A Total Amateur May Have Just Rewritten Human History With Bombshell Discovery

[Jilly_in_VA]

In what may be a major archaeological breakthrough, an independent researcher has suggested that the earliest writing in human history has been hiding in plain sight in prehistoric cave paintings in Europe, a discovery that would push the timeline of written language back by tens of thousands of years, reports a new study.

Hundreds of European caves are decorated with mesmerizing paintings of animals and other figures that were made by our species between roughly 15,000 and 40,000 years ago, during the Palaeolithic Age when humans were still hunter-gatherers. These cave paintings often include non-figurative markings, such as dots and lines, that have evaded explanation for decades.

Ben Bacon, a furniture conservator based in London, U.K. who has described himself as “effectively a person off the street,” happened to notice these markings while admiring images of European cave art, and developed a hunch that they could be decipherable. Now, Bacon has unveiled what he believes is “the first known writing in the history of Homo sapiens,” in the form of a prehistoric lunar calendar, according to a study published on Thursday in the Cambridge Archeological Journal.

“I think that the cave paintings fascinate us all because of their beauty and visceral immediacy,” Bacon told Motherboard in an email. “I was idly looking at Palaeolithic paintings one night on the Web and noticed, purely by chance, that a large number of animals had what I took to be numbers associated with them.”

Intrigued by the markings, Bacon launched a meticulous effort to decode them, with a particular focus on lines, dots, and a Y-shaped symbol that show up in hundreds of cave paintings.

Previous researchers have suggested that these symbols could be some form of numerical notation, perhaps designed to count the number of animals sighted or killed by these prehistoric artists. Bacon made the leap to suggest that they form a calendar system designed to track the life cycles of animals depicted in the paintings. He enlisted leading archaeologists from Durham University and the University College London to develop the idea and co-author the new study.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkg95v/a-total-amateur-may-have-just-rewritten-human-history-with-bombshell-discovery

[niyad]

1. knr and thank you for this fascinating information.

[jeffreyi]

2. Further down in the article:

"In short, if the new hypothesis is accurate, it shows that our Paleolithic ancestors “were almost certainly as cognitively advanced as we are” and “that they are fully modern humans,” Bacon told Motherboard."

Since when were people of the past not as "smart" as we are?

[stopdiggin]

8. +1. those types of belief are pretty outdated

doubt if they see much use in current science.

[airplaneman]

10. I though we have been getting dumber as compared to people from the past.

I also subscribe to the fact that currently there is no intelligent life anywhere in the universe including here.

-Airplane

[temporary311]

19. I dunno.

i think the surest sign that there's intelligent life out there is that it hasn't bothered to contact us yet.

[Farmer-Rick]

12. They theorized that brain development

In Paleolithic hominids was not fully expressed. Both Homo erectus and Homo neanderthalensis became extinct by the end of the Paleolithic. So they were still around adding to the gene pool and brain development during that time. And because of this it is thought hominids we're not as smart back then.

But tool development during this time suggests some pretty smart hominids.

To modern humans it seems reasonable to assume evolution added more intelligence to the species, not less. But more intelligence may not always be an evolutionary advantage to a species. Just look at some of those Trump voters.

[Farmer-Rick]

21. Science fiction is zanny

"In 'Sex On The Wrong Brain', Ard Falten wraps zany science fiction around the theory that humanity is doomed because we're sending impatient satisfaction-demanding sex energy to the mathematical, logical parts of the brain, where it creates greed, fear, and authoritarianism."

https://www.amazon.com/Sex-Wrong-Brain-Ard-Falten/dp/1387445154

So were Paleolithic hominids smarter or dumber than your average Trump voter today?

[certainot]

24. smarter and more educated in the ways of the world. "only the closed mind is certain" said Dean

Spanley (name of a movie, the character in).

fear of uncertainty/the need for certainty put big limits on imagination and creativity

fantastic book! the most subversive book ever written...

[Farmer-Rick]

26. I'll have to read it

I love science fiction.

[COL Mustard]

22. Well, if they were all THAT smart.....

Wouldn't they have lived today?

I kid, totally...

[reACTIONary]

29. Smarter... Most of us ....

... Wouldn't make it in their world.

[cachukis]

3. Human history unfolding as each one of us.

We are all born with little beyond instinct. Over time, we, like all of humanity, build on what we learn.
We are the microcosm of all human development.
Everyone of us goes through, what humanity as a whole, lives.
Very important analysis of ourselves.

[cachukis]

31. Appreciate you catching that. I have come to the conclusion

that the first question was not asked by a homo sapiens. The people in the caves were a continuation of the question and answering from the thousands of generations that developed from that learning.
Visualize a crow teaching its offspring to use bait to lure prey saying in their inimitable way, did you see how it works?
These cave discussions were passed around as shared knowledge looking for better answers to the questions of the day.
The language was limited, but the brain function used what it knew and created, through discussion, a means to teach better than just the show.

[cachukis]

37. Hope this comes through.

Monkeys – Not Humans – Made Ancient Sets of Stone Tools in Brazil, Study Finds : ScienceAlert
https://www.sciencealert.com/monkeys-not-humans-made-ancient-sets-of-stone-tools-in-brazil-study-finds

[cachukis]

39. There is a swiss army knife stone tool found all over

the African continent that indicates shared knowledge during prehistory.
There is a group called The Non Human Research Project or pretty close to that, that analyzes those creatures who exhibit human qualities, for protective status.
I have been studying the concept of vengeance and its origins in humanity. I've been searching in the primate community and have yet to find it. There are cases of violent response among chimps, for example, but they seek reconciliation after those events. Vengeance requires intent and so far I think it is a human trait of social evolution.
Many do not like to understand how we are part of a continuous development of all life on the planet and the maltreatment of animals is in essence, bad for all of us.

[republianmushroom]

4. interesting some different though

[Ray Bruns]

5. "Big deal. I can drink a beer underwater"

George Santos

[peppertree]

6. And forge checks in Portuguese!

That's what passes for talent in the GOP these days.

[central scrutinizer]

7. I've often wondered about geniuses and prodigies who were born too early

And unable to explain their insights and thoughts. For example, Archimedes was so close to developing calculus but had to explain everything with geometry. If he could have met the Mayans who had invented zero and a place value numerical system, how far could he have gone? Or musical prodigies before the development of instruments capable of expressing their vision?

[Faux pas]

9. Too Good

[paulkienitz]

11. I don't buy it -- these amateur codebreaker types always read too much into too little.

Same with the people who find 27 different stellar alignments in a single archaeological site. It devolves into conspiracy-theory-like thinking, and you end up with pyramid power and antistratfordianism.

[chowder66]

14. They seem to be a little bit cautious

Bacon told Motherboard that putting all of this together has been “exhausting” and that the team will hold off on celebrating until they have published all of their findings. The researchers also anticipate arguments among experts around the exact definition of “writing” and whether their hypothetical calendar would neatly fall into that category.

“We do not want to press the controversial (and in many senses, semantic) question of whether writing was a Paleolithic invention; perhaps it is best described as a proto-writing system, an intermediary step between a simpler notation/convention and full-blown writing,” the researchers said in the study.”

“Assuming we have convinced colleagues of our correct identification, there will no doubt be a lively debate about precisely what this system should be called, and we are certainly open to suggestions,” they continued. “For now, we restrict our terminology to proto-writing in the form of a phrenological/meteorological calendar. It implies that a form of writing existed tens of thousands of years before the earliest Sumerian writing system.”

[paulkienitz]

41. that's why I said "27 stellar alignments"

That a lot of these align with solstices is beyond doubt. But some enthusiasts keep trying to tell us that the same sites also align in multiple other ways. At some point they're just looking for whatever correspondences they can find, and then assuming they must be significant.

[Paper Roses]

13. Whatever the results, I bet these ancients were a lot smarter that the Repubs in the Senate.

[Martin68]

15. "Code-breaking" like this is very difficult to prove, particularly with the small size of the

samples that are available. People have been claiming for centuries to have found codes in the Bible, Shakespeare's works, and the like. The problem is that it is easy to come up with theories about meaning, but almost impossible to prove unless you make a very, very good case.

[packman]

16. In 50,000yrs. they'll dig up a laptop out of the dirt

And ponder its religious significance to 21st century man

Lunar cycles had more meaning to early man than the daily coming and goings of the sun - the moon had phases to mark .

[flashman13]

23. Hunter Biden's laptop no doubt.

[Warpy]

25. The laptop will be ground to dust. What they'll most likely find

are the black Bakelite telephone bodies, that stuff doesn't biodegrade and it's hard to break, unlike the flimsy laptop cases and screens.

They'll also find gold teeth from the same period and marvel at the painful lengths people went to for cosmetic beauty, they must have been the priesthood.

Other things that will survive are the ceramic supports for high tension wires and maybe a rare Le Creuset frypan, that stuff is really hard to kill. Glass floats for Japanese fishing nets will wash up for centuries, undoubtedly offerings to the sea gods.

Archaeologists have been puzzled by these: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/514246/are-roman-dodecahedrons-worlds-most-mysterious-artifact They've been fund by the thousands at Roman military encampments. I'm one of the knitters who looked at them and saw jigs for knitting fingers to leather gloves. It wouldn't have been fine work, the wool would have been heavy or they'd have worn through in a day, but I can see Roman soldiers using these things during their down time, repairing gloves and making spares for the times they were busy with cold hands, fighting barbarians.

[eppur_se_muova]

35. Mysterious ?? You mean they weren't used to play Carceres et Dracones ? nt

[Warpy]

36. It would have been a boring and predictable game

since all you could roll with one of these things is a 5.

[bucolic_frolic]

18. Yay! The learned professions, schooled by ordinary people again!

Of course the ancients knew Morse Code. How else could they communicate without paper and telephones?

[YoshidaYui]

20. Cool

[Hekate]

32. Fascinating. Thanks

[mopinko]

34. bad take. very bad take-

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1229&pid=8871