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Mysterious symbols in cave paintings may be earliest form of writing

Stone Age people in Europe appear to have recorded the reproductive habits of animals with markings on cave paintings, hinting at the early origins of writing

By Alison George

4 January 2023

Cave painting of cattle

Cave painting from Lascaux, France, showing a bull marked with a sequence of lines

JoJan/Wikipedia/CC-BY-4.​0

Stone Age people living in Europe 20,000 years ago may have devised a simple form of writing to record the habits of the animals they hunted, according to a study of mysterious symbols on artefacts and cave walls. If confirmed, this would push back the earliest known appearance of a proto-writing system by at least 10,000 years.

At least 400 caves in Europe, such as Lascaux and Chauvet in France and Altamira in Spain, have …

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