Written language, the hallmark of human civilization, didn't just suddenly appear one day. Thousands of years before the first fully developed writing systems, our ancestors scrawled geometric signs across the walls of the caves they sheltered in. Paleoanthropologist and rock art researcher Genevieve von Petzinger has studied and codified these ancient markings in caves across Europe. The uniformity of her findings suggest that graphic communication, and the ability to preserve and transmit messages beyond a single moment in time, may be much older than we think. TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (or less). Look for talks on Technology, Entertainment and Design -- plus science, business, global issues, the arts and much more. Find closed captions and translated subtitles in many languages at http://www.ted.com/translate Follow TED news on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/tednews Like TED on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TED Subscribe to our channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/TEDtalksDirector

Comments

1. She is incredibly beautiful. wow.
2. We are explorers.
   
   Question answered.
3. Fat and stupid. She works for the system. Fake news. Go to your kitchen stupid blond.
4. It's funny how she mentions every nation with its name, and Sicily like it's not part of Italy :)
5. More facts, less You.
6. Amazing
7. so people tended to use simple geometric shapes in their simple cave paintings? wow what a shocker! circles and triangles! i'd never expect a bunch of people from the same species to make art that shares some basic qualities!
8. Hashtag - prehistoric tweets.
9. More questions than answers. Thought this would be more interesting and detailed.
10. 10s of thousands of years of communication and language development...and now we have Emojis! We did it, People!
11. aboot
12. Why do humans feel the need to compare themselves to other species? Genevieve von Petzinger doesnt know about plants at all in terms of communication? Scary.
13. 8:23, one ancient artist was an assman
14. 04:00 incorrect: spoken communication is not immediately lost after the act; though with limited survival time, oral traditions preserved the spoken word in just about every culture.
15. Liberals crack me up!
16. The oldest message that was ever crawled on a wall is "Kilroy was here".
17. These look to me like old Spanish treasure symbols. When they would find any gold bearing ore in paying quantities they had to conceal the discovery or leave the area in search for more. So they had to find a way back to the site. These "map"signs are common in Arizona and Mexico. Just my 2 cents.
18. Those not geometrical figures...they letters of an ancient Hungarian runic writing used all across Europe and Middle East ancient Sumer and Mesopotamia....dont talk bullshit to mess up ignorants minds...such letters were found in the Bosnian piramids former Yugoslavia appreciated by scientists as of 35 thousand years old.
19. Boring.....
20. She stole this talk from Peter Weyland!!