7 ms·
Humans 40k yrs ago developed a system of conventional signs
- bikenaga 7mo ago[dead]
- buildsjets 7mo agoClanker.
- ponklife 7mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- truhistory 7mo ago[flagged]
- mikert89 7mo agoIts wild how far off a lot of the mainstream "consensus" takes on this are.
- SetTheorist 7mo agohttps://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35863186 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35863186 12,500 years ago seems to be a more sensible and evidence-based estimate.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- baxtr 7mo agoCreated two new accounts to push your narrative?
- truhistory 7mo ago.
- CupricTea 7mo agoArtifacts from 700kya were not left by anatomically modern humans.
- lovich 7mo agoOh good, is Jesus part of this narrative too I assume given the 2000 years reference? Edit: he deleted his comments, he mentioned something about a Waterford axe and every conflict for the past 2000 years being to hide this information. Also something about going to war for gods
- mcswell 7mo agoI think some responders have been misled here, falling victim to Poe's Law. Because you are joking, right? Right?
- WalterBright 7mo agoThey could also be simply idle doodling or decorations.
- bryanlarsen 7mo agoToo bad we don't have a paper that applies information theory techniques to answer that question. Oh wait...
- WalterBright 7mo agoI remain skeptical. Pictures in clouds.
- djtango 7mo agoWhat are you skeptical about? 40k years ago humans were just as we the humans of today, but they also faced harsher environments to survive in. Technology has enabled us to compound advanced intergenerationally but I don't really believe we're actually that special when compared to our forebears...
- chmod775 7mo agoGiven that pressure from natural selection has lessened a lot, chances are that we are less special now. Our intellect evolved for survival, but now it's very much optional - has been for many generations. It and may now even be inversely correlated with having offspring. I would be unsurprised if we're noticably dumber now than we used to be.
- iberator 7mo agoHa! And someone today at HN laughed at the research of monkeys playing with crystals... Maybe one day we could communicate with monkeys with marbles and crystals and stuff as SIGN language. Imagine monkey soldiers becoming reality in AI WARS.
- citizenpaul 7mo agoSorry to be the wet blanket. However research on monkeys/apes has for the most part proven that their intelligence is at a dead end and never can progress past what is basically around human 2yo level.
- keeganpoppen 7mo agowell that surely seems to be empirically true...
- Xss3 7mo agoThat really depends how you measure and define intelligence and does a disservice to them. Toddlers for example dont tend to have gang wars for territories and certainly couldnt do battle outcome predictions from a glance at a group across thick canopy and the sounds of branches and hollering.
- cwmoore 7mo agoTeacher wouldn’t allow it.
- iwontberude 7mo agoApes tend to be way more intelligent than humans of any age about how to hold and consume different vegetables and fruits.
- dlisboa 7mo agoHumans today perhaps. People tend to underestimate our abilities in nature because we’ve evolved to be able to shape it. In reality humans had generationally transmitted oral knowledge of food, plus are the only animals that can transform food at will, including from “toxic” to consumable.
- amatecha 7mo agoThe X's on the animal forms (Fig. 1B) ... isn't that likely to be "hit here" type markings, for hunting reference? Shoulder, side, stomach... surprised this wasn't really touched on in the paper, since it seems really likely. Though, the paper doesn't seem to care so much about the actual meanings, seemingly just narrowing down the number of possible interpretations /shrug
- shimman 7mo agoInteresting comment, I remember something similar about how researchers thought hairstyles depicted in paintings or statues were unrealistic but it wasn't until a hairstylist pointed out that you can sew the hair together: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-woman-is-a-hair-style-archaeologist-82478448/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-woman-is-a-ha... I've also heard similar stories about people working with leather recognizing some set of artifacts as being more useful for work rather than ceremonial. Here's of video of creating a roman Vestal Virgins hairstyle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eA9JYWh1r7U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eA9JYWh1r7U I bet there are many more similar stories yet to be told.
- card_zero 7mo agoEver tried carving a regular pattern, such as XXXXXXX, in a piece of wood? The blade keeps getting stuck on the wrong course, the angle deviates from vertical, you have to retry strokes and they don't land in the same place the second time. If the work piece is small your accuracy goes down. In this case they're carving bone, which may be easier, but the tool is a tiny piece of flint held between fingers. So then instead of XXXXXXX the researchers record X/\XXV/X. Let's run that through some mystifying statistical software and tell the world about its information content! Or "complexity", which might not be information. Come to think of it, an example of misunderstood artifacts from this period, the Aurignacian, is the "perforated baton", formerly proposed to be held at meetings for the right to speak, now found out to be a spear shaft straightener.
- WalterBright 7mo ago
- kazinator 7mo ago> Humans have carved visual signs into the surfaces of mobile artifacts [...] And, undoubtedly, while doing so, some of them walked into something and got hurt.
- unit149 7mo ago[dead]
- ggm 7mo agoAbsolutely fascinating study. I look forward to more as the density of materials rises. I would observe that calligraphy such as in Islamic art, frequently conveys two messages. One is more abstract such as it's compelling beauty, but it can also be strongly representational. A word about swans in the shape of a Swan. So I don't see "it's just decoration" as a strong rebuttal. It may be decorative. It can also convey meaning.
- dhosek 7mo agoI remember in my literary theory class, one of the theorists made the (deliberately) absurd claim that writing preceded speech. Reading this, and I wonder if he was correct (as an aside, I tend to wander into the weeds in language articles on Wikipedia as I find myself increasingly curious about language evolution and I always wonder whether the different language families are “merely” a result of linguistic drift over millennia or whether human speech appeared independently in multiple points of origin).
- jgtrosh 7mo agoYour instinctive reaction matches with scientific consensus. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_writing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_writing > Each historical invention of writing emerged from systems of proto-writing that used ideographic and mnemonic symbols but were not capable of fully recording spoken language. True writing, where the content of linguistic utterances can be accurately reconstructed by later readers, is a later development. As proto-writing is not capable of fully reflecting the grammar and lexicon used in languages, it is often only capable of encoding broad or imprecise information. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_speech https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_speech > vocal languages must have begun diversifying at least 100,000 years ago
- WalterBright 7mo ago> Each historical invention of writing emerged from systems of proto-writing that used ideographic and mnemonic symbols but were not capable of fully recording spoken language. And, of course, today we are going backwards to icon proto-writing, with all the same shortcomings.
- eucyclos 7mo agoI have a theory that song used to communicate emotional states precedes and probably evolved into language as we think of it.
- cenamus 7mo agoWhales also communicate by "song". But at that point it's just their language, whether you classify it as song (pleasant for a human to listen to?) or language doesn't really change that it's used for communication
- velcrovan 7mo ago"What's the good of Mercator's North Poles and Equators, Tropics, Zones, and Meridian Lines?" So the Bellman would cry: and the crew would reply "They are merely conventional signs! https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43909/the-hunting-of-the-snark https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43909/the-hunting-of-...
- pavel_lishin 7mo agoThere's something about Figure 4 that reminds me of the Codex Seraphinianus, or the Voynich Manuscript.