Special thanks to Clare O' Kelly for permission to show her artistic work on the Newgrange iconography. Many thanks to Pro. George Eogan (retd.) for permission to show illustrations of the angular and rectilinear artwork of Boyne Valley mounds.Many special thanks to Chad Arment of the online publication ' Biological Press' for some critical plate illustrations of the first known tome on European Snakes by G.A. Boulenger.

PREAMBLE

What visitors and tourists alike see when they explore ancient megalithic complexes invariably comprises some form of 'artwork' or iconography chiselled or fashioned by neolithic/mesolithic societies many thousands of years ago. To date many scholars and amateurs alike have weighted in to interpret the likely 'meaning' ,if any, of what this art means. Because these societies chose to carve in stone, many examples are well preserved to study today in the context of the society that build up such artwork. Ireland is very fortunate to have an abundance of surviving petroglyphs which cover 45% of all Irish Neolithic Iconography in the Bru Na Boinne valley and 35% of all European styles, so its not surprising that people come from all walks of life and backgrounds to try to decipher these rich highly decorative symbols. Martin Brennan, a scholar and artist, has identified some 390+ stones in Ireland that have survived the ravages of time and some 10 or so distinctive 'icons' or separate symbols such as the spiral, lozenge, rhomboid, serpentine, circle,cupmark etc. Since, to date, no written Neolithic language has been uncovered ,these symbols are all that exist to guide us in our interpretations.

PAST PETROGLYPH INTERPRETATIONS

A small number of people have endevoured to publish their interpretations of what these symbols mean and their styles differ enormously. Let's look at a few of these decipherments.

1. N. L. Thomas is an Australian engineer, who back in the early 1980's published a small book "Neolithic Symbols of 3500 BC" in which he outlined his interpretation. This was basically a unifying mathematical coding that attempted to map out each symbol as a piece of a complex jigsaw puzzle. In parts it worked, however It became increasingly complex and less plausible the more new symbol structures and richly quantative ones at that, were added, until the decipherment could no longer hold its centre without violating its previously nurtured interpretations worked out initially. In other words the dicpherment could not be sustained across all complex symbol stones without rendering the interpretation too complex for a neolithic farming community which had simple stone tools in which to work with. While it had various indivdual or localized symbolic meaning it lacked a cohesiveness that simply fell apart on closer inspection. It took a great assumption in stating that the symbolism was purely reduced to a mathematics of sorts. The great advantage of Thomas' work can in fact be seen from the earliest photographs of the Knowth kerbstones before some of them mysteriously disappeared from public view. Very little hint was noted of astronomical or celestial significance.

2. Dr. Muiris O' Sullivan of the University College of Dublin takes a completely different tact at Neolithic symbolism and comes up with a rather unique interpretation. He suggests that the symbolism carved on the stones represents hallucinations brought about by the usage of various religious drugs ingested at prescribed rituals and fertility rites etc. In scientific parlance this is termed 'Entoptic Imagery'. Because this imagery appears to exist across cultural and geographical lines Dr O' Sullivan shares the view that certain drugs, narcotics rendered particular shared visionary images in individuals who partook of these rituals and therefore cultural diffusion need not have taken place. Certainly, some glyph symbols appear universal right across ancient societies and discoveries of incense burners inside French passage mounds infers this idea. However, one such glyph, the spiral, can be independently mirrored in different locations because many objects of nature show such spiralling visuals, e.g. coiling snakes, all manner of freshwater, sea and land mollusc shells show such a coiling and even whirlpooling waters strongly suggest it. Other glyphs such as concentric arches, concentric circles etc can be found on human skin(more about that later). Psychodelic visuals seem to be only a supposition that this kind of society utilized such mind altering drugs.

3. Andis Kaulins of the web site www.megaliths.co.uk has a particular decipherment for all megalithic stones. His hypothesis concerns the meaning of cupmarks, indentations and supposed animal and human representations gleaned from rough layering edges of stones to signify astronomical constellations and geodetic marker/boundary stones in ancient times. He has amassed decipherments for stones across Northern Europe from Neolithic to Bronze Age placements. If this was possible it presupposes that certain Neolithics across hundreds/thousands of years had a representational knowledge of nearly all mapped constellations. Unfortunately, at least 60 - 70% of all the known modern constellation outlines were recently mapped out in modern times circa 1925 A.D. by one individual alone. Certainly some constellations were known and a discovery in AD 2000 in Lascaux caves in France of a 'pearl necklace' arrangement of painted dots was interptretated , visually, as the constellation Corona Borealis. When Andis tried to interest me in his 'decipherment' of stone 19 inside Cairn L monument at Loughcrew, I gave it some thought but utimately rejected the cupmarks/indentations as representative of the constellation Ophiuchus mainly because the constellation itself was a modern version ,and all manner of animal and human faces were presumed to inhabit the surface of the stone. The intricate and detailed concentric circles, heavily pick-dressed with great skill were passed off as 'empty space', i.e. representing nothing. The constellation itself was upside down and it became apparent to me that it would be relatively easy to 'pick and choose' particular stones that represented some constellation or other given the vast number of stars visible to the naked eye. Some combination has to fit, if you search hard enough you will find a match. As for the rudimentary 'animal and human faces' the only thing that came to mind was the Roschasch ink blot test, you see what you want to see. Certainly some stones will depict series of stars but I subscribe to Alexander Gurschtein's hypothesis that the Neolithics would have known about the Zodical constellations, a few large ones (Orion etc.) and possibly one or two small ones. Gurschtein's theory is common sensical to me in that a staged build up of constellation knowledge took place over many thousands of years until the sky filled up with the present complete scenario. In essence Mr. Kaulins hypothesis suffers from a monolithic meaning that never seems to take into account, spatial placement of stones, comparative mythology, etnography etc. It also begs the question why map the numerous constellations, to what singular purpose? It also flies in the face of various differing rituals and ceremonies that may have necessitated the depictment of certain stones.

4. Martin Brennan is a New York trained artist and ethnographer having studied Native Central American petroglyphs (hope I got that right). In 1980 he set about looking at Irish National Monuments in terms of gathering empirical data to support his theory that mound passage alignments were intrically connected to solar and lunar worship. Up until this point no one had given this much credence especially among the then known contemporary archaeologists. With Jack Roberts as his guide, together they trekked over Ireland producing clear evidence of purposeful alignments and winning converts among the general public. Essentially, Brennan's theory concerns the alignments and petroglyph artwork as depicting purely astronomical assemblages. He attempted to try to pinpoint certain glyphs as representing certain lunar and solar arrangements with some success.This opened up the avenue of the study of Archaeoastronomy in Ireland at the time and succeeded my interest in megalithic monuments by a couple of years. There are some parts of his decipherment which I don't personally agree with but none the less it was pioneering work driven by determination and excellent intuition. I hopefully have built upon his work, that remains to be seen. In those days there was no such thing as astronomical software of any degree of current sophistication on the market so everything had to be field tested and researched. Martin produced a number of Books on Irish Monuments , one entitled "The Stars and the Stones: Ancient Art and Astronomy in Ireland" 1983 & "The Stones of Time: Calendars, Sundials and Stone Chambers of Ancient Ireland" , 1994. Both books show Martin's proficient skills in art illustrations and covers some 240 depictments on megalithic stones

5. Dr. Marija Gimbutas was a Lithuanian archaeologist, a Professor of European Archaeology at UCLA, Los Angeles and a curator of Old World Archaeology at the UCLA Museum of Cultural History. Using over 2,000 artifacts of ritual,votive, and domestic usage during the Eastern European Neolithic period (6,500 BC - 3,500 BC) she studied the artwork to come up with a theory of a matriarchal society continous from the Paleolithic (Old Stone Age) period who worshiped the Great earth goddess in all of her various forms. She consulted comparative mythology, ethnography, folklore, linguistics and historical sources. Her findings make up two main volumes called "Gods and Goddesses of Old Europe : Myths and Cult Images", 1974 and "The Language of the Goddess", 1989, a later edition of the prior book and incorporating her views on Western Neolithic iconography (4,500 BC - 2,500 BC). In her own words, Eastern Neolithic Europe was " gylanic, non-violent and an earth-centred culture". Various symbols such as the LOZENGE, CHEVRON, RHOMBOID, CRESENT, CIRCLE ZIGZAG & SPIRAL marked an origin, not in Neolithic culture, but descending from the Paleolithic period, some 30,000BC - 25,000BC. Gimbutas received criticism for her portrayal of the meaning of Venus figurines from the Paleolithic era. Contemporary scholars accused her of slanting the heterogenous figurine morphology into a completely female direction and ignoring some male counterpart figurines and therefore not representing the class as a whole.The fact is that there was an overabundance of female figurines as opposed to male ones when all types regardless of whether they were missing visages or body parts are accounted for.. (NOTE 1) However over voluptuous ones were given the spotlight because of their association with child bearing qualities etc.(Lepugue, Willendorf, Grimaldi & Gagarino). Somewhat on Gimbutas's side, Dr Paul Bahn, argues that as a whole at least over 130 specimens show various stages of female development from pubescence to adult child-bearing to old age. (NOTE 11).

   Gimbutas' books use the correlation of objects of nature as being reproduced by Neolithic societies as important icon symbols but because most of her sources are artifacts and not petroglyphs she has not come up with any astronomical meanings other than mentioning Martin Brennan's work. However, in fairness, megalithic monuments, as a whole, were solely Atlantean locations, almost always on western seacoasts and none appear to have existed within the central European plains(her area of study). Any passing decipherments on Irish Megalithic monuments is cohesive with her ' nature objects reproduction'. Because of the many references and depth of study her work cannot really be ignored in the context of Neolithic interpretation and as such she is worthy of the additional label 'Archaeomythologist". In fact I find no other archaeologist that has gone so deep into the interpretative side of archaeology as much as she has nor have they come up with such a unique viewpoint equally necessary and manditory pertaining to this prehistoric period. As we shall see, I believe her work is crucial to a proper understanding of Neolithic iconography. These then are the main players in Neolithic decipherment studies; what I hope to do is further extend some of these findings into another direction and maybe come up with an even more unique decipherment.




Copyright © Paul Griffin 2000 - 2003