«THE MISSING LINK» - THE MESOLITHIC TIME (ON THE PROBLEM OF PRESERVING INFORMATION TRADITIONS IN THE CULTURES OF THE POST-PALAEOLITHIC EPOCH OF EURASIA). PART V: SYSTEMS OF TIME NOTATION IN THE EPOCH OF MESOLITH OF MIDDLE SIBERIA
V.Ye. Larichev
Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IAE SB RAS), Russia, 630090, Novosibirsk, prospect Akad. Lavrentieva, 17
Keywords: Siberia, the Mesolithic, art, numerical «records», calendars, the Moon, the Sun, preservation of cultural traditions, spiritual life
Abstract
The paper completes the program analyzing the problem of preserving information traditions in the mesolithic cultures of Eurasia. It is devoted to deciphering of signs on the edges of a manufactured article made of horn, which was found in Siberia and had been used as an instrument, an «art object» and bearer of the calendar-astronomical «records». As a result, the author concludes that only one thing can be inferred: in cognition of astronomy and calendaristics the inhabitants of eastern parts of Eurasia did not yield in anything important to their contemporaries in Europe. Creators of the Holocene cultures of the whole continent preserved in full volume the intellectual potential of the previous epoch - the Palaeolithic. There was no interruption in information traditions. In the paper the numerical symbolic «records» executed on the edges of the «art object» are described in detail and then testified: along the right edge of the article (30+4+2 = 36 incisions) and along its left edge (12+1+6 or 7+2 = 21 or 22 incisions). As a result it became clear that priests of the Shilka-2 Site, situated in the valley of the Yenisei River (the Middle Siberia) and dated the initial stage of the Mesolith, watched not only synodic but also sidereal and, possibly, draconic time cycles. This fact allowed the author to suggest that the calendar systems of these priests were aimed at prediction (or calculation?) of the moments of possible advent of solar and lunar eclipses. The numerical «records» near the edges of the «art object» permitted to reconstruct the notation of the lunar and solar, as well as sidereal years. The lunar year was watched by means of the sixfold notation of two months cycles (30+29 = 59 days). The equalizing of the lunar year with the current of the solar time was executed after three lunar years by means of introduction into the calculating system of the intercalation, the additional time cycle with its duration equal to 34 days. The lunar-solar year was watched by means of tenfold notation of the numerical «record» 36. The «records» of numbers 4 (or 3) and 2 were intercalated to the cycle of 360 days which led to the border-line of the end of the leap-year or the ordinary solar year.
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