Unraveling an Ice Age code - 30th January 2023

London-based furniture conservator Ben Bacon has deciphered a 20,000 year old code that had left generations of archaeologists guessing. Bacon revealed the meaning behind the mysterious dots which accompanied images of livestock on Ice Age cave paintings. They're now understood to be indications of the mating seasons of animals recorded using a lunar calendar.

The Londoner, who lacks any formal expertise in archeology, remarked that his achievement was "surreal". Bacon's fascination with prehistoric cave paintings led to him attempting to figure out the meaning behind these markings, spending countless hours reviewing images of cave paintings at the British Library and online, until he finally unravelled the code.

The pattern which appeared, a series of dots and a 'Y' symbol, accompanying renderings of cattle, reindeer and fish related to mating seasons. The 'Y' he presumed to be a fertility symbol due to the way one line emerged from another. However, since no pre-existing rationale for the presence of the dots in the 20,000 year old depictions existed, Bacon sought the aid of friends and academics to confirm his theory.

Though he was "effectively a person off the street", two academics from Durham University heeded the call and collaborated with him. The team drew comparisons between the reproductive cycles of present day relatives of the species depicted by the prehistoric artists, and their relationships to the accompanying markings. This resulted in the team evidencing that the dots and symbols coincided with the lunar calendar and the prehistoric beasts' reproductive cycles.

According to team member Professor Paul Pettitt, from Durham University, "The results show that Ice Age hunter-gatherers were the first to use a systemic calendar and marks to record information about major ecological events within that calendar."

Connecting the dots sheds new light on Ice Age hunter-gatherers' capacity to track time and record significant ecological events. This confirms that the hunter-gathers responsible for murals in Lascaux and Altamira had a systematic way of measuring time, a key element which underpins our modern civilization. This has brought Bacon to reflect that, "These people, separated from us by many millennia, are suddenly a lot closer."