The initial interpretations of the art at Lascaux and in other related grottos were couched in suggestions that the paintings and engravings were decorative, or just art for art’s sake. Further analysis at the tail-end of the 20th century suggested that the cave art had deep links to prehistoric rituals promoting fertility and successful hunting. Recent studies have found a systematic sequencing in the renditions of horses, aurochs (an extinct ancestor of domestic cattle), and stags, corresponding to seasonal characteristics of each species representing spring, summer, and autumn respectively. Art historians working for the French Ministry of Culture and Communication have called this process and symbolism a “metaphoric evocation that, in this setting, links biological and cosmic time… with its central theme, the creation of the world.”

Soon after art historians accepted these seasonal and temporal connections within the cave art, archaeoastronomer Michael A. Rappenglück of The Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies in Gilching, Germany, began addressing the possible astronomical significance of the cave imagery. He noticed a group of six spots painted above the back of one of the aurochs in a part of the cave known as the Hall of the Bulls. Charcoal freckles surround the creature’s eye, which Rappenglück thought could represent the eye of the Taurus constellation embedded in the Hyades cluster. Astronomical calculations of when the Hyades cluster would have been visible to Northern Hemisphere observers during the season depicted in the image match well with the date range given by carbon-14 dating of the charcoal traces. He added a fresh layer of interpretation to the images with his conclusion that the cyclical appearance and disappearance of the Pleiades provided a celestial clock, used alongside carved-bone lunar calendars by hunters of the Magdalenian period or just before.