Oldest 'writing' found on 60,000-year-old eggshells

This recent find could push the date of written communication back much further than previously thought.

Even as recently as last month it was being reported that writing was thought to be 30,000 to 40,000 years old as covered by the wonderful thread linked below..

www.abovetopsecret.com...

However, today there is evidence of some group using the same symbols over and over again on eggshells 60,000 years ago.

Oldest 'writing' found on 60,000-year-old eggshells

Since 1999, Pierre-Jean Texier of the University of Bordeaux, France, and his colleagues have uncovered 270 fragments of shell at the Diepkloof Rock Shelter in the Western Cape, South Africa.

They show the same symbols are used over and over again, and the team say there are signs that the symbols evolved over 5000 years. This long-term repetition is a hallmark of symbolic communication and a sign of modern human thinking, say the team (

Is this the first writing - we may never know. As the team points out, writing may have developed hither and yon over the globe..

Written language may have evolved more than once in human history. "Judging from what we know about the evolution of art all over the world, there may have been many traditions that were born, lasted for some time and then vanished," says Jean Clottes, former director of research at the Chauvet caves in southern France. "This may be one of them, most probably not the first and certainly not the last."

[edit on 3-3-2010 by Frogs]

[edit on 3-3-2010 by Frogs]

The amount of time involved is staggering. With that much time to erode artifacts it has to be of necessity a fragmentary history - the statement about writing re occuring is fascinating (could one perhaps create a fractal pattern graph of locations/liklihoods?). How many times did humans achieve this? How can we say with any certainty how many or how long any rudimentary (or otherwise) civilization/culture evolved? Great find.

I think I've deciphered one of them. It apparently says:

"Next time at [illegible], pick up more eggs. Got milk?"

Some things never change, I guess.

Great find but I've always believed humanity is much older probably border lining the 100,000 year mark, if not even older.