Why Historically Known cultures hid information about the Ice Age

a reply to: bloodymarvelous

I don't think Ursa was the North star back when bears still had tails

I know of no star named Ursa. Polaris (also called Alpha Ursae Minoris because it the brightest star in Ursa Minor) is currently the north star (about 1º off, close enough) and it was also the north star 26,000 years ago. In between, the north star has been various stars (including Beta Ursae Minoris). And sometimes there wasn't one, just like there is no south star now.

Edit: actually turns out the link for the Taurus cave painting wasn't that hard to find:

The Summer Triangle is not Taurus.

a reply to: Phage

I t was Draconis. It varies due to procession.

a reply to: anonentity

What was Draconis?
Oh, Alpha Draconis was the north star. That was only 5,000 years ago. Long after the last glacial period.

originally posted by: LABTECH767
a reply to: Hanslune

Now I am not meaning to be rude but to be perfectly frank with you your opinion is just that YOUR opinion, you have your crowd of fellow cronies but believe me it does not wash with the open minded and educated among the rest of the community, sadly this site has suffered because of pig headed sceptic's that will not accept the truth and deny it at every turn and even more sadly those looking for somewhere that they can have an honest open discussion without being ATTACKED have mostly left the site causing it to suffer a loss in quality, interesting threads and basically everything that most of the rest of us came here for, do not underestimate the damage pig headed bald faced dishonest scepticism causes to this site.

Then stop attacking people for not agreeing with you. Your being closed minded and not following evidence is not anyone's fault but your own.

I thoroughly believe that site is REAL and is artificially shaped, I also believe that we may not be the first sentient being to call either this earth or indeed our solar system home though we may be the only indigenous race here now (if indeed we are indigenous and that is an entire other debate).

That's nice but it looks like a hill but you don't like that so you subscribe to the idea someone nuked it........lol okay.

The actual evidence doesn't support your contention.

Deleted some CT stuff and no your CT opinions are not evidence. Sorry but those are the facts.

originally posted by: Blue Shift

originally posted by: rom12345
The ice age selected for those who could survive winter.

And people who lived in the Southern Hemisphere.

One of the oddities of thought is that in some way the ICE age affected everyone on Earth - it did but the vast majority of people wouldn't have ever seen the massive ice formation or even heard about them.

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: bloodymarvelous

I don't think Ursa was the North star back when bears still had tails

I know of no star named Ursa. Polaris (also called Alpha Ursae Minoris because it the brightest star in Ursa Minor) is currently the north star (about 1º off, close enough) and it was also the north star 26,000 years ago. In between, the north star has been various stars (including Beta Ursae Minoris). And sometimes there wasn't one, just like there is no south star now.

Oh. I see!

So actually Polaris could have been the North star at a time when bears still had tails, and gotten its designation then.

And identifying "North Star" constellations would probably have happened earlier than trying to identify constellations that are used to tell the seasons/months apart.

Edit: actually turns out the link for the Taurus cave painting wasn't that hard to find:

The Summer Triangle is not Taurus.

I was thinking that too on my first read through, but actually you have to read the article a little more closely to get to the right part.

It's not the "Summer Triangle Part". It's in the "Seven Sisters" part:

Inside the bull painting, there are also indications of spots that may be a representation of other stars found in that region of sky.

Today, this region forms part of the constellation of Taurus the bull, showing that mankind's identification of this part of the sky stretches back thousands of years.

a reply to: bloodymarvelous

So actually Polaris could have been the North star at a time when bears still had tails, and gotten its designation then.

Possible. But what some call Ursa Major, others call something else.

It's not the "Summer Triangle Part". It's in the "Seven Sisters" part:

That works, sort of. The Pleiades are actually contained within the classical constellation of Taurus though. The cave drawing doesn't represent it that way.

a reply to: Phage,

Yeh but finding it you had to use the constellation of the big dipper,/ Ursa major the bear..About six thousand years ago Thuban in the constellation of Draco was the nearest star to the north pole, and probably for a few thousand years before that it would be a reasonable good pointer for the pole.Thats ice agesish for all intence and purpose.

originally posted by: anonentity
a reply to: Phage,

Yeh but finding it you had to use the constellation of the big dipper,/ Ursa major the bear.

.About six thousand years ago Thuban in the constellation of Draco was the nearest star to the north pole, and probably for a few thousand years before that it would be a reasonable good pointer for the pole.Thats ice agesish for all intence and purpose.

You use terms like the Big Dipper and the Bear, but there are probably a thousand different shapes you can seen in that region that contains polaris.

Show me a bear in that pic.

Here's how they make a bear out of it. This is the exact same picture with an overlay.


Though some people think the bear's tail is vestigial, that doesn't mean it was THAT long even if it was once longer than today.
The animal that is thought to be the one that modern bears descend from didn't even have a tail that long. That was 20 million years ago.
It's silly to think that people in 4,000 BC were carrying through a constellation from a time period preceding the Genus Homo by 18 million years.

Harte

originally posted by: Hanslune

originally posted by: Blue Shift

originally posted by: rom12345
The ice age selected for those who could survive winter.

And people who lived in the Southern Hemisphere.

One of the oddities of thought is that in some way the ICE age affected everyone on Earth - it did but the vast majority of people wouldn't have ever seen the massive ice formation or even heard about them.

You'd have to go pretty far north to encounter them, that's for sure. Global temperatures would have dropped, but the Northern and Southern Hemisphere weather patterns are pretty distinct from each other. In any event, it would likely make people migrate closer toward the equator, rather than go through all the trouble of evolving to survive.

a reply to: Blue Shift

Chile had an ice sheet during the last glacial period.


Earlier in this thread I said this:

It would have been cool to live during the last glacial period. In the tropics.

Mauna Kea had a glacier back then.

a reply to: Phage

I was having this conversation with my neighbor. I said it would be pretty cool. He was worried that food supplies would dry up. I had to point out that we both have green houses and have grown food during the winter months. I also pointed out to him that if we did go back in to a glacial period, we would have cooler summers and a better ski season each year.

He had read an article about a possible "ice age" that was coming. He had to be informed that we are in a warming period of the current ice age, but the glacial period was the threat for humanity, but not us since we would both have died of old age by the time we had glaciers sitting in our front yards.

like you though the really affected generation would just move to the equatorial regions, or would use science on technologies to deal with the colder temperatures. If the Stone age people survived it, so can we.

a reply to: anonentity


Wrong Thuban was the North Star 4,800 years ago at the time of the 'Old Kingdom' in Egypt. In fact its believed that is how the great pyramid was aligned to north. The next polar star will be gamma Cephei in about 2000 years. Now there is a long periods of time where poll star just doesnt exist say 10000 years ago for example no north poll star.

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: Blue Shift

Chile had an ice sheet during the last glacial period.


Earlier in this thread I said this:

It would have been cool to live during the last glacial period. In the tropics.

Mauna Kea had a glacier back then.

Well, of course. There are still glaciers to be found at high altitudes, even at low latitudes. But if it was me, I'd definitely be heading toward the equator. Maybe some nice little village on a coastline that is now 400 feet underwater.

originally posted by: Guyfriday
a reply to: Phage

I was having this conversation with my neighbor. I said it would be pretty cool. He was worried that food supplies would dry up. I had to point out that we both have green houses and have grown food during the winter months. I also pointed out to him that if we did go back in to a glacial period, we would have cooler summers and a better ski season each year.

Yeah, but if you look at civilization trends and compare them to ice core data, our greatest civilizations rose into prominence when the weather was even a bit warmer than it is now. We tend to thrive when it's warmer. Up to a point, of course.

a reply to: Blue Shift

Oh yeah, no argument from me about that. The longer the growing season is the better off humans have been, but that doesn't mean that a glacial period means the end of civilization as we know it. We should just look at the good points of the cooler climate is most areas.

Thanks to science and technology we can take a 40 shipping container and grow an acre of food inside it. It's amazing what we can do. Imagine people having one or two buried bomb shelter styles rooms below their homes growing vegetables year round. Doesn't matter if there's a foot or more of ice in your yard, it's always between 50-60 degrees underground, and with a little forethought easy to create regional specific temperatures and humidity for what ever kind of plants a person wants to grow.

originally posted by: Harte

originally posted by: anonentity
a reply to: Phage,

Yeh but finding it you had to use the constellation of the big dipper,/ Ursa major the bear.

.About six thousand years ago Thuban in the constellation of Draco was the nearest star to the north pole, and probably for a few thousand years before that it would be a reasonable good pointer for the pole.Thats ice agesish for all intence and purpose.

You use terms like the Big Dipper and the Bear, but there are probably a thousand different shapes you can seen in that region that contains polaris.

Show me a bear in that pic.

Here's how they make a bear out of it. This is the exact same picture with an overlay.

Though some people think the bear's tail is vestigial, that doesn't mean it was THAT long even if it was once longer than today.
The animal that is thought to be the one that modern bears descend from didn't even have a tail that long. That was 20 million years ago.
It's silly to think that people in 4,000 BC were carrying through a constellation from a time period preceding the Genus Homo by 18 million years.

Harte

Ursa Major is the one that has a tail.

www.amazon.com...

originally posted by: bloodymarvelous

originally posted by: Harte

originally posted by: anonentity
a reply to: Phage,

Yeh but finding it you had to use the constellation of the big dipper,/ Ursa major the bear.

.About six thousand years ago Thuban in the constellation of Draco was the nearest star to the north pole, and probably for a few thousand years before that it would be a reasonable good pointer for the pole.Thats ice agesish for all intence and purpose.

You use terms like the Big Dipper and the Bear, but there are probably a thousand different shapes you can seen in that region that contains polaris.

Show me a bear in that pic.

Here's how they make a bear out of it. This is the exact same picture with an overlay.

Though some people think the bear's tail is vestigial, that doesn't mean it was THAT long even if it was once longer than today.
The animal that is thought to be the one that modern bears descend from didn't even have a tail that long. That was 20 million years ago.
It's silly to think that people in 4,000 BC were carrying through a constellation from a time period preceding the Genus Homo by 18 million years.

Harte

Ursa Major is the one that has a tail.

www.amazon.com...

So it has nothing to do with North then, looks like.

Harte

Maybe, but it also has nothing to do with the seasons or the Zodiac. Which would explain why it may predate the zodiac by thousands of years.


There probably never was a time when Homo Sapiens didn't look at the stars. Maybe when they first started using it, it was close enough to North that it worked for them. They probably didn't use it to navigate over long enough distances that the imprecision would be noticeable.



But the discovery of Taurus representations in very old caves is more interesting. That would suggest the Zodiac might have been invented much earlier than we have history for. Perhaps it was lost, and then recovered?

And certainly it wouldn't have risen to such a central importance in peoples' lives prior to the rise of agriculture, because the seasons don't matter much to non-agrarian people living close to the equator during an ice age.

originally posted by: bloodymarvelous

And certainly it wouldn't have risen to such a central importance in peoples' lives prior to the rise of agriculture, because the seasons don't matter much to non-agrarian people living close to the equator during an ice age.

Much like Humans grow specific fruits, berries, vegetables etc... based on changes in season, non agrarian people followed the changing of the seasons to know when herds were going to be migrating, whether they were following the herds or knew by the stars when herds would be passing through isn't really pertinent. That they used stars as a calendar of sorts is what's important. The same type of behavior is seen across the world from Croatia to Portugal to Siberia and Beringia, all of which had fairly temperate climates even at the height of the LGM. In fact, Beringia was like an open buffet with herds traversing back and forth from NE Asia to NW N. America.