Wow, thanks guys, didn't have any replys there for a good while and suddenly there is 29 replys.
So we think the cup and rings represent, most probably, celestial bodies.
We know that the sun played a massive part in our ancient ancestors' lives, so big they may have worshiped it as a religion. As christians carry around the cross and put it up in buildings, so would have the people of old with their sun symbols. The rings representing radiating light, or the colours of the rainbow. Notice many of them have 5 or 7 rings, 5 colours being easily visible red, yellow, green, blue, violet, then the other orange and indigo. The cup marks may represent the other celestial bodies, maybe the other visible planets or other stars. They may show a star chart, or natal chart, of an important date, forever recorded in stone.
I believe that in these holes they may have placed/fixed rounded quartz pebbles (like the golden oracle stones from atlantis, quartz being the golden stone, which unlocked a magical machine, but the machine was just a centre point of concentration and contemplation of the higher self, an aid to enter the trance state) the rings i believe may have been coloured as the colours of the rainbow.
Of course this theory can not work for all of the rock art found but can work as a baisis for other interpretations. We know they did not use letters and so their language would have been based around the use of symbols. In view a language of symbols works much better than letters, as deep concentration on what a picture is telling you helps you to understand it better, and it sinks in better too, as with out letter system of comunicating, you can read it and get the just of it, but have you fully understood it, has it really sunk in?
Another note on the rings is that the central cup can still represent the sun and the rings showing how many times it has circled it, i.e recording years.
The spirals is what gets me. But spirals are very significant. They are the shape that forms galaxys to the spiral in our DNA, spirals can be found in shells, found on the beach and fossilised in most of the rock in Ireland (limestone) Some spirals are anti-clockwise, some are clockwise. Anticyclones and cyclones bring us very different weather depending on the sworl of the spiral. Obviously weather was key to surivial for our ancestors being farmers, so praying to the celestial bodies for rain and sun would have been a main ritual. We know that the shaman/priest/witchdoctor's main job was to contact the gods for the right weather to grow crops and to spare them of natural disaters.
The circle and also the spiral are very sacred shapes, for us now and also back then. These symbols figured highly as a way of life, and spiritual path. Understanding these shapes in this physical realm was key to making an understanding of life and survival.
