Strange symbols carved onto a Stone Age mammoth ivory plate found at a cave in southwest Germany could be the earliest known ...

The birth of writing could be 40,000 years earlier than previously thought after scientists found etchings in a German cave.

Over 40,000 years ago, our early ancestors were already carving signs into tools and sculptures. According to a new analysis ...

Until now it was thought that writing developed in Mesopotamia around 3,000 BCE, followed by hieroglyphics in Egypt and later in China and Mesoamerica. "The Stone Age sign sequences are an early ...

While historians know roughly where and when humans first began writing, they have many unanswered questions about how and why the practice arose. Now, a new paper suggests that one of the world’s ...

More than 40,000 years ago, Ice Age humans were carving repeated patterns of dots, lines, and crosses into tools and small ivory figurines. A new computational study of more than 3,000 of these ...

Statistical analysis reveals ancient bone carvings hold complex information rivaling early Mesopotamian scripts.

Mysterious signs engraved on objects reveal that a form of proto-writing may have been used in Europe 40,000 years ago, tens of thousands of years before the emergence of a full writing system ...

(CNN) — Researchers have uncovered links between the precursor to the world’s oldest writing system and the mysterious, intricate designs left behind by engraved cylindrical seals that were rolled ...

The discovery of 5,000-year-old linguistic inscriptions predates by 1,400 years the earliest known Chinese writing and matches the age of the oldest known human writing in Mesopotamia. (via ...

SANTA CRUZ — While a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University, UC Santa Cruz history professor Elaine Sullivan unearthed ancient artifacts in Syria marked with an alphabetic script whose meaning ...