Lunar timekeeping in Upper Paleolithic cave art


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Anthropological and ethnographical surveys of hunter-gatherers and pastoral peoples from Siberia and North America during the early 1900’s recorded wide-spread use of lunar calendars for the observation and harvesting of terrestrial and aquatic animals as well as general timekeeping. Volumes of evidence in the fields of chronobiology and wildlife biology followed throughout the 20th century that record animals across the biological spectrum in both aquatic and terrestrial environments as being cued by the sun and dark/light phases of the moon. Bernie Taylor explores the possibility that patterns accompanying depicted animals in the Upper Paleolithic archaeological record could be correlated with the lunar calendars of more recent hunter-gatherers and pastoral peoples as well as lunar-cued biological behaviour of them.