Archaeologists have discovered a Stone Age artifact in a cave in southwest Germany that may be the earliest example of primitive writing. It was an ivory tablet with symbols engraved on it. The age of the discovery is almost 40 thousand years. The exact meaning of the symbols is unknown. But mathematical analysis has shown that they may contain as much information as the writing samples that appeared thousands of years later.
Research shows that this artifact was created by representatives of the Aurignacian culture. The symbols are too simple to be considered written in the full sense of the word. They do not reflect spoken language but have a clear structure.
Scientists from Saarland University and the Berlin State Museum in Germany analyzed 260 artifacts from the Aurignacian culture found in caves in what is now southern Germany. These are figurines and other artifacts carved from ivory and deer antlers. Many of them are decorated with dots, lines, zigzags, crosses and other symbols.
Researchers have cataloged more than 3,000 individual tags. They then start looking for patterns in their locations using algorithms and information theory models. The results show that the string of characters is not random.
Scientists concluded that symbols appear in “repetitive sequences designed with measurable structure.” This structure has not changed for 10 thousand years. Symbols were used to communicate between people and convey certain information, but then this tradition disappeared, reports the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The oldest artifact with a symbol is a small ivory figurine of a character. Her age is estimated at 38 thousand years. Scientists note that real writing, representing a record of spoken language, appeared about 5 thousand years ago.
Previously it was known that the world's oldest drilling machine was found in the necropolis of ancient Egypt. The age of this musical instrument is 5300 years. This discovery shows that since ancient times, Egyptians used complex machine tools.
