Washington: Long before the first known writing systems appeared, humans may already have been storing and sharing information through simple carved marks. A new computational study indicates that repeated patterns of dots, lines, notches and crosses engraved by Ice Age communities more than 40,000 years ago were not random decorations but structured visual sequences.
The research, led by linguist Christian Bentz of Saarland University and archaeologist Ewa Dutkiewicz of Berlin’s Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte, analysed more than 3,000 Paleolithic signs found on 260 artifacts. Instead of attempting to decipher meanings, the team examined measurable properties such as frequency, repetition and predictability using tools from quantitative linguistics and machine learning.
The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest that these ancient markings exhibit levels of complexity and information density comparable to proto-cuneiform, the earliest known writing system that emerged in Mesopotamia around 3,000 BCE. Proto-cuneiform itself functioned primarily as a notational system for recording goods and quantities rather than fully representing spoken language.
Across Europe, archaeologists have uncovered tools, ivory figurines and plaques bearing carefully arranged markings. Some of the most notable examples come from caves in Germany’s Swabian Jura. Among them is the Adorant, a mammoth ivory plaque approximately 38,000 years old from Geißenklösterle Cave, depicting an anthropomorphic figure accompanied by rows of dots and notches. A mammoth ivory figurine from Vogelherd Cave features repeated crosses and dots, while the Lion Human sculpture from Hohlenstein-Stadel Cave bears evenly spaced notches along one arm.
For decades, such engravings were often interpreted as ornamentation or abstract art. The new statistical analysis challenges that view. Bentz explained that the sequences reveal consistent structural patterns rather than randomness, forming what he described as a distinct statistical fingerprint. Unlike modern writing systems, which encode speech and typically display high variability, the Paleolithic sequences are highly repetitive, with patterns such as repeated crosses or lines.
Despite this difference, entropy measurements, a metric used to estimate information density, closely matched those observed in early proto-cuneiform tablets. The similarity surprised the researchers, who initially expected proto-cuneiform to resemble modern scripts more closely due to its relative recency. Dutkiewicz noted that figurines tended to display higher information density than tools, suggesting that different objects may have carried different communicative or symbolic functions.
The study does not determine exactly what information these signs conveyed. “But the findings can help us to narrow down potential interpretations,” says Dutkiewicz. Although modern societies benefit from thousands of years of accumulated knowledge, anatomically modern humans of the Paleolithic period had cognitive abilities comparable to ours, ScienceDaily reported.
The work forms part of the project The Evolution of Visual Information Encoding (EVINE), funded by the European Research Council. The project explores how humans developed systems for encoding knowledge externally long before the emergence of formal writing. Bentz emphasised that writing represents only one stage in a much longer continuum of sign systems spanning tens of thousands of years.
He also observed that the human drive to encode information remains central in the modern world. Digital technologies and artificial intelligence systems similarly rely on encoding structures and predictability. The study highlights that the cognitive foundations for information recording may have deep prehistoric roots, extending far beyond the timeline traditionally associated with the invention of writing.
