40,000-year-old German artifacts may display written language precursor

A small object called the Adorant figurine discovered in a cave in Germany in 1979 – crafted roughly 40,000 years ago by some of the earliest people to establish a distinct culture in Europe – bears intriguing sequences of notches and dots. Numerous other objects produced by this same culture exhibit similar marks.

New research suggests these marks on objects like this figurine, made of mammoth ivory and depicting a hybrid lion-human creature, fall short of amounting to a written language.