Are These The First Human Writings Ever Produced?

And they are more than 10,000 years older than previous examples.

Transcript

00:00Humanity's writing systems have come a long way in the last couple of hundred years alone.

00:07But what was it like 20,000 years ago?

00:10Well, researchers studying ancient cave paintings may finally have that answer, as they believe

00:14they have just discovered the earliest example of human writing.

00:17This is what they are now calling the proto-writing system.

00:20But what does it mean?

00:21The researchers say the cave drawings depict records of animal mating seasons, broken down

00:25into the lunar months throughout the year.

00:27And while the writings don't contain letters per se, the dots, lines, and Y-shaped symbols

00:32do appear to mean something.

00:33The markings seem to indicate when each animal's mating season would happen, crucial information

00:38for a hunter-gatherer group, with the Y symbol indicating a month of birth for a particular

00:43animal.

00:44But the most wild thing is that these symbols weren't simply found in one spot, but rather

00:47all over Europe in caves that were inhabited in the last Ice Age.

00:50With the discovery being especially interesting, as it means humans were using the written

00:54word 14,000 years earlier than experts previously thought.