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The mammoth figurine from Vogelherd Cave, approximately 40,000 years old, bears multiple sequences of crosses and dots on its surface.
The mammoth figurine from Vogelherd Cave, approximately 40,000 years old, bears multiple sequences of crosses and dots on its surface. © Universität Tübingen / Hildegard Jensen

Museumsinsel Berlin, Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte | Signs on Stone Age objects: Precursor to written language dates back 40,000 years

24.02.2026

Over 40,000 years ago, our early ancestors were already carving signs into tools and sculptures. According to a new analysis by archaeologist Ewa Dutkiewicz at the Museum für Vor- und Frühge-schichte of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and linguist Christian Bentz at Saarland University, these sign sequences have the same level of complexity and information density as the earliest proto-cuneiform script that emerged tens of thousands of years later, around 3,000 B.C.E. Using a computational approach, the team examined over 3,000 signs found on 260 objects to reveal insights on the origins of writing. Their findings, which will be published in the journal PNAS, were clear – and surprised even the researchers.

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The mammoth figurine from Vogelherd Cave, approximately 40,000 years old, bears multiple sequences of crosses and dots on its surface.
© Universität Tübingen / Hildegard Jensen

Proto-cuneiform tablet of Uruk V period (VAT 15085), approximately 3500 to 3350 years old. This so-called numero-ideographic tablet carries numerical signs on the left-hand side and one ideograph representing a vessel of unknown content on the right-hand side.
© Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Vorderasiatisches Museum / Olaf M. Tesmer

The Adorant figurine from Geißenklösterle Cave, approximately 40,000 years old, consists of a small ivory plate bearing an anthropomorphic figure and multiple sequences of notches and dots. The application of these marks suggests a notational system, most notably in the rows of dots on the back of the plate.
© Landesmuseum Württemberg / Hendrik Zwietasch

Proto-cuneiform tablet of the Uruk IV period (VAT 14774), approx. 3350-3200 years old. This so-called numero-ideographic tablet features number signs on the left-hand side and more diverse ideographs on the right-hand side. This tablet is additionally partitioned by a horizontal line.
© Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Vorderasiatisches Museum / Olaf M. Tesmer

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