... "It's a very evocative scene which indeed resembles the Christmas nativity. But it predates it by some 3,000 years," geologist Marco Morelli, director of the Museum of Planetary Sciences in Prato, near Florence, Italy, told Seeker. ... ... The scene features a man, a woman missing the head because of a painting detachment, and a baby. "It could have been interpreted as a normal depiction of a family, with the baby between the parents, but other details make this drawing unique," Morelli said. ... ... The scene becomes more symbolically complex if the other figures, two animals and a small circular feature, are taken into consideration. On the upper part is a headless lion, a mythical beast which appears in several rock art drawings from the same area, while below in the scene a baboon or an anthropomorphic monkey can be seen. In the east, the Neolithic artist drawn what appears to be star. ... |