Stone Age Symbols Push Back Writing
Mysterious Stone Age symbols found in Europe could represent proto-writing dating back 40,000 years—much earlier than previously thought for written communication. An Oregon cave has also yielded 12,000-year-old evidence of sewn materials, indicating sophisticated clothing and textile skills at the end of the last Ice Age.
- Paleoanthropologist Genevieve von Petzinger has cataloged 32 recurring geometric signs in European caves that were used over a 30,000-year period. These symbols, including dots, lines, triangles, and hand stencils, appear alongside animal imagery and outnumber the representational art by at least two to one. - The consistent use of these 32 symbols across a wide geographic area and long timespan suggests they were a deliberate form of communication, rather than random doodles. Some of the oldest of these symbols is a red disk, at least 41,000 years old, found in the El Castillo cave in Spain. - This potential "proto-writing" predates the earliest known writing systems, like Sumerian cuneiform which emerged around 4,000 to 5,000 years ago, by tens of thousands of years. While not a fully developed written language, the symbols represent a significant step in abstract communication. - The sewn materials from Oregon were discovered in Cougar Mountain Cave and are dated to between 11,880 and 12,600 years ago. The specific artifacts are pieces of North American elk hide stitched together with cord. - The cordage found with the sewn hide was crafted from a combination of plant fibers and animal hair. Other plant-based textiles found in the Oregon caves were made from sagebrush, dogbane, juniper, and bitterbrush fibers. - In addition to the sewn hide, researchers have found other sophisticated textile technologies in the region's caves, including finely crafted bone needles with eyes. At the nearby Paisley Caves, a strip of rabbit fur with the hair still attached was also recovered.
