Stone Age dots, lines and Y-shaped marks might represent a type of proto-writing created by hunter-gatherers who lived in Europe at least 20,000 years ago.
At least 20,000 years ago, humans living in Europe created striking cave paintings of animals that they paired with curious signs: lines, dots and Y-shaped symbols. These marks, which are well known to researchers, might relate to the seasonal behavior of prey animals, making the signs the first known writing in the history of humankind, a new study claims.
Melanie Chang , a paleoanthropologist at Portland State University who was not involved in the study, told Live Science in an email that she agrees with the researchers' assessment that"Upper Palaeolithic people had the cognitive capacity to write and to keep records of time." However, she cautioned that the researchers'"hypotheses are not well-supported by their results, and they also do not address alternative interpretations of the marks they analyzed.
Taking their hypothesis a step further, Bacon and colleagues focused on a Y-shaped sign that they think refers to a particular event in an animal's life cycle. Similar statistical analysis supports their conclusion that the placement of the Y-shaped sign within a series of marks signals an animal species' birthing season.
April Nowell , a Paleolithic archaeologist at the University of Victoria in Canada who was not involved in this study, told Live Science by email that"any study that explores non-figurative signs in more detail is welcome, but I think there are a number of assumptions being made here that have yet to be proven." Nowell questioned the Y sign, in particular."The majority of animals considered in this study are quadrupeds, and humans normally squat giving birth," she said.
A decade ago, however, Nowell and then-graduate student Genevieve von Petzinger co-created a database of dozens of signs and repeating motifs from more than 200 caves in southern France and Spain. Von Petzinger's thesis detailed patterns of cave wall symbols across time and space in order to better understand what these signs meant for ice age people."There are at least 32 different recurring signs," Nowell explained.
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