Symbols, Signs, and Sacred Scripts.

​

Humans have been communicating

by means of symbols for a very long time.

Abstract signs emerge in the Lower Paleolithic Acheulian

and Mousterian periods (from circa 300,000 to 100,000 B.C.),

long before the appearance of the extraordinary

Upper Paleolithic art (from circa 35,000 to 10,000 B.C.)

First Hominins to Leave Africa.

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Acheulean traces are found throughout Africa

and are widely distributed in Eurasia,

though classic handaxes are absent from eastern Asia.

For this reason, the Acheulean is regarded as the

technological adaptation of the first hominins to leave

the African tropics and become widely and permanently

established in temperate climatic zones.

(MAU: 102.)

ENTRY NARRATIVE

* Given two thirds of the fossils have yet to be microscopically analyzed,

further dating determinations remain in process.

The Early or Lower Paleolithic is from 1,000,000-50,000  BCE. Evidence of the

initiating aspects of human culture evolution includes ancient stone tools * and

cave dwellings. To date, fire is believed to have been invented c. 1,000,000 –

500,000  BCE; use of ocher c. 285,000-200,000  BCE; cooking fires came into use c.

300,000 – 250,000  BCE; and human burial is indicated c. 80,000  BCE. In Upper

Galilee, horse bones have been found as well as evidence of human made

drainage and cave remains including the rhinoceros, cave-bear, hyena, reindeer,

and elephant bones. Numerous human cave dwellings have also been discovered

in Syria, Lebanon, Anatolia, North Arabian Desert, and South Kurdistan. Cave

remains have also been excavated in England, France, Belgium, Switzerland, and

Denmark. Rich cave discoveries include exquisite animals and an “astonishing

number of symbol and sign groupings.”  (TLG: 44.) Tools and implements include

various flint core items, lances, bodkins (bobbins), and bone needles.

* Update 2015.

Ancient stone tools have been discovered at Lomekwi 3 in West Turkana,

Kenya. They were made 3.3 million years ago, predating the earliest sils

of the first member of the human genus – Homo habilis – by about

500,000 years. ‘The cores and flakes are clearly knapped,’ says team

member Sonia Harmand of Stony Brook University, but they are also very

different from the Oldowan examples that were previously the earliest

stone tools’  (TFT: 12).

Humans have been communicating by means of symbols for a very long

time. Abstract signs emerge in the Lower Paleolithic Acheulian and

Mousterian periods (from circa 300,000 to 100,000  B.C.), long before the

appearance of the extraordinary Upper Paleolithic art (from circa 35,000

to 10,000  B.C.) The familiar Upper Paleolithic images depict exquisite

animals painted or etched on cave walls. They were also carved on bone or

stone tools and made into figurines [figures]  (TLG: 43).​

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