Between 3500 and 3000 B.C., the Sumerians of ancient Mesopotamia in what is now Iraq carved wedge-shaped symbols into clay tablets with reed pens. These are cuneiform, the oldest known script of humankind. The invention date of writing might be pushed back by as much as 30,000 years. Symbols similar to cuneiform have been identified on Stone Age artifacts from 40,000 years ago excavated in Germany.
Christian Bentz of Saarland University and Ewa Dutkiewicz of the Museum of Prehistory and Early History in Berlin said they confirmed that the order of symbols engraved on Germany's Stone Age artifacts had a level of complexity and information density equivalent to cuneiform, according to a study published on the 24th (local time) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The meanings of the symbols are unknown, but the finding suggests a system capable of carrying information.
◇ Matches the migration timing of Homo sapiens
In the 1860s, archaeologists excavated hundreds of tools for making rope and clothing, musical instruments, and figurines combining human and animal forms from caves at the foot of the Swabian Alps in southwestern Germany. All were artifacts made from the tusks and bones of now-extinct animals such as mammoths, cave lions, and cave bears. Bentz said these artifacts, estimated to have been made between 43,000 and 34,000 years ago, contain the symbolic precursors of what is so far the oldest known writing.
On 260 artifacts, 22 types of symbols were engraved more than 3,000 times. The most frequently used symbol was a V-shaped notch, followed by lines, crosses, and dots. Y-shaped or star-shaped symbols were used less often. Without decisive evidence like the Rosetta Stone, on which Egyptian hieroglyphs are written alongside ancient Greek, there is currently no way to decipher these symbols. Instead, the researchers analyzed the order of the symbols. Rather than seeking meaning, they examined whether the symbols had complexity as a script sufficient to carry information.
The team used a computer to analyze the complexity and information density of the symbol sequences. They then compared the results with Mesopotamian cuneiform that appeared between 3500 and 3350 B.C. and with modern scripts. The analysis found that the 40,000-year-old symbol sequences were clearly distinguishable from modern writing but similar to proto-cuneiform. Dutkiewicz said, "Humans have long intentionally left marks on objects, but systematically and repeatedly using clearly distinguishable signs as in this case is a completely different order of behavior."
The artifacts found in Germany are thought to have been made by a group of Homo sapiens who arrived in Europe about 45,000 years ago. The researchers said the findings suggest that the first hunter-gatherers in Europe, Homo sapiens, had already developed a system of symbols by 40,000 years ago to record their thoughts. Bentz said, "Homo sapiens, the direct ancestors of modern humans, likely had the same cognitive abilities as we do today when they left Africa and spread across the world," adding, "It may not be so surprising that humanity experimented with communication through writing for so long."
◇ Different symbols for humans and animals; may have been a calendar
Cuneiform began in the Mesopotamian civilization, where agricultural culture developed, as an accounting system to record items such as crop yields. If so, what did Stone Age writing contain? A clue lies in the fact that the symbols used differed by artifact. The cross was a commonly used symbol on artifacts or tools depicting horses or mammoths, but it was not used at all on artifacts depicting humans. In contrast, dots were not used on tools at all.
Dutkiewicz described this as "a robust pattern indicating that the symbols applied to media were intentionally selected." The cross might not have been used to describe humans, and dots may have been used only for living subjects. The meanings are unknown, but the symbols may have carried information.
Ben Marwick, an anthropology professor at the University of Washington, said in Science the same day that "geometric markings likely functioned as important information technology," adding, "They would have supported the complex social cooperation needed to hunt large animals such as mammoths." In 2023, researchers at Durham University in the United Kingdom argued that sequences of dots, lines, and Y-shaped symbols placed next to animal drawings in European caves from 20,000 years ago were codes to record the behavior of prey.
The team also raised the possibility that the symbols engraved on the German artifacts were a calendar. For example, a hybrid figure of a lion and human made from mammoth tusk bears rows of dots and notches arranged in 13 or 12 lines. Dutkiewicz said this could reflect calendar observations. It would mean they recorded in symbols the 12 to 13 times the moon waxes and wanes in a year. A calendar would have been essential to know when prey migrated.
Then why did the symbols of the Swabian hunters not develop into a complete writing system? Marwick said society at the time likely did not need a refined script. Hunter-gatherers had a system perfectly suited to their needs and felt no pressure to change it. By contrast, in the much later agricultural societies, populations surged and commerce developed, creating a need for formal writing to maintain complex societies.
References
PNAS (2026), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2520385123
Cambridge Archaeological Journal (2023), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774322000415