They mapped the stars and the moon... and we call them cavemen?

yeah, look at the french. LOL (just kidding, Frenchy's...seriously).

This is an interesting thread. It might just help us continue to foward momentum in painting our ancestors as every bit as sophisticated as we are intellectually. We have more advances to build upon...but it is becoming obvious that "So easy a caveman can do it" might just be a misnomer.

Good question. They were the first humans on earth. Weren't they? And supposedly Adam and Eve could speak, and did not grunt as Caveman were to have done. If it all started with the caveman, then they were capable of learning and surviving, leading right up to us here in this age, we are all descendants of them. .I'm always trying to understand the time line of Humans and civilizations. I guess it really comes to distinguishing between the scientific view and the religious views. What a long, long history this Earth has had. Its just mind boggling. Personally I think god was an astronaut, or something like that..

heres an episode of ray mears that has something to do with what this post is about, i seen it a few days ago before this thread funnily enough and he talks to an aboriginal woman about rock painting and she does say that her ancestors used to paint things in specific areas and renew them.

link to ray mears walkabout

reply to post by HeluvaStorm

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Cave men did not grunt, they had textiles, soap and could use a stick to make a spear that would have trouble downing a pigeon into something powerful enough to kill an auroc. They had language, music and yes, even knew where the stars were at a given time. They didn't have electricity but cognitively, between them and us, that's about it. We all survive in our given situation, it's called adaptation and it's whats kept us alive for so long. Just because no one here can whittle a stick doesn't make these people master magicians or children of the god's any more than your ability to program a VCR makes you more sophisticated than them. They were anatomically the same as us, just like everyone else around you now is. These people were smart, no doubt. So are we. Yes, we make stupid choices and guess what, so did they. Do you all look at your relatives going about their everyday lives and say 'wow, they're so clever, they can do something I can't'? Have some respect for ancient humans and for yourselves. These people weren't demi god's, they were human being's surviving in a different environment to yours, that's all. Everyone seems to be mistaking neolithic man for a Disney cartoon or an episode of He Man.

reply to post by HeluvaStorm

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If you tell a big enough lie long enough people will believe it and the best place to hide something is right in plain site. I do believe the ancient astronaut theory, so many cultures around this planet has the same thing of a being or beings in vehicles flying and some even had them drawn in machines and in helmets. I'm going to throw out three theories that may be close to or on the mark on humans being on this planet.

Theory 1:

We as a whole people came from a planet that doesn't exists anymore as survivors to the planet we call earth. What if this planet was the main planet and mars was the moon of this planet. something happened and this planet broke apart. The survivors as I mentioned had the ability to scrap together enough vehicles to make the journey to earth and live here. Could have happened tens of thousands or 100,000 years ago. The people got to this lush planet and didn't have enough to build back up to the civilization that they came from. And it led to infighting and regressing back to the spear and rock for hunting.

Theory 2:

Same as Theory 1, but instead of a planet that had mars as a moon, Mars was the planet. Enviromental problems or a astroid strike could have destroyed the surface of mars and made it uninhabitable. The Survivors may have either seen it coming or was left of the destruction and was able to fashion up a few interplanetary ships to get maybe a few thousand or even a few hundred off the planet (remember, there wasn't alot of "humans" on the planet 100,000 years ago). Then as before not having enough to survive at the state of their civilization technology they had to make do and regressed to the spear and rock.

Theory 3:

Now this theory is highly controversal and still in the realm of possibility. As we know Mars had water and atmosphere millions of years ago (might be even 10's of thousands of years ago). What if two civilizations flourished in this star system, one on mars and one on earth. But one of them was farther along than the other. Something happens to mars and the survivors are able to get to earth. They start fighting with each other because of the reasons of an advanced (you don't have to be to advanced, it's relative to the person seeing you and what you can do) culture wanting things their way and the other one to follow. They fight each other to the point that they regress back to the spear and stone for hunting and killing.

Maybe theory 3 is close to the mark and they don't want us to know our history. Wouldn't it be a shock if we found out that this planet was invaded and it turned out that the people or individuals that did the invasion, there descendants are one or more of the races on this planet. The other races would go ballistic because they would be thinking that he your kind took our planet etc. etc.. maybe they don't want to have any civil strife.

Like a said just theories, but I do believe that we had in this system at least two habitable planets at one time.

As usual we're drifting off into wild speculation with little evidence other than opinion. The caves are suddenly a gathering place for Martian refugees or evidence of drug-taking mystics extending scientific knowledge through hallucinating. The paintings are 'obviously' evidence of alien abduction, hybrids and what else. At the same time there's some notion that hunter gatherers lived live at full tilt and had no time for anything like rock art. Some guys seem to imagine a lifestyle of running from predators, chasing food and never resting.

Like most successful predators, if enough food is secured they rest. Chimpanzees and modern hunter gatherers all rest after a kill or when food is abundant. Chimps can use the same nest for several nights. Modern hunter gatherers have shelters that they return to. Why would our earlier ancestors have been different? Socializing is a major feature of the primate lifestyle. The Lascaux caves guys had the same intelligence as we have...bright enough build shelter. Traditional hunter-gatherer social structure has females remaining to prepare the fruit and veg while males hunt meat. Infants that are too old to carry and too small to travel large distances would remain with the females and elderly. Mythology, shamen, language and art would have been developed and gained sophistication through social times...Throughout the world there are also sites of great tool making industry...hand axes, blades, scrapers, points etc require the time to create them...not running from a lion whilst chasing a young horse...

Another point is that humans don't seem to be the dish of first choice for predators. The energy expended to kill us isn't rewarded in the same way a horse or deer would be. We're far less fleshy than other prey. We're also organized like a pack and were probably avoided by predators unless conditions dictated otherwise. There are kill sights across Europe and especially Africa where we've ambushed Gelada baboons and butchered the remains.

Martians or alien abductions? They make great sci-fi and fantasy books and movies. The thing is that there isn't any evidence to support the ideas. The only evidence is based on a 20th or 21st Century mind trying to interpret the motivation and understanding of the societies that created the 'art' thousands of years ago. The stone tools that have been found in cave systems in Africa, Asia and Europe are associated entirely with homo habilis, homo erectus, neanderthal etc. The development of the tools is charted through the millenia. The use of the tools is further recorded by butchery marks on the bones and fragments that we've found around the world. This evidence firmly indicates the growing sophistication of early humans...it doesn't support a race that was able to cross space from Mars.

Alien abductions? Well, folk see what they want to see. Aboriginal and Native Americans have explained what their rock art means and it's fairly well documented...no aliens! No 'sky brothers.' Anyway, we can believe what we like...out of mischief, I'd like to share this rock art painting. What do you see?

reply to post by Billy t Hill

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You're completely right. They didn't grunt any more than we grunt. Furthermore they would have sung and they made instruments to play music. Have a look at the disputed 40 thousand year old Neanderthal bone flute. Archaeologists have found bone pipes and flutes that pre-date the Lascaux Caves. Obviously, they would be able to clap, sing, hum and bang stuff to a beat. Some studies suggest that in cave systems that feature art, the areas of greatest resonance often have a greater amount of the red ochre markings.

In this light, we have a cave system lit by lots of torches and resonating to the sound of chanting, songs and maybe music. Pretty cool stuff

PS good posts recently

I smell suppression of secrets.

There is alot of evidence around the world that our ancestors may have travelled to earth from another place or time in the space time continuum.

reply to post by In nothing we trust

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Can you also smell mold, damp and spreading fungus? The caves have been closed for these reasons. People tramping through and breathing increased carbon and moisture changed the environment and allowed the above to spread. An utter FU of an air conditioning unit saw white mold covering the caves in a matter of days.

Exactly...they looked to the future, while we seem to need to search the past...

Not neccesarily true.

How do we know that they weren't looking back at the past as well?

Well 99.9% of the prophecies from such a wide variety of civilizations come from the past, pointing to the future, while most in modern times search the past for answers to the present.

Prophecy points to the future - True

In modern times we search for clues to the past - True

I don't dis-agree with you there. What I'm wondering about is, if our cavemen friends were giving us clues as to thier past. Kind of like, we came from this star system over here. Always remember that point in space, thats the homeworld. Or the stars were positioned here at this point before we entered the time portal.

I think it might be more difficult to envision our cavemen ancestors saying, "We haven't rediscovered microwave cooking yet, but we need to move our species over to this star system soon before a great big asteroid hits our round earth."


[edit on 20-6-2009 by In nothing we trust]

well I definatly hear ya there...I think people probly looked at the past since time began....it is the STORY hisSTORY afterall. so allways very interesting.

Plus, everyone has allways probly wondered where we went wrong, so we could try to turn it around mabey??

See my edit.

I think people just have a basic desire to know what is my purpose for being. Surely someone in the past knew why I am here. Mom, Dad what's going on?

I have doubts on this one.
I am a layman.
But, it looks to me that the astronomer has tried to over lay the constellation map over the paintings and matched the shapes to the constellations.

This is like my son who sometimes lay watching the stars and connecting dots here and there and saying "Look Dad, there is an elephant"

This is just a hypothesis. Nothing more.

Hiya Coredrill, yours is actually more than a 'hypothesis,' it's the prevailing view. She's made the claim, but it remains a claim until more evidence is provided. I admire the caves but share your doubts.

Where is the evidence that the Lascaux populations saw the same constellations as us or identified them with the same figures? When I was a kid, I tried to identify the constellations from a book I had. Gotta say, there's no reason why separate groups through the ages would always see Orion the Hunter. Ursa Major is seen as the big dipper and the frying pan!

Also, just because she can explain 'how' they charted precession by measuring the distance stars traveled with sticks...doesn't mean they did. She should be validating the 'constellations' instead of extrapolating from mere possibility.

reply to post by Kandinsky

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two points on that-

The constellations from the period were remapped using a program at the Metroplitian University in Paris. It Maps the stars as they would have been seen from any time period, so she could match the period that the paintings were created with the sky that they would have seen in this period.

and the second point is that 'they' the Lascaux Populations are us. They are who passed on the knowledge of the constellations over time to us. This could be the evidence.

where did we get our knowledge from???? why do we seperate them from us????
i guess that is the point of the whole post.

reply to post by 2theC

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Regarding the facts of her proposal...it's a fact that there are paintings in the Lascaux Caves. Another fact is that there were stars in the sky when the paintings were created...

The rest is still speculation that is, so far, unsupported by other sources apart from Rappengluck. I'm not convinced that the animals in the paintings represent the constellations because she's applying our constellations to their culture. The names of the constellations, as we know them, are from the Greek tradition. The Lascaux cave art creators were in Western Europe some 10 000 years earlier.

The site you linked in the OP is a beautiful rendering of the Lascaux Caves artwork. The article, however, is dreadfully written and has very little basis in science. A college lecturer would simply return it to the author! 'Precision compasses?' 'Hi-tech computers?!'


You're preaching to the choir on that point. I'm emphatic in all of these A&LC threads that they shared the same intelligence as us today. The distinction 'them and us' is a natural outcome of discussing a largely unknown people from thousands of years ago.

Jegues-Wolkiewiez could be correct and it would be interesting if she was. Nevertheless, it'll need something more conclusive than what she has so far...