September
13
/ 2018
What is a symbol? This is a tough question to answer when tasked with analyzing the earliest graphic productions. What we might today interpret as figurative representations might just be an ancient doodle that had no special purpose. For a long time, archaeologists were convinced the first symbols appeared when Homo sapiens colonized areas of Europe about 40,000 years ago. However, recent archaeological discoveries in Africa, Europe, and Asia suggest the creation and use of symbols emerged much earlier. For example, the oldest known engraving is a zigzag carved into the shell of a freshwater mussel found in Trinil (Java) within 540,000-year-old archaeological strata. And objects for personal adornment have been unearthed at several archaeological sites in Africa dating back
