40,000-Year-Old Stone Age Symbols May Be a Precursor to Written Language

Geometric marks carved into Paleolithic tools and figurines were not random decoration. A new computational analysis shows that Ice Age humans used these repeated sequences of dots, lines, and notches to encode information.

Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers examined more than 3,000 signs found on 260 objects dating between 34,000 and 45,000 years ago and found that the sequences follow consistent statistical patterns. Their informational structure is comparable to early proto-cuneiform tablets (some of the earliest known writing records from ancient Mesopotamia) — not because they represent spoken language, but because they share similar levels of repetition and predictability.

"Our research is helping us uncover the unique statistical properties — or statistical fingerprint — of these sign systems, which are an early predecessor to writing," Professor Christian Bentz of Saarland University said in a press release.

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Measuring the Structure of Stone Age Symbols

Many of the marked objects come from caves in Germany’s Swabian Jura, though similar carvings appear on Paleolithic artefacts across Europe. The items, ivory figurines, tools, and carved objects, often display repeated rows of dots, crosses, and notches arranged at regular intervals.

Rather than trying to interpret the symbols' meanings, the researchers focused on how they were organized. Bentz and archaeologist Ewa Dutkiewicz assembled a digital database of more than 3,000 signs drawn from museum collections across Europe.

They then analyzed how frequently individual symbols appeared, how signs were grouped together, and how predictable each sequence was. The goal was not to decipher the carvings, but to understand the statistical structure underlying them.

Comparable to Early Writing Systems

To assess structure, the team measured entropy, a statistical estimate of how much information a sequence can carry. Highly unpredictable systems have high entropy; highly repetitive ones have lower entropy.

The Paleolithic signs sit somewhere in between. They repeat frequently — cross, cross, cross; line, line, line — but not randomly. That kind of repetition is not typical of modern writing systems, which represent spoken language and tend to show greater variation between symbols.

When compared to proto-cuneiform, however, the resemblance becomes clear. Proto-cuneiform, which emerged roughly 40,000 years later, also relied heavily on repeated symbols and did not yet encode spoken language directly. Its statistical structure closely mirrors the much older Paleolithic sequences.

The major structural shift came only about 5,000 years ago, when writing systems began representing speech. That transition introduced a very different pattern — one with less repetition and higher informational density.

The analysis also revealed variation within the Paleolithic material itself. Figurines tend to show higher informational density than tools, suggesting that some objects carried more complex sequences than others.

A Long History of Encoding

The artefacts date to a period when Homo sapiens had recently spread into Europe and were encountering Neanderthals. Anatomically and cognitively, these early humans were much like us.

“They were highly skilled craftspeople. You are able to see that they carried the objects with them. A lot of the objects fit right in the palm of your hand. That is another way in which the objects are similar to proto-cuneiform tablets,” archaeologist Ewa Dutkiewiczsaid said in the press release.

The analysis does not tell us precisely what these sequences recorded, but it makes clear that they were intentional and systematically arranged. The repeated marks were not a casual embellishment. They were placed in patterns that could be reproduced, recognized, and, presumably, understood within a community.

Seen this way, the carvings are part of a much longer story about how humans began organizing information visually, a process that unfolded gradually and took many forms before writing ever came to represent spoken language.

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Article Sources

Our writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:

• This article references information from recent research published in PNAS: Humans 40,000 y ago developed a system of conventional signs