And they are more than 10,000 years older than previous examples.
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00:00Humanity's writing systems have come a long way in the last couple of hundred years alone.
00:07But what was it like 20,000 years ago?
00:10Well, researchers studying ancient cave paintings may finally have that answer, as they believe
00:14they have just discovered the earliest example of human writing.
00:17This is what they are now calling the proto-writing system.
00:20But what does it mean?
00:21The researchers say the cave drawings depict records of animal mating seasons, broken down
00:25into the lunar months throughout the year.
00:27And while the writings don't contain letters per se, the dots, lines, and Y-shaped symbols
00:32do appear to mean something.
00:33The markings seem to indicate when each animal's mating season would happen, crucial information
00:38for a hunter-gatherer group, with the Y symbol indicating a month of birth for a particular
00:43animal.
00:44But the most wild thing is that these symbols weren't simply found in one spot, but rather
00:47all over Europe in caves that were inhabited in the last Ice Age.
00:50With the discovery being especially interesting, as it means humans were using the written
00:54word 14,000 years earlier than experts previously thought.