'Person Off the Street' Discovers Earliest Human Writing

Recording the reproductive cycles of animals in cave art likely helped hunter-gatherers in Europe survive during the last ice age some 20,000 years ago, according to researchers—a discovery made in part by "effectively a person off the street." Londoner Ben Bacon was intrigued by small dots, lines, and other markings found in Upper Paleolithic cave paintings of animals from bison to fish, which had long stumped archaeologists. The curious furniture conservator figured he might as well try to work it out. After scouring the internet and the British Library for images, he "began looking for repeating patterns" and noticed a symbol that looked like a "Y," per the BBC. He suspected it represented birth, as one line seemed to grow out of another.

He then reached out to experts from Durham University and University College London, who worked with him to detail the birth cycles of modern animals. The team deduced that the markings were meant "to record and convey seasonal behavioral information about specific prey taxa" by lunar month, according to a study published Thursday in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal. There were never more than 13 marks, coinciding with 13 lunar months of 28 days each, per Live Science. "The results show that ice age hunter-gatherers were the first to use a systemic calendar and marks to record information about major ecological events within that calendar," study co-author Paul Pettitt tells the BBC, adding he's glad to have taken Bacon's communications seriously.

The study labels the markings "the first known writing in the history of Homo sapiens." But "it is best described as a proto-writing system, an intermediary step between a simpler notation/convention and full-blown writing," in which marks are used to convey limited information. It's thought "to predate other equivalent record-keeping systems by at least 10,000 years," per the Guardian. "Knowledge of the timing of migrations, mating, and birthing would be a central concern to Upper Paleolithic behavior," notes Bacon, the study's lead author, per Live Science. Paleoanthropologist Melanie Chang, who wasn't involved in the research, counters that researchers' "hypotheses are not well-supported" and "do not address alternative interpretations of the marks." (More discoveries stories.)