Friday, December 23, 2016

PRATO, ITALY—Seeker reports that geologist Marco Morelli, director of the Museum of Planetary Sciences in Prato, led a team of researchers that found 5,000-year-old rock art on the ceiling of a small cavity in the Egyptian Sahara desert in 2005. The image, drawn in reddish-brown ochre, appears to depict a man and a woman with a baby floating above them. The woman’s head is missing due to damage to the painting. Morelli suggests that the position of the baby could indicate a birth or pregnancy. “As death was associated to Earth in contemporary rock art from the same area,” he said, “it is likely that birth was linked to the sky.” There are two animals in the scene: a headless lion, which has been found in other drawings in the region, and a baboon. There’s also a small circular mark to the side of the figures, which has been likened to a star. For more, go to “A Pharaoh’s Last Fleet.”