Smithsonian Magazine

Humans May Have Used These Mysterious Symbols to Encode Information Tens of Thousands of Years Before the First Writing Systems

The symbols, discovered on 40,000-year-old artifacts in caves in southwest Germany, may have been a precursor to the first written language ...

40,000-year-old German artifacts may display written language precursor

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON, Feb 24 (Reuters) - A small object called the Adorant figurine discovered in a cave in Germany in 1979 - crafted roughly 40,000 years ago by some of the earliest people to ...