The Dots on the Ceiling

A  woman stood outside the entrance to her cave. She gazed at the night sky. The small specks of fire fascinated her. Wondering how fire could be in the sky, she memorized their layout and  position.  Then, she turned around and entered her cave. At the edge of the fire, she pulled out a burnt twig and one stick aflame.  She crawled through a wide tunnel until she reached a small cave with a dome shaped ceiling. With her fire stick in one hand, she marked the ceiling with black dots. She rolled onto her back, stared at the ceiling and smiled in satisfaction.

Twenty-five thousand years later, a professor and his graduate assistant  were one of the first people to enter the newly discovered  cave. They were experts in the history of prehistoric cultures.

The professor said to his assistant, “The entrance cave is very much like the other caves I have studied. I need your help investigating this tunnel. No one has explored  it yet.”

The assistant was flattered by his request, “I'll be most honored to help you. I'll be right behind you.”

They crawled through the tunnel and came to a small cave with a domed shape ceiling. They shone their flashlights around the walls and found it bare. Then, the assistant shone her flashlight on the ceiling. She and the professor gasped in unison.

“Oh, my. Look at all the dots on the ceiling. I've never seen anything like it. We've seen small clusters of black dots above the paintings of animals, But, never a whole ceiling. We don't even know what the dots mean. Are they some form of language? A numeral  system? A code?”

“Professor, look at the cluster of dots over there,” the assistant said. “It looks like a constellation of stars.”

He looked at the cluster and then back at her, “Oh, my God,” he exclaimed as he quickly returned his attention to the ceiling. “It's the night sky! Someone studied the stars! The stars haven't changed since prehistoric times. This is a kind of a planetarium!”

The thrill of discovery ran through their very core.  With due reverence to their extraordinary discovery, they laid down on the dirt floor, looked up at the ceiling and smiled.