First off ... welcome back AQ! I was at a lovely, yet ruined portal tomb the other day, with 3m plus portal stones, that sat atthe intersection of 2 little streams and thought of you ... this is becoming an ever more promanent feature in the less visited/accessible sites I am finding theses days.
Now. About this piece of ochre...
I was amazed myself that people were suggesting that these geometric patterns may have been *understood* by the artist's contemporaries. What a load of twaddle !!
What it does show is that the *abstract* in peoples lives has existed all along. The necessity of (and importantly the time for) relaxation and external stimuli for pleasure was there. Life wasn't all hunting,shagging and sacrifices. Life was enjoyed! That is a very important thing, a big step in *society*. Leisure time was still found and used. This has always struck me about the Smiley face at Fourknocks.
Another inference is in the geometry of the pattern. As mentioned Newgrange, Knowth and Fourknocks all show this lozenge pattern some *65,000* years later. To all those people who wonder at the presence of these patterns on a 5,000 year old monument ... what do you think of them being present 70,000 years ago!?
Let's learn some lessons from this. Modern man could just be more barbaric and more *prehistoric* than the person who carved that stone 70K years ago. At least he took time out to relax and chill a little.
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