Talk:Cup and ring mark

i think that cup and ring markings are beatiful!!!

Opening para
Hi, I've changed the lede to state that cup and ring marks are found all over the world with a reference. Stating that they're found predominantly in the British Isles is unverified and unlikely. --HighKing (talk) 12:26, 10 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Maybe not a quality academic reference, but see the first sentence on this webpage . MidnightBlue   (Talk)  15:58, 11 October 2008 (UTC)


 * That's a very good point. ðarkun coll 16:00, 11 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Good point, have amended lede to match said reference-- Snowded  TALK  16:18, 11 October 2008 (UTC)


 * See here . You really are causing me to waste a load of time. MidnightBlue   (Talk)  16:37, 11 October 2008 (UTC)


 * This quote "Cup and ring markings are common in Galloway, as also in Ireland, Brittany and north West Spain." is a further argument against British Isles. Brittany and North West Spain are elsewhere.  Please keep this to citable material then no one will waste time. -- Snowded   TALK  17:16, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Cup and ring mark
And precisely which part of the paragraph are you requesting a citation for? I assume it's the final part about the Atlantic Coast, in which case I agree. That is an assumption without aything backing it up. I suggest it's removed if no references are forthcoming. MidnightBlue  (Talk)  12:12, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Hold that. Try this reference - Dictionary of Artifacts, by Barbara Ann Kipfer, p89 cup-and-ring mark - definition. It's available online. You could add it as a general reference in the article or as an inline source. MidnightBlue   (Talk)  12:46, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
 * (moved discussion from my Talk page)I'm looking for a reference for the entire paragraph. The preceding paragraph discusses the Italian cup-and-rings, and this is then followed by a paragraph which states that "similar patterns" are found in Spain, but at the same time attempts to draw a cultural link between Galacia and the British Isles.  The assertion of a cultural link is dubious and unreferenced.  For example, based on "similarity", there are other references that point to a similarity between Irish and Scandanavian.  Can you provide a link for reference above?  You may also be interested in the bottom of page 339 in European societies in the bronze age By A. F. Harding that states that there is no evidence of a link, especially regarding Ireland and the dating is the subject of intense discussion.  --HighKing (talk) 14:38, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Link to the publication is here, then scroll to p.101. MidnightBlue   (Talk)  14:55, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Hello, do I need to add a citation to add some galician examples? Or the general reference about their existence is enough? I would like to add clear examples as the Mogor ones (http://www.descubremarin.com/imagenes/historia/petroglifos_mogor_2.jpg) or the Luou ones (http://www.concellodeteo.com/imxd/arbore_web/imx/1207132695luou005.jpg). I am not talking about the pictures, as I do not know if they meet the requirements to be added, but maybe to name the sites, so people interested could find more info about them. Leirus (talk) 16:12, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * If you have specific references and could add them that would be great. May be sometime this article could be expanded and improved to become a C-class article. So your references would be a major step in the right direction. 16:29, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Ok, I have found this article, which seems serious enough (http://www.scribd.com/doc/22656830/A-New-Area-of-Galician-Rock-Art-Jorge-Guitian). I will try to find more about this to add info to this article. I like it, because I found it by chance, after I saw an english petroglyph which was eerily similar to the galician ones I knew. Leirus (talk) 23:10, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

My Dad was an amateur archaeologist and theorised that cup and ring marks were a game or story-telling aid linked to the legend of the Minotaur and the maze where he lived. Wybfw7 (talk) 12:53, 6 November 2011 (UTC). A quick Google search has brought me to a book published in 1903, which states there is an Irish (celtic) legend equivalent to that of the Minotaur. See "The Irish Mythological Cycle and Celtic Mythology" by H. D'Arbois de Jubainville, Professor of Celtic at the College of France, translated by Richard Irvine Best (Hodges, Figgis & Co, Dublin, 1903). Wybfw7 (talk) 13:16, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Paragraph beginning "Waddington asserts ..."
Quite frankly, I find that the general tone of this paragraph renders the entire article suspect. It presents as received fact the 80+ year old work of an aryan-theorist who wasn't well regarded even then. And in particular, the sentence "A fascinating body of work by an equally fascinating man." has a 'fan boy' tone that is inappropriate for a Wikipedia article. -- John W. Pierce (talk) 00:38, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
 * True, it's a bit shitty that bit. I've toned it down... but I'm new to this page so others should work more on it.Malick78 (talk) 12:53, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

"oldest" needs a ref/citation
The article made the uncited claim that India had the oldest cup marks, but http://originsnet.org/darakigallery/index.htm says that "Early India Petroglyphs Project... is attempting (emph added) to date the cupules and other petroglyphs at Daraki-Chattan, Bhimbetka and other sites in India." And please note (as now I see someone agreed in the 1st sentence of the UK's sub-section of the article...but apparently whoever added the India info didn't "get his memo"): Just because human habitation began at any particular site by 200M to 500M YBP (as are the years for India's), does not mean that the cupules were carved there in 200M to 500M (unless it's able to be dated by, e.g., either: abandonment/submerging of the site by a certain date, such as in Atlit's Yam's case, or organic material at the site which is confirmed by an archaeologist to have been left by the same culture who did the rock-carvings, i.e. only organic material CAN be carbon-dated whereas in contrast, rocks & carvings themselves cannot); that's why the link I gave to originsnet.org (above) can say definitively that the Indian site was inhabited since the Acheulean (200M to 500M years ago) BUT that they're still "attempting" to date the cupules at that site...

Would be great if we can get CONFIRMED dates for any of the other regions, too, even if it's only confirmation of a "range of possible dates". I'm going to add a "Canaan" section, because the article for Atlit Yam has a REF/CITE which confirm cup marks are present, in this structure which was CONFIRMED by professionals to have been abandoned by circa 6300 BCE (by Ker Than & Jeff Hecht in 2 separate reports/studies), and therefore is an example of cup marks which dates to at least 8.3 millennia BP / 6300BCE.

Note that, from the OFFICIAL site of India's "cup marks" team, http://www.ifrao.com/eip1/web/index.html :

1. the most recent study on India's cup marks is dated 2007, but Atlit Yam's cup marks were discovered after this, in 2009, and

2. as of 2007, India's are POSSIBLY as old as (but NOT CONFIRMED to be) "up to about 32,000 years BP in Chauvet Cave". 72.183.52.92 (talk) 10:48, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Asterisms?
Are the cup and ring marks perhaps asterisms or simple star charts in which cups represent stars -- big cups for bright stars and smaller ones for dimmer stars. Have stones with duplicate patterns been found? Are they oriented in some way or does the orientation seem random? Virgil H. Soule (talk) 17:15, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

"Decorations" and "Art"?
For all we know the markings could be a record of something, eg astral positions, crop planting times, equinoxes etc or could be markings left for other travelers to tell them something. There is no proof that they are either "Art" or just "Decoration" so it is misleading to label them thus. 94.31.7.101 (talk) 16:45, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

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Cup marks versus cup and rings
The lead makes it sound like cup marks and cup and ring marks are basically the same thing. They're not -- the distribution of cup and rings is more restricted. The listing of Denmark and Sweden in the lead is not supported by references within the article. We need to be more precise about how and where these appear, and some of the sources (especially for world-wide distribution) are weak. -- Elphion (talk) 03:43, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

Agree, they are not the same. I am pretty sure there aren't many if any CUP AND RING marked stones in Finland as you can see from the picture that is included in the article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cup_and_ring_mark#/media/File:Kuppikivi_hartola.jpg), it is CUP marked, but with no rings. Also there are a lot of cup marked stones in Estonia, fewer in Latvia, but no mention of them in the article.

Stonehenge
I'm going to delete this non-sequitur from the opening paragraph:

"Two studies published in 2019 found that the population which built Britain's Stonehenge descended predominantly from Fertile Crescent, South Slavic, Anatolian, and Aegean farmers (see also Neolithic Agricultural Revolution), and while female lineages were varied, male lineages belonged almost exclusively to Eastern European and Mediterranean males of I2a genetic lineage."

It's all very well, but what does it have to do with cup and ring marks? I trace it back to the edit of 18 April 2019, which states that this population built megaliths "like Stonehenge" which have cup marks, and so we get the implication that they are marks made by the builders of Stonehenge (which builders, which phase?) - anyway if anybody want to make these claims they should do it properly and boldly, and the reader shouldn't be faced with sentences that seem to vaguely suggest something without outright saying it.

I know there are UK standing stones with cup and ring marks on them. So far as I know this doesn't include Stonehenge (it has an axehead shape carved into a sarsen, but I think that's all), and even considering other sites, the assumption that the cup-and-ring marks were carved by the same people who set up the standing stones is questionable. Card Zero (talk) 19:34, 22 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Replying to myself because I found a source: Cup and Ring Marks in Context, Published online by Cambridge University Press, 22 December 2008. This argues for three phases: first 4000–3200 BC, then appropriation for use on megaliths 3200–2000 BC, then after that 200 years of "expropriation" (which I think means everybody was doing it and they no longer remembered why). Card Zero  (talk) 19:56, 28 May 2022 (UTC)