Humans living in Europe created striking cave paintings of animals that included lines, dots and Y-shaped symbols. A new study claims that these marks are the first known writing in the history of humankind.
Although Paleolithic cave art is better known for its graceful horses and ghostly handprints, there are thousands of nonfigurative or abstract marks that have been studied only in the past few decades. According to a study published in the Cambridge Archaeology Journal, these seemingly abstract dots and lines represent a sophisticated writing system that explains early humans' understanding of the mating and birthing seasons of animals.
The study's interpretations of these marks are not believed by other researchers.
Melanie Chang, a paleoanthropologist at Portland State University who was not involved in the study, told Live Science that she agrees with the assessment that Upper Palaeolithic people had the cognitive capacity to write. She warned that the researchers' Hypotheses were not supported by their results and did not address alternative interpretations of the marks they analyzed.
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The 17 key milestones in Paleolithic life are related.
Hunter-gatherers in Europe ate a lot of meat from animals such as horses and deer. The animals would have been at risk of being slaughtered by humans when they came together. The timing of migrations, mating and birthing would be a central concern to the Upper Paleolithic.
The researchers found that there were no more than 13 marks in the series, which was consistent with the 13 lunar months in each year. They theorize that the end of winter and corresponding faunal migrations to breeding grounds would have provided an obvious, if regional, point of origin for the sequence.
The researchers found a correlation between the number of marks and the moon months in which the animal is known to mate.
They focused on a Y-shaped sign that they believe refers to an event in an animal's life cycle. Their conclusion that the placement of the Y-shaped sign within a series of marks is indicative of an animal's birthing season is supported by similar statistical analysis.
To record past events and predict future events was an intellectual achievement.
Is this the earliest written work? It is best described as a Proto-writing system, an intermediate step between a simpler notation/convention and full-blown writing.
In an email to Live Science, April Nowell, a Paleolithic archaeologist at the University of Victoria in Canada who was not involved in this study, said that any study that explores non-figurative signs in more detail is welcome. The Y sign was questioned by No Well. She said that the majority of animals in the study are quadrupeds. It's not obvious to me if this sign is an example of the birth process.
There is one of the oldest written sentences on record.
Chang has two explanations for the Y sign. The edge of the brachiocephalic muscle can be seen on a horse's neck. She said that it is possible that what they recorded as Y's represent what modern horse people refer to as "primitive markings" such as leg bars that are associated with wild-type horse colors.
In an email to Live Science, Robert Kentridge, a professor in the Department of Psychology at Durham University in the U.K., said that one of the strengths of their study is that they have formally tested BenBacon.
They wrote that they have proposed the existence of a notational system associated with an animal subject and that this allows them to understand a Palaeolithic notational system in its entirety.
A decade ago, Nowell and von Petzinger created a database of more than 200 caves in southern France and Spain. The patterns of cave wall symbols across time and space are detailed in Von Petzinger's thesis. Nowell said there are at least 32 recurring signs. Three of them have been chosen to be studied.
The authors decided to focus on the trio.
A professor of archaeology at Durham University told Live Science in an email that it seemed sensible to focus on the most common markings. The most common are simple dots and lines. The Y sign is the most common one.
Researchers are going to expand their work. In an email to Live Science, bacon said they are analyzing other signs. The linguistic and cognitive bases that underpin the "writing" system are what we are looking for.
Nowell agreed with the study authors that the symbols were probably not randomly chosen, and that the lines and dots could possibly represent numbers. She noted that even if the authors are correct, almost all of the signs are meaningless.
There is still a lot of graphic communication that we don't understand.
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