[meteorite-list] 8000BC Big Dipper Petroglyph

From: bartraj at time.net.my <bartraj_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon, 12 Sep 2011 10:42:13 +0800 (MYT)
Message-ID: <40310.69.50.214.55.1315795333.squirrel_at_webmail.time.net.my>

Hello Ed, Martin, Cris, List,

There has been some discussion on meteorite-list about Chinese researcher
Wu Jiacai, who recently announced the finding of groups of petroglyphs in
Inner Mongolia. In his interpretation, the petroglyphs show that an
intellectually advanced ethnic group, the Chifeng people of the Hongshan
Culture, were forced to leave their homeland because of a singular
destructive event, perhaps comet- or meteorite-related.
http://www.globaltimes.cn/NEWS/tabid/99/ID/673451/Falling-meteor-depicted-in-5000-year-old-rock-carving-in-north-China.aspx

While looking into this event, I came across reports of an earlier find by
Wu Jiacai, an early Neolithic depiction of the Big Dipper. See for example
http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=2146412586

It made the news in Chinese papers. Here is a summary of a 2010 interview
with Wu Jiacai in a Mongolian home town newspaper.
http://www.swcf.cn/wh/2010-01/12/content_900.htm The newspaper article
features a superimposed diagram of the shape of the Big Dipper in 8000BC.
Maybe some of the astronomers here can assess whether this shape is
plausible.

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Summary

After more than a year of on-site research at Baimiaozi Mt., Wu had
identified ten distinct groups of rock art, mostly depicting animals and
people. Among them was a 310 cm-long yam-shaped stone on which 19 clearly
visible stars had been chiseled and ground into the stone's upward-facing
side, with the markings depicting the seven stars of the Big Dipper on the
northern part of the face.

[A better view of the stone, from Wu Jiacai's personal blog, is here
https://www.dropbox.com/gallery/18663629/1/Hongshan%20Culture?h=bdfa66 ]

The total length of the Big Dipper is 119cm. The indentations marking the
stars are 6cm in diameter, with a maximum depth of 5 cm. The shape of each
star resembles an upside-down mantou (steamed bread), wide on the outside
and smaller within. The star-shapes are smooth, with rounded surface
[indentations] that also contain a natural-colored residue of dust and
body oil [from touching].

Following astronomers' reconstructions of star positions from 100,000
years ago to today, Wu Jiacai found complete matches between the
configuration of the Big Dipper's seven stars 10,000 years ago and the
configuration of stars in the rock art.

Gai Shanlin [a Manchu from Hebei], who is the regional archaeological
expert on rock art, inspected the inscribing-polishing methods. He
recognized the drawing of the seven stars of the Big Dipper as an early
Neolithic artifact by ancestral people.

End Summary

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Regards

Robert A. Juhl, Tokyo
Received on Sun 11 Sep 2011 10:42:13 PM PDT