![]() ![]() While burrowing deep underground to make cave paintings of animals, early humans as far back as 40,000 years ago also developed a system of signs that is remarkably consistent across and between continents. The study of symbols carved into cave walls all over the world-including penniforms (feather shapes), claviforms (key shapes), and hand stencils-could eventually push us to “abandon the powerful narrative,” writes Frank Jacobs at Big Think, “of history as total darkness until the Sumerians flip the switch.” Though the symbols may never be truly decipherable, their purposes obscured by thousands of years of separation in time, they clearly show humans “undimming the light many millennia earlier.” ![]() And what’s more, it may be possible, suggests paleoanthropologist Genevieve von Petzinger, that those prehistoric forms of writing, which include the earliest known hashtag marks, consisted of symbols nearly as universal as emoji. But it may also be possible that the earliest writing systems predate 5000-year-old cuneiform tablets by several thousand years. ![]() ![]() The archaeological evidence so far supports the theory. We may take it for granted that the earliest writing systems developed with the Sumerians around 3400 B.C.E. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |