Future historians will be in a particular position when they come to record the history of our own times. They will hardly know which facts to select from the great mass of evidence that's always increasing. What is more, they will not have to rely only oh the written word. Films, videos, CDs and CD-ROMs are just some of the huge amount of information they will have. They will be able, as it were, to see and hear us in action. But the historian attempting to show the distant past again is always faced with a difficult task. He has to make proper use of evidence available to draw reasonable conclusions. Good news is that even evidence that may appear unimportant can shed light on the history of early man. Up to now, historians have assumed that calendars came into being with the appearance of agriculture, for man of that time was faced with a real need to understand something about the seasons. Recent scientific evidence seems to suggest that this assumption is incorrect Historians have long been puzzled by dots, lines and symbols which have been carved on walls, bones and so on. The nomads   who made these markings lived by hunting and fishing during the last Ice Age which began about 35,000 B.C. and ended about 10,000 B.C. By comparing and analyzing markings made in various parts of the world, historians have been able to read this difficult "language". They have found that it is connected with the passing of days and the stages of the moon. It is, in fact, a primitive type of calendar. It has long been known that the hunting scenes drawn on walls were not simply a form of expression of art. They had a certain meaning, for they were as near as early man could get to writing. It is possible that there is a certain relation between these, paintings and the markings that sometimes accompany them. It seems that man was making a real effort to understand the seasons 20,000 years earlier than has been supposed. Which of the following is linked to what some early markings show?
The passing of days. The brightness of the sun. The early agricultural tools. The early forms of writing.