Κυριακή 12 Σεπτεμβρίου 2010

ΟΙ ΒΡΑΧΟΓΡΑΦΙΕΣ ΤΟΥ LASCAUX ΕΙΝΑΙ ΕΝΑΣ ΑΣΤΡΟΝΟΜΙΚΟΣ ΧΑΡΤΗΣ???


Dr. Michael A. Rappenglueck sees maps of the night sky, and images of shamanistic ritual teeming with cosmological meaning
By Jack Lucentini
Special to SPACE.com
posted: 11:00 am ET
14 August 2000

When most people look at stone-age cave paintings, they see charging bulls, prancing reindeer and other animals.

Dr. Michael A. Rappenglueck also sees maps of the night sky, and images of shamanistic ritual teeming with cosmological meaning.

Rappenglueck, an independent, somewhat maverick researcher based in Gilching-Geisenbrunn, Germany, believes our ancestors were closely observing the stars as early as 16,500 years ago.

The "Chinese Horse" image from Lascaux, France

He has studied famous stone-age paintings in caves at Lascaux, France and elsewhere since the mid 1980s. To analyze the artwork, he projects it onto a grid, and compares it to maps of the night skies as our ancestors would have seen them.

Rappenglueck developed software that plots the night skies, as they appeared thousands of years ago.

"This software has to be very exact. It's not easy to have the right algorithms (formulas) to reckon the ice-age skies," said Rappenglueck.

He also claims this type of work may eventually help resolve a growing controversy over the original inhabitants of the Americas, and when. That's because it's possible to assign dates to artwork based on the celestial patterns depicted, he said.

Rappenglueck's work has been published in several research journals and a book last year, in German, published by Peter Lang Publishers.

In one finding, Rappenglueck identifies a cosmic significance in a mysterious painting at the celebrated 16,500-year-old stone-age cave site of Lascaux, France.

The painting depicts a bison that appears to be charging at a man with a bird's head. Just below, a bird's head is lodged on top of a stick or a post.

The eyes of all three creatures form a triangle identifiable as the "summer triangle" of the night sky, composed of parts of the constellations of Swan, Lyre, Dolphin and Eagle, Rappenglueck asserts.

At that time, the "summer triangle" circled around what was then the "North Star" -- the star 18-D cyg, he added. In different ages, different stars have served as the "North Star" around which other stars appear to turn. This is because the Earth's axis, which aims toward this pivotal point in the sky, itself slowly rotates.

The bird-on-a-stick is angled to point directly to this ice-age North Star, Rappenglueck further asserts.

He claims this is part of a long tradition in which early peoples worldwide -- including some Native Americans -- used to put bird heads on sticks aligned along this "axis" of the heavens. This would symbolize bird-gods or shamans who traveled to the skies to guide their people.

Even present-day weather vanes may go back to this tradition, Rappenglueck believes.

The imagery was designed to enable a shaman to rise to the heavens to communicate with ancestor-gods, Rappenglueck explains.

In the Lascaux painting, the shaman is the man-bird. He is aligned with the Milky Way, to represent his life-giving or creative force, Rappenglueck explains. The Milky Way was often thought of as a stream of milk or sperm energizing the universe, he adds, asserting that this is why our friend the shaman sports a brisk erection.

In another study, Rappenglueck writes that rock art in the Spanish cave of Cueva de El Castillo depicts the Northern Crownconstellation, with stars positioned in a way that date the art to 11,000 years ago.

Much of Rappenglueck's work is based on knowledge of other prehistoric cultures worldwide, which, he says, have much in common when it comes to ritual and imagery.

Other astronomers say that while Rappenglueck works in a speculative field, his work is well reasoned.

"He individually is a thoughtful and serious scholar," said Dr. Edward Krupp, director of the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles and the author of five books on ancient and prehistoric astronomy.

Researchers such as Rappenglueck work in the field of archaeoastronomy -- the intersection of astronomy and archaeology. It's inherently speculative work, Krupp said, because many of its conclusions are not proven; some scholars are skeptical of it.

"Even under the best circumstances you're pretty much stuck with circumstantial evidence," Krupp said. "But is the discussion worthy of entertaining? Yes, it is."


See also

http://issuu.com/lightmediation/docs/the_lascaux_cave___a_prehistoric_sky-map_3390







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