Re: Thinking outside the box


Franz Gnaedinger wrote:
Holly wrote:

Forgive my lameness but I don't know how to capture everyone's
thoughtful comments to my question.

Sigh. This time you ask so many questions ... I needed five
hours to answer them, but mercifully I make it short, one hour.
Get a sandwich and a drink, I wait so long.

Ah ... yes ... I'll hurry back.

Are you back? Well then, let me begin. Michael Rappenglueck
had a fine intuition regarding the Lascaux cave. He interpreted
the bull, the birdman and the bird on a pole in the pit as the
constellations of the Summer Triangle Lyra - Cygnus - Aquila
and he thought of a lunisolar calendar. Alas, he didn't really
say how to handle his calendar, 29 dots for a lunation and 13
dots for a half lunation won't do. A lunation lasts 29.53... days,
or 29 days 12 hours 44 minutes 2.9 seconds, modern value
from 1989 AD).

You find my interpretation of the Lascauc lunisolar calendar
in my thread from last year, "Lascaux, a lunisolar calendar"
(a research thread, live research, so to speak, as I published
my insights on an almost daily basis).

Thanks. [Excuse my mouth full, I eat and respond at the same time.
;-)] I will look this up.

The oldest algorithm for calculating lunations may already have
been known to the dwellers of the Lebombo cave in Central
Equatorial Africa, 35 000 BP, and it was certainly known to the
Lascaux people: 30 29 30 29 30 29 30 29 30 29 30 ... days
yield 30 59 89 118 148 177 207 236 266 295 325 ... days for
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 ... lunations.

Now a Lascaux genius combined this very ancient algorithm
with a solar calendar of nine periods:

h 41 i 40 b 41

g 40 a 41 c 40

f 41 e 40 d 41

Let period a begin on the summer solstice (June 21 of
our calendar), and let it be the day or night of a full moon.
Now add the periods a b c d e f g h, in numbers 41 41 40
41 40 41 40 41 days, and you obtain 325 days -- as many
days as eleven lunations according to the above algorithm.

This is very interesting.
I think if people had the ability to represent such concepts then they
had language to express it. I have read (elsewhere) that it took a
very long time for early homosapiensapien to count above three or four
(a quantum leap to five) but if they counted on their fingers ... if
they counted at all, I am inclined to think they had words to express
the numbers (perhaps without the idea of zero) such as the secret ruins
are written in columns (e.g. 23 would represent second aettir, third
rune). In this case counting fingers could be R5 (the "pinky") and L3
(the bird) -- if we are reading right hand first -- combined could mean
seven. In ASL one counts indefinitely with the right hand by using the
thumb to touch one of the digits to increase its value and using
movement of the hand to represent zero.
http://www.dummies.com/WileyCDA/DummiesArticle/id-1972,subcat-MIND.html

I think that toe counting would have been for dummies.


This means: when a new moon occurs at the begin of period
a, it will again be full moon at the begin of period i, next year
at the begin of period h, then at the begin of the periods g,
f, e, d ... This principle works for seven years withouth mistake,
while a mistake of one day occurs by the end of year eight.

So you can run this calendar for eight years, then you have to
add, say, two leap days, and consider the slightly different
phase of the moon.

Moreover, this calendar existed in two versions: as a sacred
calendar, indicated by two geometrical drawings at the rear
end of the axial gallery; and as tributary calendar, indicated
in the axial gallery, now a year had 13 periods of 28 days
(standing rectangle and 13 small dots on the right side) plus
an additional day (big dot on the left side of the rectangle).

Marie E.P. Koenig identified the horse with the sun, and
the bull with the moon. In my Lascaux thread from last year
I proposed Magdalenian CA LAB (sky cold) for the winter
sun horse, CA BEL (sky warm) for the spring sun horse,
CA BAL (sky hot) for the summer sun horse, and CA LUN
(sky moon, full moon) for the moon. Magdalenian CA LUN
may have turned into Latin calendaes and our calendar.

<Sigh> ... The Horse...hmm ... It is really difficult to know what the
Cro-Magnon was thinking when she painted one of the lovely horses in
Chauvet Cave. It's far easier to know what she was feeling. Because
of the way the mare was drawn, I think the horse was loved and was not
only a totem. In general, I think most of the representations were
personal ... that the artist personally knew the horse or the lion or
the bull, etc. So to determine the horse's significance metaphorically
or mythically is difficult. Cro-Magnon was no less intelligent than
we, and for that reason I think they knew the difference between a good
story and reality. In using the horse as a force that represents the
sun or the moon they must have been thinking of archetypes. The concept
of horse as power and mobility. Oddly, to me that is, the ancient
Egyptians "believed" that the sacred scarab pushed the sun across the
sky and then dropped it into the over night ocean that brought it back
to be rolled across the sky again, each day. Watch these beetles at
work and it is understandable how these people could see the monotonous
actions of the sun being controlled by the archetypal beetle in the
sky. If the mare were a female totem and counting was used to
determine gestational periods then it appears the moon would be the
satellite of significant association. The mare's gestation is
approximately between 335 to 342 days and varies from year to year.
However, if for males the stallion would have been a totem figure then
the association to the sun becomes clearer.


Can you see the sky as an ocean? I can't. When you consider
the constellations as regarded by various people in various
times and continents, it becomes clear that the sky was
another "earth," with people, animals, pastures, rivers, and
perhaps lakes and oceans, but the sky as a whole was never
seen as an ocean, I dare say, or then as the primeval ocean,
before earth and sky were separated.

I can see the sky as ocean. And not to be indiscrete but the smell of
fish is associated with women especially during menstruation. If a
culture worships the Great Goddess it is logical to make the connection
between fish and star.


You may know the fish idols from Lepenski Vir on the river
Danube. They have probably been cosmic deities, involved
in the creation of the world, and the living beings may perhaps
have been regarded as the offspring of their spawn. - Do you
know Marija Gimbutas? Try to get her book The Goddesses
and Gods of Old Europe, UCLA Press Berkeley 1996.

I have reasons to assume that Bevaix in western Switzerland
was devoted to fertility, beginning in the Magdalenium, when
the large limestone oval Creux du Van may have been seen
as remains of the world egg laid by the bird goddess (three
tiny figurines of that goddess from the late Magdalenium,
13 000 BP, have been found at Moruz on Lake Neuchatel).
In the megalithic time, as early as 6 500 or 6 300 BP, and
throughout the Bronze Age, the plateau of Bevaix must have
been consecrated to an amphibian fertility goddess - fish in
the water, grass frog rana temporaria in water and on land.
Her heavenly spawn have been souls of worthy deceased
entering heaven, seen in meteor showers (my interpretation
of several menhirs and plenty of slabs bearing cup marks in
that region, together with the menhir ensemble of Yverdon-
Clendy, and further menhirs in western Switzerland).

You mention Dravidian min represented by a fish and also
meaning star. Egyptian Min was a fertility god. You may
consider the aspect of fertility on several levels. First the
origin of the world, in Egypt from the primeval water, out of
which rose the primeval hill that opened up, releasing the sun
god Ra and the sky goddess Nut (in one of many versions).
Rolf Krauss, an eminent egyptologist, identified the swaying
kha channel with the band of the ecplitic, seen as a heavenly
Nile, along which the sun and moon and the plantes traveled
in their respective boats. In Magdalenian times, the sun was
a horse, and the moon was a bull. They run across the sky,
so the metaphor of the river won't do, while I believe that
the Milky Way may have been the celestial river of the Lascaux
people, and the constellations of Lyra, Cygnus and Aquila the
heavenly abodes of worhty rulers in their second life on the sky.

Mycenae culture worshipped the bull. We are all aware of the story of
the Minotaur and the Athenian youths who were sacrificed to him. No
doubt most have seen the paintings of young women doing handstands on
the back of prancing bulls, but some of you may not be aware that
during the Great Year "celebrations" (every ninth year) the kings of
that culture were visited by women wearing horses heads. It was a
gruesome event when the king was sacrificed to ensure fertility.


The problem is that you must discern between places and
periods of time. - Well, I see that my hour is over. Good bye,
and have a nice day

Yes, of course. Thank you for your hour of thought and contribution.
I too spent a little over that ... considering I made coffee and fed my
very large, vocal cat.

Good day!

Franz Gnaedinger www.seshat.ch

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