The Adorant figurine, roughly 38,000 years outdated, consists of a small, ivory plate bearing an anthropomorphic determine and a number of sequences of notches and dots
Landesmuseum Württemberg / Hendrik Zwietasch, CC BY 4.0
Stone Age folks 40,000 years in the past used a easy type of writing comparable in complexity to the earliest phases of the world’s first writing system, cuneiform, based on a examine of mysterious indicators engraved on collectible figurines and different artefacts present in Germany. If confirmed, this pushes again the emergence of a proto-writing system by greater than 30,000 years.
Historical people have lengthy made deliberate marks on objects, however a few of the earliest teams of Homo sapiens to reach in Europe round 45,000 years in the past took this to a brand new stage. Lots of the artefacts they made, equivalent to pendants, instruments and collectible figurines, had been engraved with sequences of graphic symbols equivalent to traces, crosses and dots. These teams additionally painted symbols on cave partitions alongside depictions of animals, and the that means of those symbols has been contentious.
The usage of sequences of symbols is especially placing. “Having this reoccurring, very systematic use of clearly utilized marks distinct from one another, put into sequences – that’s utterly one thing completely different,” says archaeologist Ewa Dutkiewicz on the Museum of Prehistory and Early Historical past in Berlin, Germany.
The large query is, what, if something, did these symbols imply? With no Rosetta stone – the slab that helped decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics – it’s nearly unattainable to know, however essential insights could be gleaned by analysing how these indicators had been used.
To research this, Dutkiewicz and linguist Christian Bentz at Saarland College in Saarbrücken, Germany, analysed sequences of indicators engraved on a exceptional tranche of artefacts present in caves within the Swabian Jura area of south-west Germany, made between 43,000 and 34,000 years in the past by a few of the earliest H. sapiens teams to reach in Europe – an period often called the Aurignacian. Amongst these objects, together with flutes, carvings of animals equivalent to mammoths, and collectible figurines of animal-human hybrids, 260 objects had been engraved greater than 3000 occasions with 22 completely different symbols. Most frequent is a V-shaped notch, then traces, crosses and dots, with different symbols, equivalent to Y- and star-shaped indicators, used much less usually.
The researchers used laptop fashions to analyse the complexity and knowledge density of the sequences. They in contrast the patterns to these of the earliest recognized type of proto-writing – proto-cuneiform, discovered on clay tablets made in Mesopotamia round 3500 to 3350 BC – in addition to to modern-day writing. The intention was to see what the Stone Age signal programs had in frequent with later programs used to file data.
“It is smart to take a look at sequences, as a result of data isn’t solely encoded within the variety of completely different indicators you could have, however… in the way you mix the indicators,” says Bentz. As an illustration, the English alphabet has simply 26 letters, however by combining them in patterns, it could encode all of the sounds utilized in spoken language.
The evaluation discovered that Aurignacian signal sequences had been clearly distinguishable from modern-day writing. However to the researchers’ shock, the statistical properties of the 40,000-year-old signal sequences had been corresponding to these of the earliest proto-cuneiform clay tablets. “The options are very, very comparable,” says Bentz.
This means that the earliest H. sapiens in Europe, who had been hunter-gatherers, had developed a system of symbols to file a few of their ideas. This fulfils one definition of writing: that it’s a system enabling human communication by a conference of seen marks.
“What this examine reveals is that the way in which that the marks are getting used on the Aurignacian items has a kind of configuration that carefully matches proto-cuneiform,” says palaeoanthropologist Genevieve von Petzinger. “They’re exhibiting that there’s sample repetition and organisation.” Nonetheless, this doesn’t imply that data recorded in these two programs had the identical that means.
We all know that cuneiform originated as an accounting system to file, say, quantities of crops, however what in regards to the meanings of the Stone Age “writing”? There are hints that a few of the marks used on the Aurignacian objects may need been a kind of calendar. As an illustration, an outline of a lion-human often called the Adorant, carved on a mammoth ivory plaquette, is adorned with dots and notches in rows of 13 or 12, which can be “calendric observations”, says Dutkiewicz. “It is smart that these folks may wish to maintain monitor of time.”
She and Bentz additionally examined whether or not completely different indicators had been used on various kinds of objects, and located placing patterns of use. Crosses, regardless of being some of the frequent indicators, had been by no means used on the objects depicting people, however had been frequent on these with carvings of animals, particularly horses and mammoths, in addition to on instruments. Nonetheless, dots had been by no means used on instruments.
This mammoth figurine from Vogelherd collapse Germany, roughly 40,000 years outdated, bears a number of sequences of crosses and dots on its floor
Universität Tübingen/Hildegard Jensen, CC-BY-SA 4.0
“No matter this implies, we can not say,” says Dutkiewicz. “But it surely’s a agency sample which tells us there’s a deliberate alternative of indicators that had been utilized on the media.” What’s extra, these decisions remained secure all through the ten,000-year interval over which the objects had been made, implying that the conventions had been handed down over generations. “It’s one thing that has been carried on over millennia,” she says.
“These had been undoubtedly marks being made in particular areas for particular causes,” says von Petzinger. “Even when we don’t know what the marks meant, we all know that they had that means to the individuals who made them.”
This examine builds on work from 2023 by different researchers, who argued that sequences of dots, traces and the image Y, painted alongside pictures of animals in cave artwork that’s as much as 20,000 years outdated, had been a code to file the habits of prey animals.
These research are exhibiting that, though the primary full writing system, cuneiform, emerged round 3200 BC, its roots might return 40,000 years.
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