Hi Kim, thanks for responding. This list seems to be dead for quite a while, and I think this topic, although quite new and therefore indeed in its childhood, is worth investigating and refining.

I have been writing about Lascaux and Egyptian connections for quite a while, especially from an astronomical point of view in respect to the Pleiades, Orion, Sirius and certain iconography, as well as geometrical and metric aspects that also connect to the earliest phases of Stonehenge and probably other megalithic sites in Bretagne and the British Islands, and could not yet explain these quite obvious commonalities I found between these three sites, but I'm not the first to notice those between Stonehenge and Egypt as well. To me it suggests they had a common source of intellectual knowledge, and the only possible site that exhibits such knowlegde that covers both is Lascaux. The last group at Lascaux abandoned Lascaux around 6250 BC, which is when the various megalithic cultures arose in Europe and elsewhere.

Firstly I too originally thought, like Rappenglück, that the Lascaux arts were to be dated to no older than about 15,000 years, which however did not match my findings. But who am I to dispute these original paleontological opinions? It's not my field of expertise. So the topic went for a time in the frigde. This changed enormously when new datings became available dating the beginning and end of the earliest phase of Lascaux art much and much earlier, the old date actually falling in the time when Lascaux painters did not paint at all but were absent. This did correlate precisely with my findings. That is why it is still unheard of, many people still repeat the old dating and cannot make ends meet with it. This was when I started writing again.

Secondly, I had not yet ventured on connecting Lascaux with the Saharian Atlas rock art dated to 13,000(?15,000)-12,000 BC, which art is typically about a romantic but truthfull Kabylian myth concerning the first humans that came "out of the Earth" (read the Biblical: "made of Earth") in the spring and the emergence of the goats and rams they domesticated. As the first flowers sprouted, because of the creator sun shining over the earth, 50 girls and 50 men sprang out of the earth (probably out of their caves, perhaps undergrond living area's, also found in these area's) to see the wonder of the beautiful flowers. I have to look again into this myth. It has elements of the 50 Argonaut story as they walked with their boat on the shoulders and nothwards and magically popped up in the Triton Sea (flanking east of the Saharian Atlas instead of anywhere north of the Black Sea) and they sailed further directly northwards, according to the story (how is that possible if they supposedly started of going eastwards from Greece and ended up in the Black Sea instead. The Argonauts must have started in the Atlas and went eastwards to a Colchis somewhere in the Air mountains and returned westwards far south of the Triton Sea (Nigeria or Senegal), to be able to walk northward over a dry former seabedding (recognizing former islands and the Atlas to their left and the great Eastern Mountain Caucasus to their right (thus the Hoggar) and finally reached the last remains of the Triton Sea, which was East of the Saharian Atlas, and from there they went further northwards into the Mediterranean, "created" Calliste, Sicilië, on their way and must have ended up in Liguria as their new homeland instead of Greece. This is another topic). It also contains elements of Plato's Atlantis story. In any case one of the rams the golden ram who became a burdon to the people and whose fleece was therefore offered to the sky. The ram thus became the constellation ram. We know from archaeological results that in the north of North-Africa mainly goats were herded, while in the south of North-Africa mainly cattle was herded. So this myth of the ram and its constellation fits the High Atlas and Saharian Atlas perfectly, while the bull and its constellation fits the cattle herders. The Pleiades and Hyades (the mythical 14 Atlantides, the golden portal of heaven) in the West, fits nicely in the middle, setting on the Tropic of Cancer. One might even suspect an attempt of mapping the North-West Africa they knew into the sky, the Triton or Poseidon Sea in the north associated with the water sign Pisces and the planet Neptune (Poseidon), and the Twins in the south, in Senegal and Nigeria, which is where twin births were indeed the norm, even today. I will leave the rest for others to speculate on.

The next comfirmation I got was the discovery in Egypt of Lascaux type artwork.

So now to your question: the "connection" between Lascaux and Egypt seems very tenuous, both in terms of chronology and continuity of attestation.

Not really tenuous. Just unexplored. Both in terms of chronology and continuity of attestation there is a lot to say. It is not necessary for any nomadic group of people knowing where they are going to leave their style of art on every rock they have passed, although it would helped to track them more precisely. It seems they picked up their traditional art style only after arriving in Upper-Egypt, where they apparently settled long enough to make such art again.

As I've said, I have not yet compared anything from the Atlas and Lascaux yet, but I suspected already such a move southwards and paleonthologists have already claimed such a move of at least the Solutreans and Azilians from Spain into the Atlas, and that already "joins dots". The Azilian pebble script was also found along the mediterranean all the way to Northern Egypt and dated it from 11,000 BC in Spain and the Atlas down to circa 3500 BC in the east. This is where I got the idea from that it must have been the forerunner of Sinaitic script and eventually of Phoenician and Hebrew script. Those ideas are not my invention. It has already been stated by others that the Azilian pebble script strangly resembles the phoenician script enormously, so much that some have been screaming "forgery", which the pebble script is certainly not. And also that paleolithic culture of Egypt had many things in common with the Solutreans and Azilians, which only enforces my hypothes. In the mean time, a smaller group of Azilians moved over the Alps, leaving along their way the pebble script in the same sequence of time. So these people might have become the forefathers of the Ligurians and the Pelasgians, or at least in part. But the traces did not get so far, they end somewhere in the Alps, no further as far as I know. Therefore I think that the dominant group moved over North-Africa along the northern track eastwards, while another group went further south before moving eastwards and ending up in Upper-Egypt. I am currently speculatiing that the northern group became or influenced the Natufians in Canaan, as well as the earliest settlers of the Fayum and Merimbe in Egypt. There were probably various groups from time to time following the same two routes eastwards over North-Africa. But archaeologists are of course reluctant to speculating on where these cultures came from. That is for others to propose. I am not aware of more recent studies. I hope these will come forth but there is hardly any interest in dangerous countries like Algeria and the western Soedan, where you can get killed for a dollar, while the uninhabitable desert is most extensive there and makes excavation work virtually impossible. However, I did see on detailed maps topographic features of "former islands" at distances as described in the Argonaut myth and descibed by Herodotus. This is only possible if Apollonius Rhodes and Herodotos were drawing information from some kind of source of knowledge that was already at least 6000 years old. How? I don't know. As for "recent work", I'm afraid that would have to be my work. There were a number of publications in the past, but Lhote is the most extensive. Others followed, but not recently. No animo I guess. It depends on fundings.

Rappenglück is perhaps a recent work, but his data are already out-dated and he made some very stupid conclusions too, which I handle in detail in my book. I only need someone interested and open-minded enough to review it, but from the biblicists and especially those non-believers who are theorizing a very late "invention" of all Biblical stuff, based on the so-called documentary theory, unproven, which I cannot agree upon, I get hate mails. Stupidity prevails.

I don't know much about connections further east than an interesting contrast between the cave and art forms of Lascaux and the cave and art forms of Chauvet, seemingly being their "counterparts". It only becomes obvous if you know the details, in which they also show signs of mapping skills in mapping out the whole of southern France in terms of animal patterns, those they also projected into the sky.

Only highly intelligent, mathematically minded people can do these things. Lunar calendars, star mapping, geo-mapping, enough signs to create an alphabet, moving the same signs onto pebbles and probably using them as an oracle or as a word-making-game like scrabble. I'm sure it was like that. You can have great fun with such a game of letters to create words - yes, I believe they were already playing scrabble like us. The very first thing one can do with phonetic signs on pebbles is scrabble. One can attach meanings and predictions to certain letters, and the Kelts later did hust that with the 24 runes, and the Kaballists with the Hebrew letters, thus making a religion oit of it. It's all the same game.

I believe that the Lascaux and Chauvet people moved somewhat together southwards, but had totally different interests and ways of living. The Chauvet people seemed chaotic, in contrast to the orderly Lascaux people. The Chauvets were likely Shamanistically inclined, the Lascaux people intelectually minded.

The evidence is in their respective painting styles and their type of cave they seem to be mimicing. In Lascaux you can pinpoint certain stars at their correct distaces and demonstrate the use of the 3-4-5 Pythagorean triangle and lunar day counting. At Chauvet everythings is deliberately in disorder and nothing shows knowledge of geometry or astronomy.

At present this evidence seems to be in its infancy as far as developed theories of population movement or cultural transmission go.

True, but not as undeveloped as you may think. The move of the Azilians from Spain into the Atlas around 13,000-11,000 BC is considered a fact.

Climate conditions in north Africa in the period 15,000 - 5,000 BC seem to be significantly more benign for human beings than 5,000 BC onward, but there does not seem to be yet a demonstrable connection between these cultures and the later proto-Egyptian Nile-based cultures, yet connections to the Mesopotamian cultures are established.

Yes, there is more evidence than you may know of, but it's subtile. The cultures from the far west the western desert of Egypt did not differ much. They were still mainly stone knappers like their ancestors but had started a trend of keramics. The greater change comes when they moved into the Nile Valley.

In other words, yes it is of interest, but how is it relevant to a forum devoted to historical chronology?

If one believes he already knows when "history" began, just because he knows when "readable" writing began, he might have to adjust his beliefs dramatically. But prehistorical writings is not likely about a king so and so of whom we have a statue and a personal name and his conquest stories, and some absolute or relative date to tag onto, which seems to be the only interest of most members of this list, and therefore may not go further than about the time for the Dynasties.

So what? What is history? If it depends on writings, scripts, I will point to the discovery of 26 symbols and the recurring sets of such symbols left worldwide in every cave between 33,000 and 11,000 BC. That would be the true beginning of "history". And that is indeed a recent discovery.

Does the alphabet posited for Lascaux have any hope of decipherment

I don't know yet. Haven't been able to retrieve information about the other recurring sets. I sure hope someone knows where to look for them, or the sources that describe them. I have only limited access to scholarly papers, but I'm not giving up hope yet.

We can all trawl through mythology to find "confirmation" of Atlantis, of universal floods, of diasporas of peoples to distant places, of "ancient aliens" bestowing cultural advances on primitive peoples and so on, and I suspect many people on this forum will avoid such speculation as if it were the plague (include me in this!).

I know that, but I'm not referring to the fantasies of some authors who misread Plato. I've discovered that both Plato, Herodotos and Diodoros consistently referred to the Saharian Atlas as the "city" Atlantis being the tenth part of the whole island, both in terms of distance and size. People like Marinatos thinking of Crete or Therah have failed, so too people who imagined it in the Atlantic or even in the America's or the Antarctica. It's just not possible. The "Pillars of Herakles" were namely originally not at Gibraltar but at the entrance of the Triton Sea at Gabés, and earlier still they were at the Tropic of Cancer in front of the Hoggar, which is where Herodotos places them, on the latitude of Thebes, and which is where the Egyptians thought them too as the pillars of Shu through which the sungod Re in his solar bark went from west to east. This topic is however a separate book in which I detail all this and more. Not as fantasy but as archaeological fact.

BTW - on a specific point, your pentagrammaton of "God" does not seem to be symmetrical i.e. the "name" does not read the same in both directions, whereas your extended tetragrammaton (YHVH+Y) does...

Yes, I know. This gives rise to an interesting aspect of the whole name. There is an etymological connection between HaWaH as male, the father-God, and CHaWaH (or our English Eve) as female, the mother-Goddess. And the female form of God is meant in the cave art's pentagrammaton. The Hebrews made it become male by simply changing the Ch into a H equal to the other H. Well, that is my hypothesis, as you probaby know. Perhaps originally reading ChaWaH one way was female and reverse reading the other way HaWaCh was male, which I suggest was the purpose of the two directions of reading. By replacing the Ch by a H, it now reads male in both directions, perfect for the male oriented Hebrews since Abraham. I can't prove it, but that is the connection I see. It will become more clearly once I've studied other sets of symbols to compare with.

So who knows more???? Anyone???

Ian