London man connects the dots

Ice Age calendar - 30th January 2023

Ben Bacon mends old furniture in London. But he’s solved a puzzle for archaeology. Scientists who study prehistoric life couldn’t understand some dots on Ice Age paintings. Ben Bacon discovered that the dots were linked to the moon calendar. Ice Age people used the dots to show when different animals had babies.

Bacon hasn’t ever studied archaeology, but he's interested in the prehistoric old cave paintings of early humans, which he studied online. That’s when he started to see patterns. Lots of animals, like cows, deer and fish, had dots near them.

Bacon needed to confirm that his idea was correct. So, he requested help from two professors at Durham University. He wasn't a professional archaeologist, but they agreed to work with him.

Bacon and the professors focused on when the animals got pregnant and gave birth. They checked the patterns for modern animals which are similar to animals in the cave paintings. They saw that the dots used a moon calendar to record these patterns.

This is a big discovery. It shows that people from the Ice Age were already using a calendar. Time was part of their society. It was used to record important events.