One of the earliest forms of art that has survived is rock art: images that have been painted (pictographs) and/or carved or etched (petroglyphs) on rocks in caves, on cliffs, and other rock surfaces. These images are clearly symbols and some researchers feel that they may be the beginning of writing, a kind of proto-writing which could evolve into writing.
Symbols carry meaning not just because they resemble something, but because they invoke associations in the minds of people who understand its cultural significance. The use of symbols in communication is an important part of human cognition and vital in all forms of language—spoken, signed, and written. British philosopher A.C. Grayling, in his book Life, Sex and Ideas: The Good Life Without God, writes:
“The power of symbols to convey much by minimal means has been central to the growth of knowledge. Arguably, the truly distinctive feature of human intelligence is its ability to create and use them.”
Many researchers have pointed out that both language and art—representational and abstract—require symbolic thought and have used the presence of art as an indication that the artists had language. For example, Richard Leakey and Roger Lewin, in their book Origins Reconsidered: In Search of What Makes Us Human, write:
“When we find representational and abstract images of the sort that being to appear about 30,000 years ago in Africa and in Europe, we surely are dealing with people endowed with a fully modern, articulate, spoken language.”
Writing is also a symbol system. Is there a connection between art and writing? Can ancient art be a writing system or, at least, a proto-writing system?
In cultural evolution, as in biological evolution, new traits, such as writing, do not suddenly appear but are based on earlier cultural traits. It is, therefore, logical to view art, particularly symbolic forms of art, as one of the possible precursors of writing. In their chapter in the Handbook of Human Symbolic Evolution, David Barton and Mary Hamilton write:
“Ideographic systems without a linguistic link are thereby related to a category of ‘proto-writing’ or ‘forerunners’ of writing.”
In his book Writing and Script: A Very Short Introduction, Andrew Robinson defines proto-writing as “permanent visible marks capable of partial/specialized communication.” Andrew Robinson goes on to say:
“Thus there are endless varieties of proto-writing. It includes prehistoric petroglyphs from around the world, Pictish symbol stones from Scotland, Amerindian pictograms, notched and inscribed wooded tally sticks (used until 1934 by the British Treasury), and the fascinating knotted rope quipus used to keep track of the movement of goods in the Inca empire.”
Looking at the spectacular European cave art that appeared at the end of the last Ice Age, Genevieve von Petzinger, in her book The First Signs: Unlocking the Mysteries of the World’s Oldest Symbols, writes:
“Was the invention of later writing systems made possible by the development of symbol use during the Ice Age? Rather than assume that writing appeared almost out of nowhere 5,000 to 6,000 years ago, can we trace its origins back to those ancient artists working 20,000 or more years earlier?”
Our exploration into the possibility that rock art may be a form of proto-writing must begin with an understanding of what is meant by writing. There are many ways of defining writing. Some researchers view it as a visual system of communication which is not restricted to linguistic forms; others see it as a visual representation of language, in which the visual symbols have a correspondence with spoken language. Unlike art, which also communicates, writing involves a sequence of visible marks which communicate a narrative. Genevieve von Petzinger defines writing this way:
“a system of intercommunication based on the use of conventional visible marks produced on a durable surface.”
Under this definition, some rock art may be not only a type of proto-writing, but actual writing. Unfortunately, many linguists and other researchers disagree with this definition and define writing as a representation of language. For example, Peter Daniels, in his chapter on the study of writing systems in The World’s Writing Systems, writes:
“…writing is defined as a system of more or less permanent marks used to represent an utterance in such a way that it can be recovered more or less exactly without the intervention of the utterer. By this definition, writing is bound up with language; consequently, the widespread practice of recording by means of pictures (pictograms) of ideas that are not couched in specific linguistic form is excluded. Such pictograms are often designated as forerunners of writing, but in fact writing systems (or scripts) do not develop from them.”
Peter Daniels goes on to say:
“Pictography is not writing, because languages include many things that cannot be represented by pictures: not only obvious things like abstract notions and many verbs, but also grammatical inflections and particles, and names.”
In their chapter in the Handbook of Human Symbolic Evolution, David Barton and Mary Hamilton write:
“There is, in human terms, a huge gap between the earliest cave paintings and the emergence of writing.”
David Barton and Mary Hamilton also write:
“The distinction between writing proper and other notational systems would seem to centre around the type of information being communicated. It is possible to make the distinction clear by restricting ‘full’ writing to those systems which are based on some correspondence with the spoken language.”
Writing, like language, is more than just words representing things (i.e. nouns). The words are connected syntactically with verbs, adverbs, adjectives, and other symbols to tell some kind of story. At a Texas rock shelter, Shumla Cave, near the White Shaman site, there is a 26-foot-long section of pictographs which some researchers feel is a visual set of instructions on how to carry out a peyote ritual. The use of this site has been dated to 2500 BCE to 500 CE. In a report in American Archaeology, Richard Marini writes:
“The White Shaman mural is believed to tell a creation story similar to that of Mesoamerican groups who live hundreds of miles to the south, suggesting there was a connection between the two peoples. It’s even possible that the people who left this area migrated to the south, eventually becoming the Aztec.”
If these pictographs tell a story, one which can be read thousands of years after it was created, is this a form of writing? It should be noted that some researchers are skeptical of this interpretation of the pictographs. Without an understanding of the cultural milieu in which art is created, it is easy to misinterpret its meaning.
Rock art, such as the European Paleolithic cave paintings, often includes abstract forms in addition to the realistic images of animals which can be recognized by people outside of the artists’ culture. In one example, Andrew Robinson reports:
“In a cave at Peche Merle, in Lot, in southern France, there is a boulder with some mysterious signs on it: a stenciled hand—with four splayed fingers and thumb clearly visible—in red dye, and next to it a random pattern of some eleven dots.”
Andrew Robinson also writes:
“An example from a different cave shows an engraved figure of a horse, over-engraved with a series of ‘P’ signs (one of them reversed); in an adjoining cave a horse figure is surrounded by more than 80 ‘P’ signs, many of which were clearly made with different tools.”
Are these abstract forms symbols which communicate to other people? Should they be considered writing or proto-writing?
More Human Origins
Human Origins: Domesticating Fire
Human Origins: Symbolism
Human Origins: Bipedalism
Human Origins: Cultural Evolution
Human Origins: The Large Brain
Human Origins: The Mind