hmmmmmm mabey doodles???

I doodle stuff like that all day, and don't have a meaning behind it, so if like you said a bunch of nutty arceaologists "guessed" at meanings, then more modern, wanting to appear mysterious types, mabey will "go with it?"

One of MY guesses...

For a symbol, by definition, to be a symbol it has to convey a meaning. We may not understand that meaning or lose the context such meaning was conceived, but generally speaking the symbol is still recognized as such. Notches carved in a bone 1.2 million years ago may be a symbol (was it religious, art, or something else?) but most likely it had no meaning and was not a symbol of anything. It could simply be an ancient early human sharpening a stone tool or playing with a bone out of boredom. We don't know because we see no meaning in such marks. I wouldn't rule them out completely as a symbol, however they are simply too cryptic for our understanding.

Paleolithic cave art though is clearly symbolic - we modern city dwellers grasp their meaning. Cave art may not be a true language, but it is written in symbols we can understand. It is based on forms ancient man knew - the human body and the animals he encountered. I believe that by the time cave art progressed beyond the human/animal form to more abstract forms, such as spirals and the like, ancient man stood at the cusp of written language.

edit: this is a really nice thread, don't forget to S+F!

[edit on 6-5-2009 by Blackmarketeer]

Originally posted by zazzafrazz
OP forget Obleisks, or abstract symbols, they are too modern.

Agreed. The oldest ones date to around 1800 BC, which is pretty modern, actually (we've found settlements up to 16,000 BC (reliable dating) and older (questionable dating.) No obelisks. Even the "henges" are dated only to 3,000-4,000 BC. They're mere babies compared to handprints and animal drawings and tally marks (like the ones shown in the BBC article.)

The circle-with-dot sign is not as old as some other signs although it's found many places. It also means different things in different areas. In Hawaii, the circle-dot petroglyphs represent births (I was in Hawaii about six years ago, researching petroglyphs as part of a paper for an anthropology class.)

Obelisks are not really symbols as much as they are architecture (like square houses, round houses, etc.) And no, the Muslims aren't stoning an obelisk or any part of one. And the Masons only adopted the Obelisk back in the 1700's.

NoHup, BlackMarketeer and Zeroghost's suggestions make sense. It may be unreasonable to try to identify the 'first' symbol as several similar symbols might have been used in different areas simultaneously. Certainly, straight notches and circles appear to be universal. The urge to represent an abstract seems to be an innate predisposition. Give ten toddlers paper and a pen, within the scribble there will be circles and lines.

(Idle speculation) Nature favors awareness of location and food sources. Bees do the 'waggle dance', mammals leave musk or urine to mark territory etc. I wonder if the very earliest, deliberate symbols were related to marking locations? Maybe they were a reflection of our inherent artistic sensibilities?

A tough questions because the interpretation of words like symbol and icon are open-ended.

Neanderthals buried their dead with red ochre painted on, maybe 30-100,00 years ago.

Most food dyes disintegrate so we have little evidence how extensive and far back it goes. But body-painting maybe originally for camouflage must go back really far.

Sexual potency, simulations of animal powers, and status were probably conferred though the usage of applied colour to the skin. Drawing lines and images were an inevitable evolution.

I also imagine when tools came into use, the pointed knife became iconic particularly with it's resonance of the erect penis.

Somehow I can see the perfect circle being satisfying to create as it existed in the sky with the sun and moon.


Mike

Ive always wanted to do something with an obelisk, ive wanted to resonate certain patterns of sound through it and see the effect. Maybe test a hollow obelisk, maybe it will amplify things, maybe see if i can use obelisks for telecommunications, well in simple systems. I dont know, they could have been a communications type thign.

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I think the circle with the dot in the center is a reference to fertility.

A pregnant mother's belly with the belly button in the middle.

My 2 cents.

-EyesII

It seems to me that an Obelisk is a relatively new symbol "in the grand scheme of things".

Stone obelisks have only been around about 6000 years. That's pretty new when one considers that the Lascaux cave paintings have been around for 16,000 years, and other symbols painted on caves have been found to be 25,000 years old. That's nearly 20,000 years older than the "obelisks".

And, as others have said, I'm sure humans were drawing symbols in the dirt for possibly 100,000 years -- most likely to communicate to others the locations of things such as food.

As for the meaning for the obelisk shape, I will have to agree with some others who say it is a giant phallus -- and thus a sign of power.

[edit on 7/2/2009 by Soylent Green Is People]

The answer to that question is HUMAN EYES.

reflect deep on that.

This might be a little too abstract but rather than looking for the "oldest symbol on earth" as a depiction in stone, earth, or paint, what about the symbolism of burial?

Before shamans began painting on cave walls they were living in communal groupings and burying their dead, and the act of a ritual burial is symbolic of a belief in the afterlife (or at least symbolic of caring for their dead.