Hebrew University study finds dwellers of 23,000 years-old hunter-gatherers community on the banks of the Sea of Galilee, use tools to fully exploit animals down to the marrow and thus thrive, despite the Ice Age food shortage around the world
Credit: Marion Prévost
While scientists and historians have long surmised that etchings on stones and bones have been used as a form of symbolism dating back as early as the Middle Paleolithic period (250,000-45,000 BCE), findings to support that theory are extremely rare.
A recent discovery by archeologists from the Hebrew University and the University of Haifa alongside a team from the Le Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in France have uncovered evidence of what may be the earliest-known use of symbols. The symbols were found on a bone fragment in the Ramle region in central Israel and are believed to be approximately 120,000 years old.
1,295 shares
A bone fragment discovered near Ramle, Israel with deliberate etchings on that may be the earliest-known use of symbols. (Marion Prévost)
Six lines carved on a 120,000-year-old bone fragment found in central Israel could be one of the earliest known uses of symbols found on Earth, if not the first, according to Israeli and French researchers.
The bone fragment, found recently during an excavation near the city of Ramle, has six similar etchings on one side of the bone, leading researchers to conclude that they were deliberately carved symbols, according to a joint statement from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Haifa University released Wednesday.
Follow
Feb. 4, 2021
About 120,000 years ago, in what is today Israel, somebody devoted great effort to etching six parallel lines on the bone of an aurochs. This discovery in the open-air Middle Paleolithic site of Nesher Ramla in Israel is the oldest evidence of deliberate decoration in the Levant.
The bone and the few similar objects found to date support the theory that both early modern humans and the hominins predating them were capable of behavior associated with symbolism, suggests the team led by Marion Prévost of the Hebrew University Institute of Archaeology, with Yossi Zaidner, Iris Groman-Yaroslavski and Kathryn Crater Gershtein of the Zinman Institute of Archaeology at the University of Haifa, and José-Miguel Tejero of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique de France. The study was published this week in Quaternary International.
Lines On A Wild Cow Bone May Be 120,000-Year-Old Symbols
Researchers have uncovered what they claim is among the earliest-known use of symbols “ever discovered.” The collection of lines carved into a bone fragment date to approximately 120,000 years ago, but as you will see, they are but children compared to the antiquity of the grandfather of all ancient symbols.
The discovery and analysis of “six similar etchings on one side of a bone fragment” was made by a team of archaeologists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the University of Haifa, with researchers from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in France. The new research was published in the scientific journal