A small object called the Adorante figurine, discovered in a cave in Germany in 1979 and produced around 40,000 years ago by some of the first people to establish a distinct culture in Europe, features intriguing sequences of notches and dots. Numerous other objects produced by this same culture bear similar markings.
New research published this week in the scientific journal “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences” suggests that these marks, present on objects such as this figurine — made of mammoth ivory and representing a hybrid creature between a lion and a human — do not constitute a written language.
However, it was found that its sequential use in these artifacts presents properties similar to those of writing which would appear much later in , around 3300 BC, precursor of cuneiform writing, one of the oldest forms of written language known.
This suggests remarkable cognitive abilities for such an ancient people. The artifacts date back to a period in which it spread across Europe, traveling through the territory in groups of hunter-gatherers after migrating from Africa and encountering, along the way, .
Researchers use the term “types of signs” to describe these markswhich include notches, dots, lines, crosses, star shapes, among others. They carried out a computational analysis of the use of these signals in these artifacts, looking for a characteristic called information density. This concept refers to the amount of information transmitted per unit of language, such as a syllable or, in this case, a sign.
“We argue that these signal sequences go beyond mere aesthetically pleasing decoration. In other words, our statistical results show that these signals were applied selectively and conventionally”, said linguist Christian Bentz, from the University of Saarland, Germany, main author of the research.
For example, crosses have only been found on tools and animal figures, but not on human figures.
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The researchers analyzed more than 200 Stone Age artifacts with these characteristics, dating from around 43,000 to 34,000 years ago, from four archaeological cave sites in southwest Germany associated with the Aurignacian culture. The Adorante figurine, for example, was found in the Geissenklösterle Cave, in the state of Baden-Württemberg, and measures around 38 mm by 14 mm.
“The convention of carving certain types of signs only on the surfaces of certain artifacts must have been passed down over many generations; otherwise, we would not find these statistical patterns in the data,” Bentz said.
The objective of researchers was not able to determine the meaning of the signalswhich have not yet been deciphered.
Aurignacian culture is associated with some of the oldest known works of figurative art. The artifacts analyzed in the research were, for the most part, made from ivory from mammoth tusks, but also from animal bones and horns. Some of the figures represented animalssuch as mammoths, cave lions and horses, as well as creatures that apparently combined human and animal characteristics. Also found were various tools, personal ornaments and musical instrumentslike flutes.
The researchers noted that the analyzed sign sequences are statistically different from modern writing systems.
However, these sequences exhibit an information density very similar to that of the earliest examples of the precursor to cuneiform writing, called proto-cuneiform, known from the ancient Mesopotamian city of Uruk. Proto-cuneiform evolved into cuneiform writing, a system employing wedge-shaped marks and was used for millennia in the ancient Near East.
The researchers claim that the Aurignacian signs display some design features found in written languagesbut others are absent, including the connection with the structures of spoken language.
“Unfortunately, we can only speculate about the state of languages spoken at the time. In general, archaeologists and linguists assume that modern humans (Homo sapiens) 40,000 years ago had languages that were structurally similar to those spoken around the world today,” said archaeologist and study co-author Ewa Dutkiewicz of the Museum of Prehistory and Early History in Berlin.
