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Researchers analyzed bone markings from 70,000-year-old artifacts to determine if artificial memory systems were in use.
The team found that patterns in markings differentiated between butchering, decorative, and counting use cases.
While not conclusive, the findings could show that cognitive abilities grew much earlier in the human timeline than previously believed.
Humanity’s ancestors could have been counting long before any formal writing system existed. And it may have been advanced enough that entire societies knew what was going on.
A team of researchers recently published a study detailing an analysis of 22 artifacts (dated to between 15,000 and 70,000 years ago) intended to determine how scientists could better identify artificial memory systems, or AMSs. As the authors describe them, AMSs are “tools that allow for the storage and retrieval of coded information beyond the physical body.”
Nowadays, we use computers and smartphones for the bulk of our out of body memory tracking, but the concept includes everything from systems of writing to sticks carved with tally marks known appropriately as ‘tally sticks.’ Anything that would allow you to ‘make a note’ of an idea and come back to it later—that counts.
But these things aren’t easy to identify—especially the earliest examples on record, which consist of nothing more than a few marks on an object. And over the course of millenia, marks can be collected by an object for a variety of reasons. So, the team behind this new paper set out to find a better method for identifying these early recording devices through the use of “new statistical tools and empirical evidence.”
Basically, the team wanted to be able to identify what markings meant AMS, and what markings meant, say, butchery or art. So, they analyzed their 22 artifacts—which included a 44,000-year-old baboon bone from South Africa, a 70,000-year-old bone, a reindeer antler from France, medieval tally sticks, and Indigenous calendars—in the hopes of gathering enough information to create descriptions of what features markings of different purposes would have. In particular, the team looked for signs of regular, intentionally spaced markings that would indicate an objet was being used as an AMS.
And according to the study, the team found what they were looking for. “Upper Paleolithic AMSs,” the authors wrote, “are endowed with systematically different signatures that distinguish them from the other artifacts.” Butchery marks were found to be clustered, and abstract decorative motifs displayed randomness in spacing (both had significant variation in angle). But potential AMSs show regular spatial patterns—what researchers claim are “distinct separation[s]” between the different types of markings.
“These findings,” the researchers wrote, “suggest that modern humans in at least Africa and Europe had sophisticated cognitive capabilities for information storage and retrieval, providing insights into the possible development of quantity-related cognition.”
Some examples come from regions and time periods linked to Homo sapiens, while others could be tied to Neanderthals.
Questions, however, still abound. For instance, just what information these AMSs were recording remains a mystery. Possibilities include days of the week, lunar movements, community events, objects, and even numbers of people.
The researchers caution that they “cannot truly speculate about the exact nature of these population’s precise linguistic repertoire.” But they surmise that the recording of information by marking objects offers a “form of external representation, defining a communication technology that implies the transmitting of knowledge within a community, necessitating a shared understanding of the processes behind the production and use of these devices.”
Despite the mystery that still surrpounds many of these artifacts, there is no question as to the importance of the finds. “These marks,” the authors wrote, “could reflect a crucial step in the transition from basic cognitive abilities—like distinguishing between ‘few’ and ‘many’—toward abstract concepts like numbers.”
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