Oldest Lunar Calendar (10,000 years ago)
Today I’m taking a look at the oldest lunar calendar that archaeologists feel pretty confident about. It takes the form of a pebble that some hunter gatherers were carving notches onto the side of about 10,000 years ago, presumably in order to count off the days until the next full moon (or new moon?). The item was found left at the top of Monte Alto in the Alban Hills, just a little south of Rome, in 2007. It wasn’t until 12 years later that someone noticed that the number of notches on the rock corresponded with the number of days in a lunar cycle. The rock was somewhat shaped like a rectangular prism, with four long edges. There were 7 notches along one long edge, 9 along another, and 11 on a third. When you add them all up, you get the number of days in a lunar cycle, 27. These notches (called tache) were made with different scraping rocks, making it appear as if they were added on different days, as if they were counting the days. The pebble was pocket sized, but I find myself wondering if these hunter gatherers had pockets, or where they would keep them. Maybe it was kept in a little pouch that they wore on their neck, waiste, or arm? I wonder about all sorts of things. Why was it important to have a portable calendar? Maybe so you could tell what day it was when the Moon wasn’t visible? Would one person be the date keeper? Would everyone else go up to them and say “hey Larry, what day is it?”. Or, “how many more days do we have before we all meet up by that one river for the party?” Would the guy in charge of it be an astronomy nerd like me? Maybe he just kept it to himself for his own amusement, ha.
I’m a little disappointed that the stone didn’t have 4 sides with 7 notches each (one for each “week”). They could go from new moon to half moon along one side, then to full moon on another side, then to half, then back to new. Was one of these phases deemed “more important” than the other in that it was given a seven day side? Where the other notches just “the rest” of the month, divided onto the two sides randomly as they fit? Did they really have three weeks in a month, with a seven day week, followed by a 9 day week, followed by a 11 day one? Is it just easier to denote which day you’re on in rock art when they’re not the same length?
I also wonder if they were able to reuse the calendar, or would they start scratching up a new pebble once the lunar cycle is complete? I’m imagining they could tie a string around the pebble and place it in between the grooves of the notches and use that to mark what day it was, then reuse it as many times as they wanted. The pebble was used for a long time before it was used as a calendar, so it’d be weird if they chucked it after 1 month. It started out as a tool used chip at and touch up other stone tools, and was later used to bash and red ochre into paint.
I also wonder if the fact it was found on a high hill important. Maybe, going up where it was high increased the chances that you could see the moon at a given time. Maybe that’s just where they go for their astronomical stuff, a little observatory.
Of course, the stone only tells you what “day of the month” it is, but doesn’t tell you which month you were on. Did they have some something else that kept track of the month? How did they synch their lunar calendar with the seasons and solar cycle? They found a site in Warren Field in Scotland from about the same time that might explain how they did that. There, they found a series of twelve pits (one for each lunar month) and think that when the Sun was positioned in a particular way, they would reset their lunar calendars to align with the Sun. It is thought that genetically, the people living in Italy and Scotland were both “Western Hunter Gatherers”. If they had a similar culture in both places, maybe they had similar lunar/solar pit calendar up on that hill that was lost or we haven’t found yet?
The Alban Hills are volcanic mountains which last erupted about 36000 years ago and is 5000 years overdue by for another eruption, likely within the next 1000 years, destroying nearby Rome. They are situated in between two large lakes, which have supported human populations of various kinda for hundreds of thousands of years. The calendar stone was created from rock outcrops several kilometers from where it was found, so the band would have been well traveled around this area. During the Upper Pleistocene, the area was inhabited by Upper Paleolithic People (previously known as Cro-Magnon). The people here were part of the Epigravetian stone tool culture, which encompassed Italy, the Balkans, and Ukraine. From my reckoning, at some point there was a wave of hunter gatherers who entered Europe from the East, called the Eastern Hunter Gatherers, and they brought with them the advanced Mesolithic micro-blade stone tool technology. They mixed with the Upper Paleolithic People they found there, and this mix became the Western Hunter Gatherer population, who occupied most of Europe west of Poland. I’d like to have a better understanding of how old the calendar pebble really was and which group was using it. I have been unable to read the full original paper on this lunar stone in Italy (without paying for it, ha), so I’m a little hazy on some of the details. What made them think that it was 10,000 years old? The news articles describe the artifact as being an Upper Pleistocene artifact, and some indicate that the Pleistocene ended at 10,000 years ago, so they said that the artifact was “at least” 10,000 years ago, and thus the oldest lunar calendar (the oldest other one being the one in Scotland). Others just say it was dated at 10,000 years ago (how?). As far as I know though, Italy was in the Mesolithic 10,000 years ago. So maybe it’s actually a mesolithic artifact, or else it’s a Pleistocene artifact older than 10,000 years. Unless this part of Italy was one of the last places to make the switch to the Mesolithic. It’d be nice to know if it was truly contemporary to the one in Scotland.
There are other artifacts suspected of being used as lunar calendars that are older than this one, but their use is considered controversial. I guess if you start marking something with tallies each day, but didn’t get to the end of the month, there’s no way to tell if it was actually counting days of a lunar cycle, or just tallying any old thing. It’s the fact that there’s 27 marks that make this one convincing. There have been three controversial artifacts found in France that could have been lunar calendars, including a 28,000 year old baton found in Abri Blanchard, the 25,000 year old “Venus of Laussel”, and 17,000 year old paint marks among the cave paintings at Lascaux Caves.
Sources:
News Stories-
Lunar Stone (Jun 2019) https://www.academia.edu/40366419/A_new_notational_artifact_from_the_Upper_Paleolithic_Technological_and_traceological_analysis_of_a_pebble_decorated_with_notches_found_on_Monte_Alto_Velletri_Italy
https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/lunar-calendar-0012340
https://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.com/2019/07/10000-year-old-engraved-pebble-found.html?m=1
https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/9573269/stone-age-pebble-oldest-lunar-calendar/
Web Pages:
other lunar calendars: https://www.fundacionpryconsa.es/media/How-do-we-know-what-ancient-civilisation-knew-about-the-Moon.pdf
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