Prehistoric Astronomers: Stargazing at the Dawn of Time

35,000 years ago, in Europe, tribes of hunter-gatherers invented a fascinating art form. An art populated with animals emerging from the depths of the earth. Some 18,000 years later, in the heart of the Perigord region in France, they created their most fabulous masterpiece. Lascaux, the Sistine Chapel of the prehistoric era. Prehistorians have offered all sorts of explanations for this wall art, and theories abound concerning its purpose. Hunting magic, totemism, shamanism. Yet none has revealed the deeper meaning of the works left behind by our ancient ancestors. But Chantal-Jegg-Volquier-Viez, an independent French researcher, has come up with an exciting new hypothesis. She believes the Lascaux cave paintings represent a map of the sky. The sky as seen by the world's first artists 17,000 years ago. Her claims, advanced after many astronomical calculations, represent a radical departure from previous interpretations. But will the researcher be able to convince others? At times I did have doubts, so I would start all over again. And each time I came up with the same answers. I can't backtrack now, I simply can't. Whenever someone says that can't be right, I reply, yes it is, it works. Chantal-Jegg-Volquier-Viez first set out on the trail of our ancient ancestors 15 years ago. At the time she only knew Lascaux by name. She was interested in a totally different site, located in the heart of the southern French Alps, the Vallée des Merveilles, the Valley of the Marvels. Together with her husband, Jacques, and Michael, a guide specialised in the valley's history, she is revisiting the place that initially aroused her interest in prehistoric man. Nestled high in the mountains at over 2,000 metres below majestic Mount Bago, the Vallée des Merveilles conceals a unique treasure. 35,000 engravings carved by Bronze Age man between 2,500 BC and 1,700 BC. Daggers by the thousands, axes and halberds, motifs reminiscent of bull's horns, wheels and anthropomorphic figures. These rock carvings contain a mysterious message. Some people believe we are dealing with something that is found throughout the Mediterranean basin. Symbolic drawings produced by a cult devoted to bovine gods, with or without sacrificial rites. While others believe it is a form of proto-writing. That's the magic of this site. It remains open to interpretation. Chantal believes the sky holds the key to this mystery. For ten years she worked on this site for her PhD thesis. Her idea being that during the Bronze Age, the Vallée was a vast astronomic observatory. It was on the rock known as the altar that she made her first discoveries. Here, prehistoric man carved dozens of daggers. At first glance, there is no apparent logic to their orientation. On the morning of the autumn equinox, in the spring too, but in spring there's too much snow, you can't see anything. The sun rises over there where the daggers are pointing. To penetrate the meaning of the 115 carved daggers, Chantal applied the methods of archaeoastronomy. She used a clinometer to measure the incline of the rock and a hand-bearing compass to determine the orientation. In this manner, she proved that the majority of the daggers were oriented to the point of the horizon where the sun rises on the day of the autumn equinox. Chantal also proved that in the middle of the night, at the same time of the year, the daggers were aligned with the moon. Basically, everything is pointing in the same direction. It would appear the ancient engravers recorded astronomical coordinates. But why? Another observation would provide part of the answer. Beneath this huge boulder, lying upon the stone slab, the sun and the moon light upon a small cavity at the same time of year. You see this spot of light here? Yes. Here on this rock? This occurs because it's the equinox and the sunlight passes under the boulder. What was the point of observing all this? Actually, it's very simple. We have the union of the sun and the moon. So, from this, you can see exactly where you are in time and reset the clock, so to speak. When this phenomenon occurred, the rock carvers knew winter was drawing in and the site would soon be covered with snow. It was time for them to return to the valley. The stone altar was therefore a sort of lunar-solar calendar. As Chantal continued her research, she became convinced the carvings were the work of seasoned astronomers who recorded the passage of time in stone. She pursued her investigation with these mysterious serpentine figures. The arco-astronomer's interpretation is somewhat unexpected. This is a classic figure, which is familiar to any astronomer interested in the path of the moon. You have zigzags like this, rising moon, descending moon, rising moon, descending moon. Here we have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. This means you have 12 lunar months. We have 12 cycles, 12 lunar months in the year. This isn't surprising. If any observer were to draw the moon's trajectory during its 28-day cycle and throughout an entire year, he would obtain roughly the same drawing. When she left the Vallée des Merveilles, Chantal knew she was only at the start of a long story. One that ultimately led early man to observe the sky. And she wanted to write the following chapters, pursue avenues unexplored by prehistorians and construct bold hypotheses. The arco-astronomer needed to understand what had happened further back in time. And so she turned to our Stone Age ancestors, those who decorated Lascaux's walls. The cold has come to the clan's territory. The game has disappeared. Provisions are low. They have decided to set out again, to travel further than on previous days. They know which plants are nourishing, those which stave off hunger. They know where to find rocks to make fire. They repeat the gestures made by their ancestors since the dawn of time. They know how to hunt in groups, to track animals, to see them without being seen, to lay traps. They have learned how to smoke meat, to preserve it for many days, many moons, until the burning circle of light rises high in the sky once more. When Chantal Jacques Volquier-Viez advanced her theory on the Vallée des Merveilles, she was greeted with sarcasm and derision. This intrusion into the realm of prehistory by an atypical researcher was not looked on favourably. For years, archaeology and astronomy had been mutually exclusive disciplines. But one prehistorian decided to change all that. Jean-Michel Genest, the curator of Lascaux. He invited Chantal to visit the cave and apply her methods there. She jumped at this chance to analyse the world's most famous cave paintings. Her research at Lascaux began one June evening, on the 21st, the first day of summer. Chantal wanted to verify for herself what she already suspected from studying maps of the cave. She would discover something very astonishing. In 1999, I discovered that the sun shone into Lascaux on the evening of the summer solstice, and only then. I thought that this astronomical event might have been what made the inside of the cave sacred. And maybe this was why our ancestors had decorated the walls and considered the site sacred. According to her calculations, the rays of the setting summer sun 17,000 years ago shone through the narrow shaft leading to the first Lascaux galleries. So casting light upon the walls and illuminating the paintings that were shrouded in darkness the rest of the year. Until 1999, cave art had been thought of as an art of darkness. But it suddenly became an art of shadow and light. Chantal's hypothesis allows us to imagine the life of Stone Age man in a totally different light. One of them has observed the sky for days on end, interpreting its messages. At the edge of the great forest, he recognised the signal known to his ancestors. The star which warms the earth and makes trees grow. Tomorrow, he will guide his clan towards the sanctuary. He has chosen this cave to capture its rays, to honour it once again. Everyone holds their breath. Is it a sign for them? Is the star telling them that its upcoming disappearance is only temporary? That it will be back, like every year after the winds have swept across the valley? That they need not fear the forthcoming night? Did the disappearance of the sun below the earth give rise to such rituals? Even more than with her thesis on the Vallée des Merveilles, Chantal's claims provoked angry responses from the scientific community. Absurd, ridiculous, unorthodox. Her critics were ruthless. And yet some prehistorians were intrigued, such as Jean Claude, one of the world's foremost experts on Paleolithic art. In shamanism, or rather shamanisms, because there are all sorts of shamanistic practices, the supernatural world can be situated in very different places. It can be at the top of a mountain, at the bottom of a cave, inside rocks and of course in the sky. The important thing is that people believe they have access to it. Jean Claude does not interpret prehistoric paintings in the same way as Chantal. For over ten years now, he has advanced a hypothesis that is every bit as bold and controversial. He believes the paintings, like these here in Cognac, were produced for shamanistic purposes. They were the work of shamans whose responsibility it was to heal the clan, capture game and win the good graces of animal spirits. This hypothesis also created a sensation when it was first introduced. Here, for example, they used the natural contours of the rock for their drawings. From the very beginnings of prehistoric art, you find this idea that the rock is alive. There is an interaction between the world of spirits, the supernatural world, where we are now, and the world of the living. Inside the rock were animals and spirits that were ready to come out. They were half-materialized. And the paintings served as a medium for man to enter into contact with these supernatural forces and harness their power. In the forest, he has listened to the signals of nature. He has seen the bison, the spirit of the ibex. A bull has spoken to him. Now he must join them in the world of shadows. Combine fire and pigments. Lure the animals. Capture the curve of their backs. Pierce the darkness. Uncover the mane of a galloping horse. Make out the blood coursing through its veins of rock. Summon its spirit and charm its soul. Carve, sculpt, and paint again and again. Make them come alive by the light of a torch and harness their power. Ask them for help. Make them allies. Could shamanistic practices and solar cults have coexisted? Or even been part of the same view of the world? Chantal is convinced of it. Jean-Claude and Jean-Michel Genest both found this interesting, but they thought it might be a coincidence. What I needed to do was study all the other caves and see whether, statistically speaking, I would find similar orientations and astronomical events. So I set out with my husband. We explored Burgundy, the Dordogne. Chantal wanted to prove that the sunlight played the same role in other painted caves as it did in Lascaux. It was a veritable challenge for a lone scientist with no means of research or funding and only her husband for support. Her journey would last over seven years. She visited the caves of Courbarelle, Font de Gaume, and Bernifal. Her first results all pointed in the same direction. These caves were aligned with a sunrise or sunset on key days of the year, solstices or equinoxes. She took measurements for months, then years on end. In the heart of the Perigord Noir region at Comarque, a 12th-century castle rises above troglodyte dwellings and a painted cave dated from 14,000 years ago. As at Lascaux, the setting sun shines into the cave on the day of the summer solstice, lighting up its walls. Did the Paleolithic artists choose their caves according to their orientation? Did they discover the astronomical laws governing the path of the sun? If you closely observe the points of the rising and setting sun for an entire year from the same spot, you will see that it moves inexorably day after day. On the first day of winter, the sun rises in the southeast and remains low in the sky. Night falls faster and is longer than the day. On the day of the spring and autumn equinoxes, the sun reaches the halfway point of its annual trajectory and rises in the east. Day is as long as night. Lastly, on June 21st, the first day of summer, the sun rises in the northeast. This is the longest day of the year. For an observer equipped with a compass, there are six significant points on the horizon. Could Paleolithic man have determined these points without measuring instruments? Absolutely. They could have used natural landmarks and observed the sun sliding along the horizon as the months went by, so keeping track of the changing seasons. To be sure the caves had been deliberately chosen for their orientation and not simply at random, Chantal decided to expand the scope of her research. She started investigating caves without carvings or paintings. On these sites, her compass indicated no particular orientation. Altogether, Chantal would travel 20,000 kilometers and take measurements in 130 decorated caves and rock shelters. It was a long, painstaking job, but nonetheless indispensable if she was to convince the world's prehistorians. Enthusiastic about her work, Count Hubert de Comarque opened the doors of his Bourguigny estate to her. Here she would set up her field laboratory. The time had come to draw the conclusions from her journey. Pato, we're here. You see, the cave is there. The cave is there, indeed. Bernifal is here. The moot is here. Ruffignac's over there. Ah, the Abri du Poisson, Logerie Haute. Look at this. Yes, all three face toward the winter sun. All of the well-oriented caves are decorated, whereas the others are not. So it wasn't for geological reasons? I don't think so. I think we need to continue. All of the measurements converged. Of 130 caves, only four were not aligned with the sun at key times. For Chantal, there was no longer any doubt. Paleolithic man intentionally chose these sites in order to carry out his artwork. Chantal met up with Jean-Claude in Dordogne at the Abri du Poisson rock shelter. She wanted to discuss a new possibility with him. She wondered whether there was a relationship between the way in which the animals are depicted and the time of year when the sun lit up the shelter. This salmon is represented with a curved lower jaw, a characteristic of a kelp or post-spawn fish. And spawning only occurs in the winter. We have this salmon on the ceiling. It's pointing in the direction of the rising winter sun. Only in winter would the sun have been low enough it rose over there. We cast light on the ceiling and make this salmon stand out. And the salmon is depicted as a kelp. There is definitely a seasonal aspect and the fact that this salmon is a kelp indicates which season. But is the Abri du Poisson a unique case? One of a kind? The detailed drawing of a naturalist before his time? Is the fact the salmon is orientated to the rising winter sun a mere coincidence? Chantal knew she had to find further proof to support her hypothesis. A scene in the Lascaux cave confirmed her hunch. Located deep inside the cave, this panel depicts two bison standing back to back. The tails of the two bison are crossed. According to experts, the fur colour of the bison on the left is a sign that it is molting. While the erection of the bison on the right indicates it is rutting. Standing directly opposite the two animals, Chantal measures the orientation of their eyes. The eye of the bison on the right indicates 124 degrees. And the eye of the bison on the left is oriented at 56 degrees. As for the two tails, they cross at 90 degrees. If there were a transparent wall here, behind the eye of the bison on the right, you would have the rising winter sun. Behind the eye of the bison on the left, you would have the rising summer sun. And at the point where the two tails cross, you would have the rising spring and autumn suns. The image corresponds to reality. Bisons rot in autumn and molt in spring. So it's a small victory. Early man knows about the winds. He knows about changing shadows. He knows that when winter comes, the animals will leave the river's banks. The light indicates the direction to follow. The trail of the reindeer, the bison and the ibex. He crosses the mountains, tracks game in all weather, season after season. When life withers, he silently follows the course of the river. Spots the shadows of fish, makes use of the reflections on the surface to surprise them, spearing their sides with his trident. Winter is back, and with it, the bitter cold. Season after season, the clan draws strength from the dance of the sun. From the skill of the flintknappers who prepare weapons for future hunts. From the dexterity of the hunters who build up reserves to hold the clan over until summer returns. Paleolithic man was very similar and yet very different to us. Remember, we are westerners who live in the complex world of the 21st century. Ours is an industrial society. We are removed from nature. Our thinking is dominated by practical concerns, not at all by spiritual ones. You have to look at how these hunter-gatherers thought. It's evident that they observed the changing seasons, the stars. It isn't at all impossible that they translated this into art. That is why Chantal's work interests me. I believe she is on to something. The results she has shown me, for example the light entering the caves, the fact that caves were chosen in relation to their exposure to the sun or the moon. Given that she is dealing with a rather large number of caves, I have the feeling she has put her finger on something extremely interesting. Chantal believed she could go even further. She was convinced our ancestors did not content themselves with learning about the cycles of the sun. They were also interested in the phases of the moon. At that point, the carving of a Venus holding a crescent moon constituted the only clue that paleolithic man was aware of the moon's path. But did he actually observe it? The paleoastronomer embarked on this new investigation with as much energy as ever. She had heard of a small carved bone previously studied by an American researcher. This 35,000-year-old artefact was discovered by one of France's first amateur archaeologists, René Castanet, who set up a small museum to house his finds. Today, his son is the custodian of the collection. What is the meaning of these mysterious markings? In the 1970s, the American anthropologist Alexander Marshak studied this artefact while he was researching the origins of astronomy for NASA. His interpretation was surprising. Now the bone from the Abre Blanchard is a prime example. On one piece of bone, in an area about the size of a wristwatch, he made 69 tiny marks. This hunter was doing something that nobody had expected. And my analysis indicated that this seemed to be a lunar calendar. What he was doing was notating the passage of time, notating the phases of the moon as the moon waxed and waned. In other words, this piece of bone was an abstract of phenomena that was occurring out in the real world. The American researcher's findings were coolly received, before being forgotten about for years, until Chantal became interested in them. He discovered the meaning of the marks, but sadly for him and happily for me, because I was delighted to discover something he hadn't. He didn't realize that the serpentine form is the result of observations being made from the same spot throughout the entire observation period. To confirm Marchak's hypothesis, the paleoastronomer visited the Abre Blanchard, where the bone was discovered. Sitting at the foot of the cliff, like the paleolithic sculptor, she recorded the measurements necessary for her calculations, the orientation of the Abre and the height of the cliff opposite. The researcher then drew a chart that showed, day by day, the position of the moon in the sky and the point on the horizon where it's set. The results exceeded her expectations. One by one, the coordinates she obtained with her astronomical calculations matched the tiny cupules, or cup marks, carved on the bone. True, it was not a perfect match and some lunar phases were missing, but the general outline of the two figures is strikingly similar. This bone was probably the first lunar calendar in the history of man, and its sculptor an astronomer before his time. The observation of the moon and the sun was of great importance to paleolithic man. Seeing their precise movements would have helped him plan for hunting and gathering and prepare for seasonal migrations. What if his knowledge was even more incredible? What if he knew how to distinguish certain stars in the sky? I believe that man's first house was the sky. He lived on earth and looked up at the sky. Today, we know that the sky has an astrophysical and physical significance, but at that time it was seen as a spherical starry vault. Man looked up at the stars and tried to regroup them in order to memorize them, to talk about them. He gave them names, the names of animals in most cases. Constellations varied from one place to another, from one civilization to another. But basically, daily life was governed by the stars and by the height of the sun above the horizon. At first sight, the night sky is made up of thousands of stars, defying all logic. But if you look closer, some stars are more visible than others, as they are brighter. These stars were recorded very early on in history. The Babylonians grouped them into 12 constellations, the constellations of the zodiac. If you observe the sky long enough, the stars appear to move around an imaginary axis, running through the North Pole. Did Paleolithic man observe this phenomenon and isolate groups of stars in this vast starry vault, mentally projecting the image of familiar animals onto them? Back in Lascaux, Chantal realized that the cave was far more than a gallery of paintings. The very shape of this dome reminds her of the belt of the zodiac in the sky. One figure, a large bull to her right, drew her attention. She recognized the Pleiades star cluster and the Aldebaran star. She decided to measure the astronomical coordinates of various points on the cave's animals. Eyes, tips of tusks, lower flanks, forefeet and hind feet. Next, she turned to her astronomy software to see whether her hunch was correct. I realized that the sun passed through all of the constellations. You have the unicorn, which would represent Capricorn, and horses in the place of Sagittarius. If the hall of the bulls were in glass, you would see the constellations behind them. Early man, long regarded as brutish, becomes the first observer of celestial phenomena. The time spent on such studies would have affected his view of life, material survival and his origins. One man probably tried to unravel the message the stars wanted to teach him. He measured, noted, compared and tried to discern the shapes of familiar animals in the cosmic disorder. And just maybe he recorded his observations in caves. Do the animals of Lascaux belong to the sky of that period? To verify this hypothesis, Chantal had to first recreate the summertime Palaeolithic sky. The computer system at the Montpellier Planetarium would help her with this calculation. Her journey through time could begin. I need the latitude of this spot. I'll use this latitude here. It's roughly the same. Yes, 45 degrees exactly. I'll put the sun in now to see what time it rises, then we can... It should be around 7.30 a.m. Let's enter all of that and see what it says. They're moving away now. Sirius is moving away and the other one too. Procyon. 9,000 B.C., 13,000 B.C., 17,000 B.C. Within hours, the astronomy software recreates the sky as Lascaux's painters would have seen it on the first night of summer. Armed with this data, Chantal then superposed the constellations of the prehistoric sky onto the prominent points in the Hall of the Bulls. Before her very eyes, the superposition, although imperfect, showed unsettling associations. Capricorn, Scorpio, Leo, Taurus. These constellations seem to merge with the figures of the cave. I was stunned. When I first visited the cave, I thought Paleolithic man had little knowledge of astronomy. I knew he was capable of detecting the sun that shone into the cave. I'd seen that in the maps. But I never imagined he was capable of producing an accurate representation of the constellations. Because that demands immense patience and years of observation. Lascaux? The world's first sky map? The idea certainly fires the imagination, but it has provoked criticism in some quarters. Chantal first presented her results to Gérard Jasniewicz, an astronomer and astrophysicist at the University of Montpellier. This researcher had been on the examining panel when she defended her thesis on the Vallée des Merveilles. But this time, he had mixed feelings. Certainly, there are elements which enable me to say there are points, or marks, in Lascaux cave that could correspond to elements in the sky. But, in my opinion, there is not sufficient evidence to allow us to say with certainty that Lascaux is a planetarium that coincides exactly with what we see in the sky. I feel there is something missing, and I would hesitate to make a general interpretation. Obviously, it isn't a planetarium like this one. Chantal had difficulty convincing others of the validity of her theory. To compound matters, it stands at the crossroads of two disciplines, astronomy and prehistory, which tend to turn their backs on each other. The hypothesis was too bold. There was a mutual lack of comprehension between scientists of both disciplines. Scepticism won out. For someone like me, who knows nothing about the sky and the infinite number of stars, many of which are so bright they can be seen with the naked eye, I have the feeling that if you took the image of an ibex, or a horse, or a bison, and you placed it over a sky map, you would always manage to get it to coincide with a certain number of stars. Isn't it all rather subjective? It's important to understand that the constellations are fixed in space, and they never change, ever. They never change position in relation to one another. What's interesting here is that these constellations are arranged in a certain order. They form a sequence. And this sequence corresponds to the forms and sequence of the images on the wall. For the paleoastronomer, the superposition she revealed is not that of a few lone animals with stars chosen at random. It shows that the succession of animals painted on the cave's walls actually corresponds to the sequence of constellations in the sky. Despite her arguments, her fellow scientists were puzzled. They voiced a number of objections, and wondered, for example, how men and women could have possibly inscribed correctly oriented figures on the cave's walls without the aid of measuring instruments. I realized that the only possible explanation was that they used simple methods and gestures resulting from observations made with the naked eye. If you do basic astronomy, you learn, for example, to place your arm like this, then your hand. And everyone, whether it's a child or an adult, comes up with the same measurements. That is, the length of your arm is proportional to your hand span. That's to say, thumb 2 degrees, closed fingers 10 degrees, and spread fingers 15 degrees. Chantal believed some artifacts discovered at the same time as Lascaux, such as sticks with holes in them, ropes, and oil lamps, could have enabled early man to make these alignments. Was early man capable of making such measurements? Did he possess the tools necessary for these alignments? How many gestures, how many attempts did it take to obtain the correct measurements? How many nights were spent establishing the cosmic directions? How did he reproduce the exact positions of the constellations in the depths of the cave? What calculations did he use to chart the stars, their angle, distance, and height? How many points were transferred onto the wall before the animal forms became stellar figures? This demonstration is disturbing. It supposes that prehistoric artists were able to make real astronomy tools. To back up this argument, Chantal had no choice but to interpret the artifacts found in the cave in a different light. For example, the Asagai spears. One of them bears incisions in the form of a star. Could this have been a directional tool, a sort of primitive compass? This is the base of the Asagai. The shaft would have been here. Jean-Michel Jeunesse, the curator of Lascaux, and Chantal studied the object together. I'm inclined to say that its function is above all decorative, though there could be some meaning we are missing. Did it have another significance? It's a portable object, it's a hunting weapon, and one that was obviously used. I'm sticking with the idea that these elements are highly symbolic. They are extremely simple, but at the same time, there are various forms. There is a sort of systematic arrangement here. For me, that's the link between wall art and mobiliary art. Chantal had to bow to the evidence. It is highly unlikely that the men of Lascaux used the Asagai as a primitive compass. She visited Lascaux one last time with Jean-Michel Jeunesse, before the caves were closed to scientists for conservation purposes. Opposite her, a human figure and a stick topped with a bird are facing a bison with its entrails hanging out. What do these paintings mean? Do they have any relation to the stars? These questions will remain unanswered. With no access to the paintings, Chantal cannot advance her research. And without a research team to support her and verify her findings, it will be hard to bring her work on one of the world's most beautiful Paleolithic caves to a successful conclusion. Chantal's work challenges the whole body of knowledge and learning with which we work. To discover that there was a highly developed body of knowledge, which was passed on from generation to generation, and that these astronomic observations were repeated, not for years on end, but several times over periods of ten or twenty years, and then recorded, radically transforms our knowledge and our conception of this world, and indeed of how early man actually saw it. And as a result, the generally accepted ideas, the paradigms that enable us to imagine the prehistoric world, all explode. In this sense, it's an absolute revolution. Can these events be validated? Can the hypotheses be tested? If this is the case, then we'll be forced to consider that these societies possessed a highly structured knowledge, and that's in complete contradiction with what we currently know about hunter-gatherer societies. As a result of Chantal Jacques Volquier-Viezy's research, a new image has emerged. That of prehistoric societies with sophisticated knowledge, which devoted a large part of their time and resources to observing the sky. The same sky we ourselves rarely admire, blinded as we are by the bright lights of our cities. By studying the path of the stars, man learned to master time. He established the rhythm of natural cycles, took control of his destiny in the natural world. This knowledge of the sky, passed on from generation to generation, would have been of capital importance. Did this knowledge form the basis of their myths? Perhaps. Far more research is necessary to confirm the existence of such knowledge. But at the end of this exploration lies the understanding of an entire chapter of our history. A history that has travelled to us down through the millennia, and which still fascinates us today.