A Route Map Proposal as the Topological Equivalent of the Ladder Design (65000 Years Ago) at La Pasiega Cave

Special Article - Civilization

Austin Anthropol. 2019; 3(2): 1011.

A Route Map Proposal as the Topological Equivalent of the Ladder Design (65000 Years Ago) at La Pasiega Cave

J. C. Flores*

Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Tarapacá, Casilla 7-D, Arica-Chile

*Corresponding author: Flores JC, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Tarapacá, Casilla 7-D, Arica- Chile

Received: November 28, 2019; Accepted: December 17, 2019; Published: December 24, 2019

Abstract

The ladder design in the La Pasiega cave (Spain) possesses geometrical, entropic and mathematical properties of practical relevance. The approximate 5:3:9 ratio of its enclosed spaces seems correlated with walking areas within the cave. The schema’s compositional strokes are directionally inclined mainly at angles of 0o and 90o with a proportion of 7% and 20% respectively. Moreover, the prolific strokes within that defined interval suggest that the author was right-handed. The ladder five-node schema with three enclosed areas seems topologically equivalent to a virtual route map inside the cave. This conceivable scheme, created perhaps 65,000 years ago, still can yield valuable topographical information on paths inside the cave. Additionally, the full panel contains other designs or figures related to other epochs, nevertheless, the ladder entropyinformation is smaller than the rest, and consequently, it is more precise.

Keywords: Design in a cave; Topographic information; Archaeology; Topologic equivalences

Introduction

The Cave of La Pasiega, located in Cantabria, Spain, contains a ladder-shaped design among other draws (Panel 78, Hall XI, Gallery C; see Figure 1) and recently attributed to Neanderthals with a date of origin that preceded the advent of modern humans (Homo sapiens) by at least 20,000 years in the region [1]. Nevertheless, at the moment, it remains a controversial topic [2,3]. Debates on Neanderthals “complex” symbolic capacities have been intense [4,5,6], however, the hypothetical subject of this paper only focuses on the possible topographical abilities of the author of the ladder. Namely, I modestly conjecture a conceptual topographic ability of the author of the mentioned design.