We could take it for granted that the earliest writing systems developed with the Sumerians round 3400 B.C.E. The archaeological evidence thus far supports the theory. However it could even be possible that the earliest writing systems predate 5000-year-old cuneiform tablets by several thousand years. And what’s extra, it could be possible, suggests paleoanthropologist Genevieve von Petzinger, that these prehistoric types of writing, which embrace the earliest identified hashtag marks, consisted of symbols close toly as universal as emoji.
The examine of symbols carved into cave partitions everywhere in the world—together with pennivarieties (feather shapes), clavivarieties (key shapes), and hand stencils—might eventually push us to “abandon the powerful narrative,” writes Frank Jacobs at Huge Assume, “of history as whole darkishness till the Sumerians flip the swap.” Although the symbols could never be truly decipherin a position, their purposes obscured by thousands of years of separation in time, they clearly present people “undimming the sunshine many millennia earlier.”
Whereas burrowing deep belowfloor to make cave paintings of animals, early people way back to 40,000 years in the past additionally developed a system of indicators that’s commentably consistent throughout and between continents. Von Petzinger spent years cataloguing these symbols in Europe, visiting “52 caves,” stories New Scientist’s Alison George, “in France, Spain, Italy and Portugal. The symbols she discovered ranged from dots, traces, triangles, squares and zigzags to extra complex varieties like ladder shapes, hand stencils, somefactor known as a tectitype that appears a bit like a publish with a roof, and feather shapes known as pennivarieties.”
She discovered 32 indicators discovered everywhere in the continent, carved and painted over a really lengthy period of time. “For tens of thousands of years,” Jacobs factors out, “our ancestors appear to have been curiously consistent with the symbols they used.” Von Petzinger sees this system as a automotiveryover from modern people’ migration into Europe from Africa. “This doesn’t appear like the start-up part of a brand-new invention,” she writes in her e book The First Indicators: Unlocking the mysteries of the world’s outdatedest symbols.
In her TED Discuss on the prime, von Petzinger describes this early system of communication by means of summary indicators as a precursor to the “global internetwork of information change” within the modern world. “We’ve been constructing on the ladstal obtainments of those that got here earlier than us for thus lengthy,” she says, “that it’s straightforward to forget that certain abilities haven’t exist alreadyed,” lengthy earlier than the formal written data we recognize. These symbols traveled: they aren’t solely present in caves, but in addition etched into deer enamel strung together in an historical necklace.
Von Petzinger believes, writes George, that “the simple shapes repredespatched a enjoyabledamalestal shift in our ancestors’ malestal abilities,” towards utilizing summary symbols to communicate. Not eachone agrees together with her. Because the Bradshaw Foundation notes, with regards to the European symbols, eminent prehistorian Jean Clottes argues “the indicators within the caves are all the time (or close toly all the time) associated with animal figures and thus cannot be mentioned to be the primary steps towards symbolism.”
After all, it’s additionally possible that each the indicators and the animals have been meant to convey concepts simply as a written language does. So argues MIT linguist Cora Lesure and her co-authors in a paper published in Frontiers in Psychology final 12 months. Cave artwork would possibly present early people “converting acoustic sounds into drawings,” notes Sarah Gibbens at National Geographic. Lesure says her analysis “suggests that the cognitive mechanisms necessary for the development of cave and rock artwork are likely to be analogous to these employed within the expression of the symbolic assumeing required for language.”
In other phrases, below her theory, “cave and rock [art] would repredespatched a modality of linguistic expression.” And the symbols sursphericaling that artwork would possibly repredespatched an elaboration on the theme. The very first system of writing, shared by early people everywhere in the world for tens of thousands of years.
Notice: An earlier version of this publish appeared on our website in 2019.
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Josh Jones is a author and musician primarily based in Durham, NC.
