New research reveals "writing" dates back over 30,000 years - 26 repeated "signs"!!

G'day ATS!

Today I came across an article that I think is as important as it is interesting!

It suggests that the beginning of a written form of communication could have had its roots many millennia before archaeologist initially believed. This also suggests that man was far more advanced 20, 30, 50,000 years ago, I think this is cool!

The writing on the cave wall

THE first intrepid explorers to brave the 7-metre crawl through a perilously narrow tunnel leading to the Chauvet caves in southern France were rewarded with magnificent artwork to rival any modern composition. Stretching a full 3 metres in height, the paintings depict a troupe of majestic horses in deep colours, above a pair of boisterous rhinos in the midst of a fight. To the left, they found the beautiful rendering of a herd of prehistoric cows. "The horse heads just seem to leap out of the wall towards you," says Jean Clottes, former director of scientific research at the caves and one of the few people to see the paintings with his own eyes.

A Brief look at the Chauvet Caves

The cave was first explored on December 18, 1994 by a trio of speleologists: Eliette Brunel Deschamps, Christian Hillaire, and Jean-Marie Chauvet, for whom it was named.

Hundreds of animal paintings have been catalogued, depicting at least 13 different species, including those which have rarely or never been found in other ice age paintings. Rather than depicting only the familiar animals of the hunt that predominate in Paleolithic cave art, i.e. horses, cattle, reindeer, etc., the walls of the Chauvet Cave are covered with predatory animals: lions, panthers, bears, owls, rhinos and hyenas. Typical of most cave art, there are no paintings of complete human figures, although there is one possible partial "Venus" figure that may represent the legs and genitals of a woman. Also a chimerical figure may be present; it appears to have the lower body of a woman with the upper body of a bison. There are a few panels of red ochre hand prints and hand stencils made by spitting pigment over hands pressed against the cave surface. Abstract markings—lines and dots—are found throughout the cave.

Now back to the main story!

While some scholars like Clottes had recorded the presence of cave signs at individual sites, Genevieve von Petzinger, then a student at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada, was surprised to find that no one had brought all these records together to compare signs from different caves. And so, under the supervision of April Nowell, also at the University of Victoria, she devised an ambitious masters project. She compiled a comprehensive database of all recorded cave signs from 146 sites in France, covering 25,000 years of prehistory from 35,000 to 10,000 years ago.

What emerged was startling: 26 signs, all drawn in the same style, appeared again and again at numerous sites (see illustration). Admittedly, some of the symbols are pretty basic, like straight lines, circles and triangles, but the fact that many of the more complex designs also appeared in several places hinted to von Petzinger and Nowell that they were meaningful - perhaps even the seeds of written communication.

Truly amazing, firstly an extraordinary coincidence (I think it is) between our 26 letter English alphabet and the 26 repeated signs. Secondly the repetition of the painted forms suggest order and purpose, the beginnings of writing!!?

The writing on the cave wall

The real clincher came with the observation that certain signs appear repeatedly in pairs. Negative hands and dots tend to be one of the most frequent pairings, for example, especially during a warm climate period known as the Gravettian (28,000 to 22,000 years ago). One site called Les Trois-Frères in the French Pyrenees, even shows four sign types grouped together: negative hands, dots, finger fluting and thumb stencils (a rare subcategory of the negative hands).

For the signs and additional info on commonality between ancient paintings in different areas of the world click HERE

I thought I'd share this and give you a chance to view what is quite possibly some of the first attempts of our early forefathers to communicate in 'writing'!

So here are the signs, really quite astonishing:

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/fbd4cb439fc1.png[/atsimg]

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/52d041a57ddd.png[/atsimg]

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/d89ce03a04cf.png[/atsimg]

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/14ce8c722c83.png[/atsimg]

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/7c75b68b9c96.png[/atsimg]

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/774b005f4023.png[/atsimg]

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/9abe66369478.png[/atsimg]

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/8024d4578347.png[/atsimg]

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/37ec017d85d7.png[/atsimg]

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/284c676fde9d.png[/atsimg]

Hope you find these as important as I do, all the best ATS, KF!




[edit on 23-2-2010 by kiwifoot]

reply to post by kiwifoot


Fascinating! The zig-zag, pectiform and peniform bear strong resemblance to Phoenician as well as Runic. I wonder if they'll discover similar writing at the recently unearthed temple in Turkey they call Gobekli Tepe or the ancient South African ruins?

www.newsweek.com...

mysterytopia.com...

Great post. These are really old. The Ka is absent however.

Thank you for this information. I saw cave pantings in South Africa. The lines/shapes seemed like more than just doodles to go along with the paintings of animals.

Originally posted by siahchi
reply to post by kiwifoot

 

Fascinating! The zig-zag, pectiform and peniform bear strong resemblance to Phoenician as well as Runic. I wonder if they'll discover similar writing at the recently unearthed temple in Turkey they call Gobekli Tepe or the ancient South African ruins?

www.newsweek.com...

mysterytopia.com...

I was going to do a thread on the Gobekli site but was beaten to it by another member!

The link to the signs actually brings up a larger image which shows which signs are common to various places, N America, Europe, India etc! I believe it has to be more than coincidence that these signs are repeated time and time again over many years!

Thanks for the links, all the best, KF!

We may never be able to decipher the symbols into a sane language, but at least we know what the source was: Entoptics.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/df021209b3f0.jpg[/atsimg]

Additional links:

dspace.dial.pipex.com...
www.megalithic-visions.org...

David Lewis-Williams,Professor Emeritus of Wittwaterstrand University (SA) is, imo, the ultimate resource for the study.

In his book The Mind in the Cave, David Lewis-Williams suggests these marks may be understood as entoptic phenomena. Entoptic = within vision. In other words, this imagery 'may originate ... between the eye itself and the cortex of the brain.' He distinguishes two types of entoptic imagery: phosphenes, induced by physical stimulation, such as pressure on the eyeball itself; and form constants which derive from the optic system beyond the eye. There is a spacial relationship between the retina and the visual cortex which means that points close together on the retina, if stimulated, lead to the firing of equivalently placed neurons in the cortex. Lewis-Williams suggests that, when psychotropic substances are taken, as he believes they were by most ancient artists, the usual order of this process is, or can be, reversed so that 'the pattern in the cortex is perceived as the visual percept.' People in this state may see the structure of their own brains.

lucaantara.blogspot.com...

An animation showing how entoptics come into our vision

Many of my paintings contain these symbols. Here's one:

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/3d5c5d05c622.jpg[/atsimg]

The upper panel displays what are considered 'male' entoptics/symbols while the lower panel features 'female'. The hand above is my own and the lower one that of my wife.



added links

[edit on 24/2/10 by masqua]

reply to post by kiwifoot


Some on ATS will cringe at this statement, but given early interventions by ETs to the first, capable humans cultures, art, language and writing would have been some of the first gifts. Art, such as cave art protected from the elements, would be the best evidence that remains. And so it is....

Let us hope that they will be so kind toward us at this moment in time.

i really wish we could understand what they were writing. I wonder if it's ever been translated before

What a great discovery...wish i could read "caveman". Probably just the football results

I can't believe no one posted the artwork.

Here it is:


Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.

EDIT: to embed

[edit on 24-2-2010 by tyranny22]

If those are the cave paintings, they are above and beyond the usual artwork, which is usually stick figures and stuff right on the edge of abstract.

That said- are they *sure* it's thousands of years old? Having had to study art- the usual progression has been from crude stick figures to more refined art. Now, it wouldn't surprise me to find out history (as usual) is wrong....

holy! that is the best artwork of animals ive ever seen tbh

wish i could draw as good as that

[edit on 24-2-2010 by Welshextremist]

reply to post by Aliensun


Right on brother. I think we have to be kidding our selves, for not even entertaining, the idea that maybe, just maybe, we were visited by (ET) beings at some point in our history. The height of human arrogance!

It's funny, i just started an Egyptian Archaeology course today, and i come on here tonight and find this amazing story about the possibility of human language being tens of thousands of years old.

And why not? We have Gobekli Tepe which is estimated to be 11,000 years old, anything is possible.

Peace!

Fantastic Post Kiwifoot. S&F.

I remember reading a bit about these caves a while back. Looks like a great discovery.

Maybe they will tell us the truth about how old the Pyramids really are soon?!



g

reply to post by kiwifoot




Very interesting…. Nice post buddy. It’s good to see posts like this.

Star for you

thats pretty cool stuff!

all the ancient civilizations were really advanced, look at egypt, they were very advanced for there time period, yet look at them now?

WOW the art is very nice!

Being in a cave i think it is safe to assume that they were drawn from memory and not from watching them in action, which is even more amazing! im an artist myself and i always have trouble drawing out the bodies of animals and getting all the joints right in their proper location, but these guys nailed it.

good stuff good stuff.

I was just looking at cuneform for another forum, and some of the symbols looks similar.
While Sumerian writing was the earliest, it's been known that writing's origins are older. This find would work it back.

Originally posted by Aliensun
reply to post by kiwifoot

 

Some on ATS will cringe at this statement, but given early interventions by ETs to the first, capable humans cultures, art, language and writing would have been some of the first gifts. Art, such as cave art protected from the elements, would be the best evidence that remains. And so it is....

Let us hope that they will be so kind toward us at this moment in time.

I think one of the best things about this topic, is that we really haven't a clue what they were doing, so all theories are totally valid.

I like masqua's explanation, but I too beleive in ET influence on early man!

Who knows, that's why every and all ideas should be welcome!

All the best, kiwifoot!

What kind of tests have been run to date these drawings back 30,000-50,000 years? I understand there are repeating signs but what is the chance of these being hoaxes?

Non-the-less, Fascinating information. Thanks.