"She completed the first Europe-wide comparison of geometric signs and identified 32 that crop up over and over, across space and time. While some might have taken on more than one meaning over the years, their consistency could point to a system of communication. She has now created the world’s largest database of Ice Age-era geometric signs. Inverse spoke to her about her work and what she thinks it might mean...
We see writing as at the top of this pinnacle, but there are lots of other more modern societies that didn’t develop writing either. But everyone in the world has graphic communication when they had complex hierarchical societies, you need it for religious rules, for taxation.
So writing isn’t necessarily this be-all end-all everyone reaches for. It all just depends on people’s lifestyle choices. A community of 50 probably had other priorities than setting people aside to be full-time scribes — what did they really need writing for? We call people “cavemen when we want to [call them primitive], but you really have to go back a heck of a lot farther than that before they werent us."
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