LawPundit Pages

Saturday, March 19, 2022

History of Astronomy: Serrania de la Lindosa Colombia South America Rock Art Wall Painting Section Deciphered as a Sky Map of the Southern Stars ca. 3000 B.C.

At CNN, Katie Hunt this month in her article
Controversial rock art may depict extinct giants of the ice age
featured a section of the rock art wall paintings of Serrania de la Lindosa
in the Colombian Amazon rainforest,
an image of which section of rock art can be found at:

https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/220307082103-01-rock-art-colombia-scn-exlarge-169.jpg

We have deciphered that particular section of the wall painting below, finding it to be astronomical in nature and -- via the painted figures -- to depict the starry sky of the night as a sky map of the southern stars as seen from the wall painting Colombian location. 

Below is our decipherment, comparing the wall painting to what we allege are the comparable stars depicted, as shown by our clip of the comparable heavens using Starry Night Pro astronomy software (click on the image for a larger graphic);

In our opinion, the alleged age of the wall painting(s) by mainstream academia as being more than 12000 years old is extremely doubtful, expecially since the stars of Sagittarius seem to be clearly depicted as a horse-mounted rider, which is a much more recent rendering of the stars of that stellar constellation.

Based upon the wall painting's portrayal of the southern stars with Crux at the approximate horizontal middle of the painting, and taking into account the scope of the painting as running from approximately Canis Major on the left to Sagittarius and Scorpio on the right, which latter approximately mark the Autumn Equinox ca. 3000 B.C., we consider a date in that much later ambit to be far more likely.

Please note: the label for the stars of Ophiuchus was inadvertently pushed upward when adding text to the image. It should be lower to the right below Scorpius, where there is a large head profile. It will be corrected when we can get back to image work.