In a recent paper on the rock art in Arnhem Land, Australia, a group of archeologists tried out a new method for assessing the 3000 paintings made over the last 15,000 years. Focusing on a series from 15,000 years ago, they attempted to recreate a facsimile of the landscape as it was then, to get a better sense of the scene:

We also found that during the period when the sea level was rising, rock art was preferentially made in areas with long-distance views over areas of open woodland.

This may have been to facilitate hunting, or to allow careful management of landscapes during a period when many people would have been displaced from the north by sea level rise.

Jarrad Daniel Kowlessar & Alfred Nayinggul , Daryl Wesley , Ian Moffat, “New Analysis Unlocks the Hidden Meaning of 15,000-Year-Old Rock Art,” RealClearScience, January 10, 2024

So the artwork seems to have been a planned community project, with practical and perhaps aesthetic considerations.

Mysterious giraffes

The authors acknowledge that interpreting very old artwork is controversial — but then, so is interpreting Homer or the New Testament. Every scholar has a theory; that’s part of what it takes to be a scholar.

For example, two large giraffes, probably a male and a female, feature among roughly 400 other petroglyphs (rock carvings) from about 6000 through 8000 years ago in what is now Dabous in north central Niger. Each giraffe features a line that runs from its mouth or nose toward a human figure. We are told that “Similar motifs have been found elsewhere in the Sahara, but scholars are unsure of their significance.” (Britannica) Maybe scholars are unsure but some of us would bet that it implies a desire for control over the movements of the giraffe, perhaps for hunting purposes.

So far, we have found cave art and rock art at hundreds of sites around the world from roughly 40,000 through 14,000 years ago.

What about abstract thought?

The earliest images we have found are abstract, which implies a message but the meaning is now lost. For example, the oldest known cave paintings by Neanderthals from 64,000 years ago feature ladder-like lines and hand stencils. Of course, the hand stencils could be a sort of signature or signify membership in a group.

Incidentally, the choice of abstract drawing may not be due to lack of skill with representational drawing. What if a representational drawing was too lifelike? Would it come to life? Would it have power over you? If you had never seen one, how would you know? At any rate, our ancestors, including Neanderthals, appear to have approached representational art slowly, by degrees.

The Lascaux Caves from about 17,000 years ago feature horses, bulls, and deer with a high degree of realism but they hint at something more:

The Lascaux cave art contains something like a “unicorn”—a horned, horse-like animal that may or may not be pregnant. Another unique image has variously been interpreted as a hunting accident in which a bison and a man both die, or an image involving a sorcerer or wizard. In any case, the artist seems to have paid particular attention to making the human figure anatomically male.

Becky Little, “What Prehistoric Cave Paintings Reveal About Early Human Life,”History, October 5, 2021

Perhaps these are oral stories, represented in art. The key is forever lost with the language, unless we find whole new series of caves that fill in some of that story.

What about actual messages?

Some symbols appear frequently and may represent the earliest form of graphic communication:

The patterns of dots, lines and Y-shaped marks on cave walls from as early as 20,000 years ago have only recently begun to be studied seriously. One Cambridge group argues that they represent a proto-writing system and calendar.

Using a database of images spanning the European Upper Palaeolithic, we suggest how three of the most frequently occurring signs—the line <|>, the dot <•>, and the <Y>—functioned as units of communication. We demonstrate that when found in close association with images of animals the line <|> and dot <•> constitute numbers denoting months, and form constituent parts of a local phenological/meteorological calendar beginning in spring and recording time from this point in lunar months. We also demonstrate that the <Y> sign, one of the most frequently occurring signs in Palaeolithic non-figurative art, has the meaning <To Give Birth>. The position of the <Y> within a sequence of marks denotes month of parturition, an ordinal representation of number in contrast to the cardinal representation used in tallies.

Bacon B, Khatiri A, Palmer J, Freeth T, Pettitt P, Kentridge R. An Upper Palaeolithic Proto-writing System and Phenological Calendar. Cambridge Archaeological Journal. 2023;33(3):371-389. doi:10.1017/S0959774322000415 Open access.

Notably, no cave markings among hundreds showed more than 13 dots or lines, which is consistent with the lunar calendar. Bacon et al. think the symbol choices were records of animal behavior during specific months.

But of course, as Kristina Killgrove reports at LiveScience, not everyone agrees with the study authors’ interpretations:

April Nowell, a Paleolithic archaeologist at the University of Victoria in Canada who was not involved in this study, told Live Science by email that “any study that explores non-figurative signs in more detail is welcome, but I think there are a number of assumptions being made here that have yet to be proven.” Nowell questioned the Y sign, in particular. “The majority of animals considered in this study are quadrupeds, and humans normally squat giving birth,” she said. “If this sign is supposed to be iconic of the birth process, it is not obvious to me.”

Kristina Killgrove, “20,000-year-old cave painting ‘dots’ are the earliest written language, study claims. But not everyone agrees,” LiveScience, January 4, 2023

What’s obvious is that our remote ancestors were forging a system for writing down what they knew. Further study will probably yield fascinating new insights from a time long before history.

You may also wish to read: What was it like to grow up in the Paleolithic era? We are learning much about our ancestors’ lives from the less highly publicized finds. From the fragments gathered so far, it seems we have no evidence for a history of the human mind, only the history of human technology.