Symbols found carved into 40,000-year-old artifacts may be precursor to writing

Sculptures and tools from the Stone Age show markings that could be an early precursor to written language, according to a new analysis.
Smithsonian Magazine

Humans May Have Used These Mysterious Symbols to Encode Information Tens of Thousands of Years Before the First Writing Systems

The symbols, discovered on 40,000-year-old artifacts in caves in southwest Germany, may have been a precursor to the first written language ...
Science Daily

40,000-year-old signs show humans were recording information long before writing

More than 40,000 years ago, Ice Age humans were carving repeated patterns of dots, lines, and crosses into tools and small ivory figurines. A new computational study of more than 3,000 of these ...