Words of our fathers

Some of the most impressive art that we know of is the rock art produced by ancient man and found in caves scattered across France and Spain. More than 200 caves have been found, studied and admired for their scope of subjects and brilliance of effort all leading to a conclusion that our ancestors, while living simply (by our standards) had a full and complex culture.

Humans take pride in knowing they are different from other animals, and one of the reasons is that we use a large, complicated vocabulary to communicate our thoughts. While it’s understood that verbal communication is perhaps the earliest form of information transfer it’s also commonly felt that the act of writing down the sounds of speech didn’t happen until about 13,000 years ago.

But that date might be in question if the theory of some researchers in paleoanthropology are correct. Genevieve von Petzinger from the University of Victoria in British Columbia has written a paper on a study she did using rock art as her source. Included in the art are signs and symbols whose meaning is unknown. She, and her associates have created a data base of some 26 visual forms, called hectiforms, that are found in cave art all across Europe that were created across some 20,000 years. The hectiforms seem to transcend time different cultures and could mean that humankind had developed a form of proto-communication at long ago as 35,000 years.  

The hectiform addition to ancient art work appears to be also found in some cave art found in Africa which could extend the theory that viable communication goes even further back in our history. My feeling is that mankind is a lot smarter than some of scientist’s believe and that our ancestral heritage was produced by people just like you or me.