Recent research suggests that humans were using structured symbolic communication systems as early as 40,000 years ago – far earlier than previously thought. A detailed analysis of Paleolithic artifacts reveals thousands of deliberately carved marks that exhibit patterns comparable to early forms of writing.
Structured Marks, Not Writing
The marks, created by the Aurignacian culture between 43,000 and 34,000 years ago, are not full-fledged writing. They don’t directly represent spoken language like later cuneiform scripts. Instead, the way they were arranged indicates a systematic approach to information storage and sharing.
Linguist Christian Bentz and archaeologist Ewa Dutkiewicz, who led the study, emphasize that these marks were applied “in a deliberate, systematic, and conventional manner,” tens of thousands of years before the emergence of true writing. This suggests an earlier stage in human cognitive development: the ability to create and maintain shared symbolic systems.
How the Study Worked
Researchers analyzed over 260 portable artifacts from caves in southern Germany, including ivory figurines, bone tools, and antler carvings. These objects bore more than 3,000 individual marks, such as dots, lines, and zigzags. Using statistical analysis, they measured repetition rates, symbol diversity, and entropy to determine if the patterns were random or intentional.
The results were clear: the carvings were not haphazard. Different types of objects displayed distinct patterns. For example, figurines had more structured variations than tools, suggesting different levels of information density. These patterns remained stable for over 10,000 years, indicating a consistent, shared function.
Why This Matters
This discovery underscores how early humans were capable of abstract thought and systematic communication long before the development of agriculture or settled societies. The ability to store and share information through symbols is a defining trait of our species.
The fact that these symbols disappeared after 10,000 years raises questions about how cultural knowledge can be lost over time. Artifacts decay, and oral traditions fade, making it difficult to reconstruct the full history of human communication.
These findings don’t mean early humans wrote novels, but they do show they were thinking in ways we once assumed came much later.
The researchers acknowledge that deciphering the exact meaning of these symbols may be impossible. However, the evidence strongly suggests that humans were actively managing and transmitting information through structured marks tens of thousands of years before writing as we know it emerged. This pushes back the timeline for complex human cognition and symbolic thought.
