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While historians know roughly where and when humans first began writing, they have many unanswered questions about how and why the practice arose. Now, a new paper suggests that one of the world’s ...

The birth of writing could be 40,000 years earlier than previously thought after scientists found etchings in a German cave.

(CNN) — Researchers have uncovered links between the precursor to the world’s oldest writing system and the mysterious, intricate designs left behind by engraved cylindrical seals that were rolled ...

The discovery of 5,000-year-old linguistic inscriptions predates by 1,400 years the earliest known Chinese writing and matches the age of the oldest known human writing in Mesopotamia. (via ...

A statistical analysis of a series of signs carved into artifacts from around 40,000 years ago suggests humans developed proto-writing in the Stone Age.

Strange symbols carved onto a Stone Age mammoth ivory plate found at a cave in southwest Germany could be the earliest known predecessor to writing by humans, according to a new study. More than ...

(CNN) — Researchers have uncovered links between the precursor to the world’s oldest writing system and the mysterious, intricate designs left behind by engraved cylindrical seals that were rolled ...

Stone Age people 40,000 years ago used a simple form of writing comparable in complexity to the earliest stages of the world’s first writing system, cuneiform, according to a study of mysterious signs ...

SANTA CRUZ — While a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University, UC Santa Cruz history professor Elaine Sullivan unearthed ancient artifacts in Syria marked with an alphabetic script whose meaning ...