40,000-Year-Old Symbols Found in Caves Worldwide May Be the Earliest Written Language

We may take it for grant­ed that the ear­li­est writ­ing sys­tems devel­oped with the Sume­ri­ans around 3400 B.C.E. The archae­o­log­i­cal evi­dence so far sup­ports the the­o­ry. But it may also be pos­si­ble that the ear­li­est writ­ing sys­tems pre­date 5000-year-old cuneiform tablets by sev­er­al thou­sand years. And what’s more, it may be pos­si­ble, sug­gests pale­oan­thro­pol­o­gist Genevieve von Pet­zinger, that those pre­his­toric forms of writ­ing, which include the ear­li­est known hash­tag marks, con­sist­ed of sym­bols near­ly as uni­ver­sal as emo­ji.

The study of sym­bols carved into cave walls all over the world—including pen­ni­forms (feath­er shapes), clav­i­forms (key shapes), and hand stencils—could even­tu­al­ly push us to “aban­don the pow­er­ful nar­ra­tive,” writes Frank Jacobs at Big Think, “of his­to­ry as total dark­ness until the Sume­ri­ans flip the switch.” Though the sym­bols may nev­er be tru­ly deci­pher­able, their pur­pos­es obscured by thou­sands of years of sep­a­ra­tion in time, they clear­ly show humans “undim­ming the light many mil­len­nia ear­li­er.”

While bur­row­ing deep under­ground to make cave paint­ings of ani­mals, ear­ly humans as far back as 40,000 years ago also devel­oped a sys­tem of signs that is remark­ably con­sis­tent across and between con­ti­nents. Von Pet­zinger spent years cat­a­logu­ing these sym­bols in Europe, vis­it­ing “52 caves,” reports New Scientist’s Ali­son George, “in France, Span, Italy and Por­tu­gal. The sym­bols she found ranged from dots, lines, tri­an­gles, squares and zigza­gs to more com­plex forms like lad­der shapes, hand sten­cils, some­thing called a tec­ti­form that looks a bit like a post with a roof, and feath­er shapes called pen­ni­forms.”

She dis­cov­ered 32 signs found all over the con­ti­nent, carved and paint­ed over a very long peri­od of time. “For tens of thou­sands of years,” Jacobs points out, “our ances­tors seem to have been curi­ous­ly con­sis­tent with the sym­bols they used.” Von Pet­zinger sees this sys­tem as a car­ry­over from mod­ern humans’ migra­tion into Europe from Africa. “This does not look like the start-up phase of a brand-new inven­tion,” she writes in her book The First Signs: Unlock­ing the mys­ter­ies of the world’s old­est sym­bols.

In her TED Talk at the top, von Pet­zinger describes this ear­ly sys­tem of com­mu­ni­ca­tion through abstract signs as a pre­cur­sor to the “glob­al net­work of infor­ma­tion exchange” in the mod­ern world. “We’ve been build­ing on the men­tal achieve­ments of those who came before us for so long,” she says, “that it’s easy to for­get that cer­tain abil­i­ties haven’t already exist­ed,” long before the for­mal writ­ten records we rec­og­nize. These sym­bols trav­eled: they aren’t only found in caves, but also etched into deer teeth strung togeth­er in an ancient neck­lace.

Von Pet­zinger believes, writes George, that “the sim­ple shapes rep­re­sent a fun­da­men­tal shift in our ancestor’s men­tal skills,” toward using abstract sym­bols to com­mu­ni­cate. Not every­one agrees with her. As the Brad­shaw Foun­da­tion notes, when it comes to the Euro­pean sym­bols, emi­nent pre­his­to­ri­an Jean Clottes argues “the signs in the caves are always (or near­ly always) asso­ci­at­ed with ani­mal fig­ures and thus can­not be said to be the first steps toward sym­bol­ism.”

Of course, it’s also pos­si­ble that both the signs and the ani­mals were meant to con­vey ideas just as a writ­ten lan­guage does. So argues MIT lin­guist Cora Lesure and her co-authors in a paper pub­lished in Fron­tiers in Psy­chol­o­gy last year. Cave art might show ear­ly humans “con­vert­ing acoustic sounds into draw­ings,” notes Sarah Gibbens at Nation­al Geo­graph­ic. Lesure says her research “sug­gests that the cog­ni­tive mech­a­nisms nec­es­sary for the devel­op­ment of cave and rock art are like­ly to be anal­o­gous to those employed in the expres­sion of the sym­bol­ic think­ing required for lan­guage.”

In oth­er words, under her the­o­ry, “cave and rock [art] would rep­re­sent a modal­i­ty of lin­guis­tic expres­sion.” And the sym­bols sur­round­ing that art might rep­re­sent an elab­o­ra­tion on the theme. The very first sys­tem of writ­ing, shared by ear­ly humans all over the world for tens of thou­sands of years.

via Big Think

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Was a 32,000-Year-Old Cave Paint­ing the Ear­li­est Form of Cin­e­ma?

How to Write in Cuneiform, the Old­est Writ­ing Sys­tem in the World: A Short, Charm­ing Intro­duc­tion

Dis­cov­er the Old­est Beer Recipe in His­to­ry From Ancient Sume­ria, 1800 B.C.

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness


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Comments (26)
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  • Richard Lyon says:

    Per­haps from the sur­vivors of the event that caused the pre­vi­ous civ­i­liza­tion to col­lapse.

  • Sarah says:

    So there was a sin­gle group of peo­ple with a sin­gle lan­guage. Inter­est­ing. Note also that most peo­ple in the world have sim­i­lar myths such as a cre­ation and flood myths. You can start to won­der…

  • Pliadies Child says:

    Inter­est­ing that the sev­en sis­ters or the Plieiadies star sys­tem is depict­ed on every con­ti­nent. Again and again.
    Why? There are oth­er sym­bols, but I am inter­est­ed in the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Pleiades .
    Every­where.… inter­est­ing

  • Red Rix says:

    All humans even­tu­al­ly descend from one tribe in ancient africa that had the abil­i­ty of basic oral com­mu­ni­ca­tion, yes. It is pos­si­ble that they had some form of non­ver­bal com­mu­ni­ca­tion as well, carv­ing or paint­ing com­mon­ly under­stood signs to express ideas. for exam­ple a wig­gly line could say ‘water’ and a wigly line crossed­out could­mean ‘bad water’ , a cir­cel could meaan ‘sun’ and a half cir­cle ‘moon’ , a V shape could mean a horned ani­mal etc. How­ev­er these signs/symbols are so sim­ple that nay per­son, or peo­ple, with some basic under­stand­ing can come up with them, so there does not have to be any direct con­nec­tion between them.

  • Deborah Guy says:

    That was my thoughts as well.

  • Antonio says:

    The Pleiades every­where…
    The expla­na­tion may rest on the idea of new year dawn.

    Near June 05, the Pleiades can be observed for only a few min­utes, about an hour before sun­rise, near the hori­zon line.That moment we call the heli­a­cal birth of Pleiades. Then, due to the Earth­’s rota­tion­al motion from west to east, the sun ris­es on the east side, over­shad­ow­ing the Pleiades vision.

    Fol­low­ing its orbit the Earth move from west to east; and the stars advance on aver­age 3 min­utes and 56 sec­onds a day, rel­a­tive to the Sun.
    Thus, the obser­va­tion of the Pleiades in the days fol­low­ing the heli­a­cal birth is eas­i­er because they are vis­i­ble longer before sun­rise and at the same time they are high­er in the sky and can be observed ear­li­er in the day.
    On Novem­ber 10, approx­i­mate­ly, they are born at sun­set. From that day, we can no longer observe the birth of the Pleiades because, at dusk, they are already above the hori­zon, mov­ing to the west side until they dis­ap­pear to the sun­set (heli­a­cal sun­set).
    The heli­a­cal sun­set occurs near April 30, and the Pleiades no longer are vis­i­ble at night until near June 5 when his heli­a­cal birth occurs again.So the obser­va­tion and accu­rate record­ing of the birth of this con­stel­la­tion for brazil­ian indi­ans was of utmost impor­tance, because this event gov­erned all its annu­al activ­i­ty: from sow­ing the seeds to the type of hunt­ing avail­able and their fes­tiv­i­ties.

  • Antonio says:

    The Pleiades every­where…
    The expla­na­tion may rest on the idea of new year dawn.

    Near June 05, the Pleiades can be observed for only a few min­utes, about an hour before sun­rise, near the hori­zon line. That moment we call the heli­a­cal birth of Pleiades. Then, due to the Earth’s rota­tion­al motion from west to east, the sun ris­es on the east side, over­shad­ow­ing the Pleiades vision.

    Fol­low­ing its orbit the Earth move from west to east; and the stars advance on aver­age 3 min­utes and 56 sec­onds a day, rel­a­tive to the Sun.
    Thus, the obser­va­tion of the Pleiades in the days fol­low­ing the heli­a­cal birth is eas­i­er because they are vis­i­ble longer before sun­rise and at the same time they are high­er in the sky and can be observed ear­li­er in the day.
    On Novem­ber 10, approx­i­mate­ly, they are born at sun­set. From that day, we can no longer observe the birth of the Pleiades because, at dusk, they are already above the hori­zon, mov­ing to the west side until they dis­ap­pear to the sun­set (heli­a­cal sun­set).
    The heli­a­cal sun­set occurs near April 30, and the Pleiades no longer are vis­i­ble at night until near June 5 when his heli­a­cal birth occurs again. So the obser­va­tion and accu­rate record­ing of the birth of this con­stel­la­tion for brazil­ian indi­ans was of utmost impor­tance, because this event gov­erned all its annu­al activ­i­ty: from sow­ing the seeds to the type of hunt­ing avail­able and their fes­tiv­i­ties.

  • mark says:

    you ever looked at the sky? it’s a VERY promi­nent clus­ter

  • LARRY CALDWELL says:

    If you include rock face pic­tograms in addi­tion to caves, there are more sym­bols com­mon to North Amer­i­ca. For instance, the spi­ral is com­mon in rock art all over North Amer­i­ca.

  • oroo says:

    The Atom­ic The­o­ry and the Fun­da­men­tal Prin­ci­ples under­ly­ing the Descrip­tion of Nature
    [What is inter­est­ing, the orbits for celes­tial bod­ies can be accu­rate­ly vec­tored by math­e­mat­i­cal equa­tion where­as at the sub­nu­clear (atom­ic spaces) this is present­ly impos­si­ble due to (Heisen­berg’s uncer­tain­ty prin­ci­ple — Sim­ple Eng­lish …)].

    |

    15 Char­ac­ter­is­tics and Prop­er­ties of the Atom­ic Struc­ture

    Explor­ing time — pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive (POLARITY) cre­ate [i.e. feath­er shapes — key shapes]
    and aug­ment the bound­aries for any direc­tion for all direc­tions… (an eter­nal lan­guage).

    Trans­mis­sion Elec­tron Microscopy (The­o­ry) : Cell biol­o­gy Vir­tu­al Lab I : Biotech­nol­o­gy and Bio­med­ical Engi­neer­ing : Amri­ta Vish­wa Vidyapeetham Vir­tu­al Lab — vlab.amrita.edu

    Why not just go ahead and prove the the­o­ry! CHANGE DETECTION Ronald A. Rensink — Descrip­tion — Uni­ver­si­ty of …

    |

    Videos: Paul Dirac — WikiVi­su­al­ly

    After judge erupts, plain­tiff lawyer in Roundup case at tri­al pleads for no sanc­tions

  • Robert Barrett says:

    The method used for dat­ing these at 40,000 years is flawed. It is based on cir­cu­lar rea­son­ing.

  • william says:

    1st writ­ing was Har­rapi­an civ­i­liza­tion 3500+

  • pieter prall says:

    Well…There are just so many sim­ple line con­fig­u­ra­tions one can draw. and, by the way…It does­n’t tale a genius to fig­ure out how to pile rocks into a pyra­mid shape either…yu pile rocks up unto they start to tum­ble off the top of the heap…voilla…a pyra­mid.

  • Michael H Cargal says:

    Or it could be that migraine auras are sim­i­lar every­where.

  • Jerry May says:

    It’s the world’s first shared poem.

  • Matt says:

    She needs study a bit more.

  • Sudip Chaudhuri says:

    What about the rock paint­ings of Bhimb­het­ka near Bhopal in Mad­hya Pradesh in India ? These paint­ings start­ed from the time of Pale­olith­ic Age and con­tin­ued through the Neolith­ic Age and till 2000B.C.

  • BC says:

    Stu­pid­est TED talk ever. The “mys­te­ri­ous” sym­bols are PHOSPHENES. There is absolute­ly zero mys­tery here. Just close your eyes. Every­one sees them. Most peo­ple see at least 5–7 of the same ones. Guy Murchie wrote about this in his book The Sev­en Mys­ter­ies of Life (page 236).

    I cer­tain­ly hope this woman is not get­ting paid to do her research, or for doing these TED talks. She thinks she has dis­cov­ered some­thing, but has actu­al­ly cre­at­ed a false enig­ma sur­round­ing a sub­ject that has been known for at least half a cen­tu­ry.

  • Ross S Marshall says:

    If you want a new (but old) research on his­to­ry before his­to­ry, pre­his­toric cukl­tures and who they were and where from, col­o­niza­tions, migra­tions, difu­sions, com­par­a­tive mythol­o­gy, eth­nol­o­gy, sumerol­o­gy, etc…here is 3000+ pages of syn­the­sized mythog­ra­phy telli.ng the whole sto­ry, includes the times of rock art writ­ers.
    Research BOOKS by myself and Dr. John D. Pilkey…
    I am up for correspondences…weirdvieos.com
    https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Ross+S+Marshall

    THE GENESIS 10 HISTORY Video with Dr Pilkey
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDeSlqOMEZU&t=2s

  • Cliff says:

    There are hun­dreds of Amer­i­can Indi­an ges­ture signs that are his­tor­i­cal­ly doc­u­ment­ed. The signs, appar­ent­ly, were brought with them to the Amer­i­c­as dur­ing many migra­tions thus the signs are very old. Some of the signs date back over 50,000 years. The signs were very impor­tant for com­mu­ni­ca­tion between groups using dif­fer­ent ver­bal lan­guages, for silent hunt­ing and war­fare, and for pre­serv­ing an ancient cos­mol­o­gy.

  • Ross Marshall says:

    the “Sumer­ian Flood” is the piv­otal mark between the fall of the Tow­er of Babel and the First Kish Dynasty begin­ning with King Etana whom we have iden­ti­fied as the Gen­e­sis Noah. Fromk this fall and scat­ter­ing went the many groups out­ward towards all the points of the com­pass- the four quar­ters. The sym­bols are the same because there was one large group hold­ing the same sys­tem. Evi­dence to this is Kish and the first Sumer­ian com­po­si­tion of a writ­ing sys­tem for com­mu­ni­ca­tion, the ear­li­est Uruk and Jamet Nazra pic­to­graph­ic script. This devel­oped into being used by oth­er lan­guis­tic sys­tems like the Hit­tite, Elamite, and lat­er Chi­nese Ora­cle Bone script. After some time, and after peo­ple became more stu­pid, the Phoeni­cians con­densed it down into a pho­net­ic script… And no, the Indus Sym­bols are not the old­est, they derive from Sumer aong the Dra­vid­i­an colonists to to the Sin­dus. The Vin­ca cul­ture used them ear­li­er as well in Roma­nia to “mark” their pot­tery and oth­er items. As fo;lks moved away from the cen­ter of world com­mu­ni­ty, they lived in caves and more prim­i­tive­ly etched them and paint­ed them on the walls. It looks like the fur­ther you move away from the old­est cul­tur­al area- Mesopotamia, the more primka­tive the sys­tem. ALL the sys­tems from Mid east to Cave Art are all POST FLOOD. The rock art of Inyo Coun­ty Cal­i­for­nia depicts a sto­ry of Noah’s Ark and Flood if you go see our books on Ama­zon by Ross S Mar­shall and Dr. John D. Pilkey.

  • Ross Marshall says:

    PS. Notice the des­per­sion of the first Siber­ian migrants. The fur­ther away they moved from the Mid­dle east- to the far­ther­est North East Siberia, the more they lost sym­bol­ic sys­tem. it dimin­ish­es until it is lost and less like­ly to be found. There is rock art but not much left of the pic­to­graph­ic sys­tem. But, the next immi­gra­tion wave took place with the Amerindi­ans who brought the “art” with them (before the 1st kish erra, or at least before for­mal writ­ing sys­tems) and carved the stuff all over the west Coastal areas.

  • Bethsheba Ashe says:

    I’m an author/researcher that writes about Gema­tria, the Merk­abah and the Birth of the Alpha­bet. My books are ‘Char­i­ot’, ‘The Gen­e­sis Wheel’ and my lat­est work: ‘Behold! : The Art and Prac­tice of Gema­tria.’

    Ross — you’re com­plete­ly ignor­ing the Pro­to-Con­so­nan­tal Script from Sinai dat­ed to 1900 BCE and the fact that it is clear­ly derived from Egypt­ian Hiero­glyphs. Your idea that the Phoeni­cians “con­densed” the alpha­bet from Cuni­form wedges flies in the face of all the evi­dence. There is no sup­port what­so­ev­er for that asser­tion.

  • Laura says:

    “The FACT that it is clear­ly derived from Egypt­ian hiero­glyph­ics ” !!??? Wow.

    It’s a THEORY until time trav­el is invent­ed or some­one digs up anoth­er Tabla Rosa.

  • JP Van Gordon (Ian Gordon) says:

    I think that they might be sym­bols rep­re­sent­ing things they saw in nature, like the ani­mals … Per­haps stars, the moon, grass or plants, water, as in a lake or riv­er, etc.. The trick is, of course, to final­ly put a name with those objects…

  • JP Van Gordon (Ian Gordon) says:

    I believe it may be a grave error to assume that the sym­bols might be equiv­a­lents of sounds or vocal names or nois­es… it’s much more like­ly that they are very sim­ple rep­re­sen­ta­tions of com­mon things seen around them, and, in some cas­es, nat­ur­al sit­u­a­tions. such as rain or snow­ing, day­light and night, stars and the moon, etc…

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