,
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: and it illuminates highly specific, intentionally painted panels deep within
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: the cave system, just for that one day. And this
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: illumination only occurs for a few fleet evidents on one
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: or two specific days a year.
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: To put this into a modern scientific perspective for the listener,
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: it's akin to the optical alignments required for like the
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: James Web Space Telescope.
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: That's a great comparison.
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: To get JWST to function, engineers had to calculate exactly
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: how sunlight would hit the sunshield, how the mirrors would
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: align to catch specific photons from deep space, all while
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: dealing with extreme environmental variables. Right, these Upper Paleolithic humans
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: were doing the terrestrial equivalent of that optical engineering. They
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: had to observe and calculate solar asimuth angles outside the
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: mountain over long periods of time, over years likely right,
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: had to map exactly how that specific beam of light
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: would behave on the solstice. They had to account for
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: their refraction of light, the jagged, irregular nature of the
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: natural stone corridors, and even the changing vegetation outside.
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: The cave mouth, all without computers.
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: They did all that math, and then they placed their
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: most vital astronomical knowledge exactly where that solitary beam of
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: light would strike. It is an absolute masterpiece of solar engineering.
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: The mathematical and optical complexity required to achieve this is undeniable.
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: It requires a mastery of geometry, an intimate understanding of
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: the solar cycle, and the ability to project three dimensional
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: light paths into absolute darkness.
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: It's just genius.
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: It proves that these spaces were designed as highly tuned
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: observatories and ritual centers where the cosmos physically interacted with
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: the recorded data.
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: This perfect alignment of breathtaking artistic perspective, deep time astronomy,
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: biological science, and solar engineering. It forces us to look
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: at the entire legacy of human history in a totally
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: new light.
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: It really does.
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: We have to completely abandon the idea that human progress
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: was a sudden, miraculous invention that just sparked out of
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: nowhere during the Bronze Age and Mesopotamia or ancient Greece.
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: We do the evidence locked in lasco Altemera, and Chauvet
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: demands that we rewrite the textbooks entirely. It proves that
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: the foundations of science, mathematics, and astronomy were not born
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: in the agricultural societies of the fertile presence.
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: No, they were born much earlier.
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: They were born in the dark of the ice Age.
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: They were engineered with ochre, charcoal and animal fat by
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: human beings who were looking up at the stars, utilizing
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: brilliant cognitive strategies to find order, predictability, and meaning in
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: the seemingly chaotic forces of nature.
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: There were scientists, engineers, and storytellers all wrapped into one.
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: So the next time you step outside on a clear,
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: crisp night and you look up and spot the belt
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: of Orion, or you catch a glimpse of the Pleates
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: hovering in the sky, I want you to realize something profound,
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: beautiful thought. You are sharing an identical analytical gaze with
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: a human being from forty thousand years ago. When you
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: look at those stars and track their movement, you are
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: actively participating in humanity's oldest continuous scientific tradition.
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: It is a staggering connection across deep time. Despite the millennia,
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: the changing climates, and the rise and fall of whole civilizations,
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: we are looking at the exact same sky, seeking the
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: exact same understanding of our place within the universe.
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: It really is, And I want to leave you with
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: one final lingering question to ponder on your own today.
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: We've just spent this entire journey discovering how our Ice
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: Age ancestors brilliantly encoded their deepest, most vital scientific knowledge
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: into the dramatic mythology and art of their time to
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: ensure it survived tens of thousands.
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: Of years right hiding data and myths.
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: They hid their hard data inside stories of birdman and
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: painted bulls. So what profound truths of our time? What
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: vital pieces of human knowledg or survival data are we
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: unconsciously embedding into our own modern art, our blockbuster movies,
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: and our pop culture stories right now? The future archaeologists
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: tens of thousands of years from today might entirely misunderstand.
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: Makes you wonder imagine them
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: Standing in the buried, pitch black ruins of our world,
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: shining a light on our digital screens or our monuments,
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: and wondering if we were just painting primitive magic on
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: the walls