Scientists may have discovered enigmatic symbols from 40,000 years ago that will reshape our understanding of human communication.
Communication has been the main focal point in our advancement as a species. Without it, we would never have reached this point in our evolution. As we explore the deepest and most unexplored regions of the world, we are now one step closer to opening a page in history.
That page could reshape our history and future.
How our evolution has been unearthed by researchers
We as a species have relied on the egg heads of history to study and open the door to a world of unexplored human information.
Collectively, we have made significant discoveries over the past half-century that have deepened our understanding of our history. But as we have only begun scratching the surface of human history, we have yet to find so many substantially important fossils and secrets.
A recent discovery has opened the book to a new chapter that we never thought existed. With profound implications.
In science, the more we look, the more we find
We only relatively recently began searching for evidence of early human history, in the grand scope of things.
The Egyptian pyramids started us along a path towards digging up ancient sites. More recently, the Cradle of Humankind in South Africa has provided never-before-seen fossils of our long-lost family tree.
Something as obscure as finding a tooth can have far-reaching implications.
Whether purposely digging through the ground to find broken pieces of the world of yesterday, or accidentally stumbling on a discovery of profound importance. Things can change at the drop of a hat in modern-day science.
Even looking outside of our family tree has revealed the secrets of the food and drink we put in our bodies every day.
Plants that can boost our bodily and brain functions have been discovered by scientists as they study everything around us. However, a recent publication of a significant study has revealed that we are far more complex than previously thought.
The study, “Humans 40,000 years ago developed a system of conventional signs”, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has lifted the veil on early human cognitive skills.
Human ancestors were capable of so much more than we thought
Our deep-rooted need to understand our history and how we evolved as a species has come forward by leaps and bounds in recent years.
A study in the National Academy of Sciences has suggested that a 40,000-year-old engraving from the Paleolithic period features the earliest forms of writing that we have discovered to date. The strange V-shaped drawings and crosses were found on ivory and pieces of bone in a cave in Germany.
These ancient drawings can forever reshape our understanding of our history and how we communicated as humans.
The findings indicate that early humans used complex systems to do very basic counting and also found evidence of symbolic communication that is tens of thousands of years younger than our previously dated communication lines.
Communication by writing started earlier than previously imagined
The systematic encoding of information paints a picture of an ancestry that was much more complex than we ever thought.
It essentially rolls back the clock on how and when we were first capable of complex cognitive skills, revealing that we started to communicate via writing at a much earlier stage than what science has taught us over the past few decades.
Our knowledge of our former selves is changing every day.
Recent findings have also affected our understanding of our biological clock and the process of how we age. How will this finding affect future studies of our ancestors going forward?