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Earliest "Writing" On 60,000-Year-Old Eggshells
New Scientist reports on research published in PNAS (abstract here) about what may be the earliest writing yet discovered, on eggshells dated to 60,000 years ago. "Since 1999, Pierre-Jean Texier of the University of Bordeaux, France, and his colleagues have uncovered 270 fragments of shell at the Diepkloof Rock Shelter in the Western Cape, South Africa. They show the same symbols are used over and over again, and the team say there are signs that the symbols evolved over 5,000 years. This long-term repetition is a hallmark of symbolic communication and a sign of modern human thinking, say the team. [Another researcher is quoted:] 'Judging from what we know about the evolution of art all over the world, there may have been many [written language] traditions that were born, lasted for some time, and then vanished. This may be one of them, most probably not the first and certainly not the last.'"
In 60,000 years we've progressed from scratching symbols on eggshells and shitting in caves to producing electronic television shows like "Jersey Shore" and "The Hills." How far we've come.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Turns out it was a shopping list. First item on the list? Eggs.
Unfortunately, they can't; early humans had established a 70,000-year copyright period. And their DMCA takedown notices come by club and bone-tipped arrow.
I have examined the shells, and have been able to decipher the images. It reads...
VERY FIRST POST.
why do you think there's only "fragments" left? Chuck Norris was there .
The rooster came first. Then left, not realizing what he had started. Said he'd call, but never did...prehistoric bastard!
Perhaps these symbols were still far from forming a structured script. Still, from the article it seems that they were used for communication, which is the main goal of writing. The reason why this is amazing is clear when you put it into the context of humankind 60.000 years later: we STILL have tribes that have no concept of writing, and in some countries analphabetism is affecting large swaths of the population.
That reminds me of Civilization, when you "find Writing in scrolls of ancient wisdom". Who knows how much of such "ancient wisdom" was lost and then re-developed only to be lost again, during these past tens of millennia. In fact, a lot of the engineering and science developed during the Apollo program, with the passing of Wernher von Braun and some of his colleagues, can well be considered lost. Sorry for the digression.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
... and as I recall, the results were that hunter-gatherers were better nourished (both in terms of just calories and the various essential nutrients) than earlier farming populations... on average. The trouble was that excursions from the "average" were a lot bigger for the hunter gatherers.. it was quite literally feast or famine. So although the H-G populations got more nutrition over the course of, say, a year, they were also more likely to starve to death during the lean times. Agriculture was, comparatively, a sure thing, which is why most groups took to it. But the move wasn't without cost - for one thing, you ended up having to work a lot harder to be successful at agriculture, as someone pointed out above.