However, it's unknown what motivated them to apply so many layers of protective wards on the cave walls and ceiling. The witch marks were inscribed into the cave walls between the 16th and 19th centuries, likely by generations of local people who added to the existing marks over time, according to the email. (Image credit: Creswell Crags Museum and Heritage Centre) (opens in new tab) "The most important find is the earliest example of colored art in Britain - the shape of a horse scratched into a bone and colored with ochre, which is over 12,000 years old."īox-shaped markings represented wards to contain evil. These include bones of creatures such as hyenas and horses, and flint tools used by early humans," the representative said in the email. "Artifacts found in the cave are mostly from the Ice Age - when creatures and early humans took shelter in there.
The limestone cave is thought to have formed naturally, through water erosion hundreds of thousands of years ago, and the rock is around 260 million years old, a representative with Creswell Heritage Trust told Live Science in an email. Photogrammetry will map the surfaces in 3D, creating a virtual cave that will make the marks accessible to the public and to scientists the team recently produced an animated preview of the virtual tour, sharing the footage on Vimeo (opens in new tab). University researchers scanned the marks with a technology called lidar - light detection and ranging - which creates maps by pinging a surface with lasers and then measuring the reflected light.
However, the hundreds of protective carvings that remain make up the most abundant collection of witch marks in the U.K. But when archaeologists found and excavated the cave in the 19th century, they widened its chambers and possibly destroyed surfaces bearing marks, according to the statement. Not all of the cave's walls contain markings. Some marks are designs resembling boxes, mazes and diagonal lines, and are thought to represent devices for trapping evil. Protective witch-mark carvings are also known as apotropaic marks, from the Greek word "apotrepein," which means "to turn away." The variety of marks in the cave is extraordinary: There are references to the Virgin Mary in the inscriptions "PM" (for "Pace Maria") and in double "V" engravings ("Virgin of Virgins"), according to the Creswell Crags statement released in February.
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