Lamb and tuna

From a great post by @ahahistory2 a great account well worth following. 

One of many depictions of ships from the Laxe dos Cervos petroglyphs, dated to the 13th-12th century BC. At least two of the ships seem to be provided with sails. 

What animals are depicted with the ships? 

I would guess wild sheep with lambs...

But why would you depict these animals with a sail boat?

The main sailing season in Portuguese coastal waters for small boats during the ancient times was from Apr/May to Oct/Nov, allowing for predictable trade winds along the Atlantic coast...

Apr/May is the end of the lambing season, and the beginning of the milking season for both wild and domestic sheep...

So could this be animal calendar marker for the start of the sailing season? 

"When sheep finish lambing, it's time to go sailing"?

@ahahistory2 suggested that these could be deer, but it’s not clear whether the ships and the deer are contemporaneous...

I would be very surprised if these were deer. They are usually depicted with proper antlers...Example: Why was Orion depicted above the mating deer on the bowls made by the people of the Los Millares culture (Spain) and dated to c. 3000BC? I talked about this intriguing vessel in my post Bowls from Los Millares...

Unless these are Red deer hinds with fawns. Red deer hinds typically give birth to a single calf between May/Jun, with peak calving occurring early in this period... 

Again even if these are red deer hinds with fawns, we could still use them as an animal calendar marker for the start of the sailing season...

"When red deer finish fawning, it's time to go sailing"?

Of course it is possible that boats and animals depictions are not contemporaneous and are not related...

Then just when I thought I had nothing more to say about this, @Ulrich1976c asked:

Do some fish come at that same time to the Galician waters every year? Maybe this means it's time to sail and fish?

The answer is yes. The traditional tuna fishing season, known as almadraba, takes place in the spring, specifically peaking in April, May, and June along the coast of the Iberian Peninsula. During this time, Atlantic bluefin tuna are caught as they migrate into the Mediterranean.

I talked about tuna fishing in the Mediterranean in my post Tuna boats about this Early Cycladic "frying pan" (a type of artifact made in the Aegean Islands between c. 2700 and c. 2200 BC) depicting a boat and a tuna fish...

So a very important time of the year...Worth marking with something that happens on land (birthing season of sheep and possibly deer) to know when something important happens in the sea...

To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, which are at the root of all our mythologies, start here…Then check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am way way behind...