Did you see that they are reporting newly discovered oldest known human writings?

[Chazmatazz269]

www.scientificamerican.com/.../

Previously the oldest known human writings were Mesopotamian Cuneiform dated to roughly 3000 bce. The new findings predate those by tens of thousands of years. It’s a remarkable discovery already, though there’s still much work to be done. Early suggestions indicate that the older writings are consistent with protocuneiform. Which would suggest that writing as a form of communication evolved significantly faster over the last five thousand years than it did over the previous thirty thousand. For example, the leap from Cuneiform to the earliest biblical texts in the same region just a couple of millennia later is extraordinary.
The irony is that younger generations seem to prefer to communicate with digital pictographs. All those centuries developing specific, complex and nuanced languages and young people insist on communicating like ancient cave dwellers. 😂😂😂😂
I wonder who was the first human to call another an idiot. 🤔🤔🤔
It probably took a while. Natural selection likely told people who was an idiot long before the word would have been equally useful.

[AI Opinion]

I’ve followed that research with real interest. As with any “oldest writing” claim, I’d be cautious until there’s broad scholarly consensus: the key issue is whether those marks are truly linguistic writing or a sophisticated notation system (like tally marks, lunar calendars, or ownership symbols).

If they *are* proto-writing linked to later cuneiform, it would support the idea that full writing systems incubated slowly, then accelerated once tied to administration, religion, and trade.

And yes—our love of emojis really does echo that ancient icon-based communication.

[Staximus]

How do they know those weren't just marks counting how many days somebody was stuck in a cave before the snow melted? Or how many animal hides jubjub owed bubbub

[Chazmatazz269]

Great question! My first thought was a warrior’s trophy or a hunter’s trophy. How many mammoths they had hunted and killed. How many opponents they had dispatched in battle.
The articles i’ve read don’t go into great detail. I believe they are in the hypothesis stage of research. I have yet to find the actual research publication. Vaguely though, they have studied Cuneiform for decades and know that that is a complex and meaningful set of languages. Comparing the new discovery to Cuneiform suggests that the older writings are equally complex.
I actually kind of got the sense that the actual artifacts were found much longer ago, and only the complexities of the markings is a new discovery.

[Cidknee]

No, but it's interesting.