More Red Dots We see more red dots. T ey are grouped together on the ceiling. T e dots continue all the way to the back of the cave. Dots are not the only symbols


we’ve found in caves. We’ve seen lines and circles. Spirals and triangles, too. We’ve seen symbols that look like feathers or trees. We’ve seen half circles and asterisks. I built a database to record the signs and symbols at each site. Altogether, we’ve collected data from more than 350 sites. T e symbols outnumber the paintings of animals and people by two to one.


WORDWISE


engraving: the process of cutting or carving a design on a hard surface


ice age: any of several cold periods during which glaciers covered much of Earth


symbol: something that stands for or represents something else


22 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC EXPLORER


Looking for Meaning Here’s what’s really interesting. In all the caves we’ve visited, we’ve only found 32 diff erent symbols. T ey are repeated across sites that span all of Europe. T ey cover a period of more than 30,000 years. What do they mean? We can try to take educated guesses


about their meaning. Some markings, such as the squiggly lines I found in one cave, may have been part of a map. T ey may have shown a river or other landform. Other signs are harder to fi gure out.


Feather symbols look to some like a tree or plant. Others think they might be a weapon. But without someone to tell us, how can we know? One thing seems clear. T ese


symbols meant something to the ice age people. I may never know why they created a series of signs to communicate. But I will keep crawling through caves and recording data to try to fi nd out!


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