Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Symbols Found in Ice Age Caves Across Europe (2015)

digventures.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 150 posts

Re: Symbols Found in Ice Age Caves Across Europe (2015)

#111

Post by sbmassey »

tritium wrote: post #20
mirimir wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would help account for consistency over place and time. But meaning? I'm guessing something like "# was here".

Possibly ad-hoc way finding, and reference points when lost, to help detect if you're going in circles, or if a change of direction is necessary. If there are N number of confusing junctions, it would require the same number of markings as a unique mnemonic device to register the steps to escape the confusing area, and jog one's memory of how directions were negotiated the last time.

Or perhaps locations of good sources of food, shelter and so forth

Re: Symbols Found in Ice Age Caves Across Europe (2015)

#112

Post by ivanb »

sd8dgf8ds8g8dsg wrote: post #59
ivanb wrote: post #24

I find it suspicious that the set of the most common symbols doesn't contain a dick. Why wouldn't the most common modern wall ornament (in my experience) be popular at that time?

I guess you have not heard about the Venus figurines? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_figurines

You guessed wrong. Of course I heard and saw the figurine in museums with my own eyes. What's your point?

Re: Symbols Found in Ice Age Caves Across Europe (2015)

#113

Post by cptkoons »

To under exaggerate this time, one rectangle is drawn inside a cave and another rectangle is drawn inside another cave 1000 years later. 25,000 years later modern man finds these rectangles drawn on the walls and is astonished? Is it not just kinda a given that before speech communication there was drawn image communication (like point at images and grunt)? I mention the 1000 year gap only to point out that they probably moved around and other groups took over caves that were inhabited by other groups before...thus why there are mimicked across europe. ((25000 also being just an arbitrary number for discussion purpose because im not an anthropologist or geologist))

Re: Symbols Found in Ice Age Caves Across Europe (2015)

#114

Post by dghf »

hyperdunc wrote: post #42
eesmith wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, the Romans draw lots of phalluses. http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1113411682/ancient-roma... contains many examples.

The Ancient Egyptians did too. I recall examples on a temple wall that illustrate decreasing virility (semen volume) as age increases. http://www.seiglefamily.com/2008egypt/IMG_4997%20hieroglyphi...

In the tomb of Ti at Saqqara, in a mural depicting a battle, there is a hieroglyph comprising a stylised phallus entering an even more stylised vulva. It is an insult that one warrior is hurling at his enemy. Apparently it is usually translated, somewhat primly, as "Come here, you copulator"; in his Scorn: With Added Vitriol (a collection of invective across the ages), Matthew Parris prefers the earthier "Come 'ere, you fucker."

Re: Symbols Found in Ice Age Caves Across Europe (2015)

#115

Post by Houshalter »

yipopov wrote: post #48

Top 32 cave symbols that will blow your mind! What these researchers found in caves will amaze you! 32 sure signs you're in a European ice age cave! Discover these cave-dwelling secrets that your real estate developer doesn't want you to know!

The only thing clickbaity about it is there is a number in the title. And it isn't a listicle.

Re: Symbols Found in Ice Age Caves Across Europe (2015)

#116

Post by empath75 »

sd8dgf8ds8g8dsg wrote: post #90
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Reminds me of the also unbroken Indus script. With all this computational power, I'm surprised that we haven't been able to crack ancient proto-writing. Attempts to crack the Indus script with the aid of computers have been made since at least the 1970s (a large Soviet team went to work on it then), but the problem is that the Indus script may not actually encode the sounds of a language. If it is essentially a set…

> And even if it encodes the sounds of a language, if that language utterly died out and is unknown to scholars today, then even if we know what the sounds were, we probably wouldn’t be able to determine much of their meaning. I feel this conclusion rather weak. As an counter example, consider how the decipherment of the mayan written language was performed [1]. Another one is the hieroglyphs. Re-constructing how may…

The people that decoded the mayan language had the advantage of having several actively spoken maya languages to work from.

Re: Symbols Found in Ice Age Caves Across Europe (2015)

#117

Post by pygy_ »

The signs painted in caves have been preserved to this day but at the time I guess that they were also used outside, on rocks and on trees, and that they were lost to time...

With perhaps the exception of dance, the classic arts really are prehistoric mnemonic/communication devices which were made obsolete when writing was invented.

They were so useful though that craving them has been carved in our genes, and we still like a good story/song to this day.

Re: Symbols Found in Ice Age Caves Across Europe (2015)

#119

Post by empath75 »

brango wrote: post #22

The mainstream view of our history has some massive unexplained mysteries. For example the ability of ancient people to work with massive slabs of stone in a way we'd struggle to do now even with modern machinery. Not just the Pyramids and Stonehenge, but the stone foundations at Cuzco and also Baalbeck temple which apparently has foundational stones estimated to weigh 1000 tons.

They started by moving small slabs of stone and gradually moved up to bigger ones. There are thousands of years worth of pyramids sitting around the banks of the nile, and you can see the development. It's not like they started with the Pyramids at Giza, which indeed would have been an unexplainable accomplishment.

Re: Symbols Found in Ice Age Caves Across Europe (2015)

#120

Post by tomcooks »

timonoko wrote: post #75

I bet the omnipresent "Sun"-symbol is removed from results, to conform with German Laws and general sentiments. You can find it on Nordic Runes and Tibetan tapestry and American Indian tepee decorations. And it always means "Sun" or "Good Luck" or something positive. Except after 1945 it does not.

1st row, 3rh d column, there's your sun symbol. Swastikas came much later, sun does not look like a swastika and has nothing to do with "Nordic Runes", whatever that might mean.

Nothing to do with German laws either, considering they don't cover research. Please help stop this nonsense.

Post reply on HN