Another re-run of the idea a writing system was invented long before it emerged as an accounting tool in Sumeria. See https://phys.org/news/2026-02-year-stone-age-paved-mesopotamia.html …. and more fully at https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2520385123 … where, according to a new study in PNAS, over 40,000 years ago our human ancestors were carving signs and symbols on to tools and sculptures, and various other small artifacts. These signs and notches have the same level of complexity and information density as the earliest proto- cuneiform script that emerged in what is now ancient Iraq. The team analysed 3000 signs on 260 objects using computational methodologies. They are described as mobile artifacts. People carried them around as most seem to have fitted into the palm of the hand. The signs, we may note, are quite unlike modern writing systems which are based on speech and language. However, they have a remarkable similarity with the earliest proto cuneiform tablets. This suggests little changed between 40,000 years ago and 5000 years ago. Many of the artifacts come from caves in the Jura Mountains of southern Germany. A lot of them are actually made from ivory, some of which depicts mammoths pictorially. This is again remarkable if mammoth bone and tusks was being used to depict mammoths.
The study does not reveal what stone age people were trying to convey, or record. The latter is the more appropriate as they were carrying these objects around with them. However, although it is not mentioned the dates assigned to the objects may in itself be revealing. They stretch from the Laschamp Event, a temporary magnetic reversal which would have been accompanied by unusual auroral activity, and 33,000 years ago – which just happens to coincide with a second extinction event in which animals died in multitudes. Even in Australia. The same study is at https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/paleolithic-humans-invented-an-early-predecessor-to-writing-at-least-40-000-years-ago-carved-signs-suggest … and both links say the period in question is defined as when the Gravettian culture was in full sway across Europe. This is the first culture specifically associated with modern humans in Europe. The Gravettians continued to live in the region during the Late Glacial Maximum. Once again we get the feeling people at this time were spending a lot of time in caves and cave systems that had extensive tunnels and galleries. Enhanced auroral activity could have been a problem – and increased radiation as a result of the magnetic reversal.