Why are these 32 symbols found in caves all over Europe | Genevieve von Petzinger | TED

One major problem with our interpretation of this cave art is the way that we are lighting them when we take pictures or other recordings of them. Ancient hominins from the period would have had some kind of open flame lantern. It has been demonstrated by other scholars that the combination of an open flame light source, the art, and the contours of the rock on which they are written produced a kind of rudimentary animation, or 3D storyboard. To fully understand the purpose of ancient cave markings requires more culturally and materially relativistic investigation.

What if they were just the first tripadvisor reviews? “Great cave - bad wifi - good ventilation - stayed for 3 nights - i’ll rate it 5 fingers”

Imagine thousands of years into the future. An alien archaeologist (or perhaps a creature evolved from meerkats) is trying to work out what "keep left", "hard hat mandatory" and "no tumble dry" symbols mean. The word "ritual" will no doubt occur.

I would like to pose the possibility that they were the map of the cave system. Cave systems can be very confusing but a mark that says that way to the opening would be essential.

That green door the cavemen installed was functional, yet festive.

The caves were the closest things that early man had to a refrigerator. The kids drawings always end up in the refrigerator.

The caves in SW France were like condominiums. Warm secure with high ceilings and walls to paint on the way we hang pictures. I visited Peche-Merle and was amazed by the beautiful paintings of fish horses ‘bison’ and hand prints like signatures and a river running through. A true underworld and the origin of later Styx and Homeric underworld of Classical mythology.

I'm imagining that these symbols were written all over the place but they only survived in caves.

When I'm in a cave I often find myself wondering wtf am I doing in a cave?

Geez people, often the presenters here aren't professional speakers, they're specialists in their respective fields. Cut them some slack, they're brave for speaking in front of a room full of people, not as easy as it looks.

Super fascinating! I often wonder about the histories that occurred long before we were able to share them with future generations. Your work is so important. Thank you for sharing this!

I read her book, First Signs. It's really fascinating and worth looking at. Her idea to catalog abstract markings in ancient inscriptions across Europe to try to assign meaning is unique and gives evidence of very extensive social organization among people in the remote past.

The emotion she is going through the talk shows how passionate she is about her work! Love and respect. ❤

"Why always in cave?" Simple answer: The others outside where washed away by rain!

Just occurred to me while watching (for the second time, as I saw it few years back already): first, as little as I know, if people were equipped with only the torch (with some pitch), there would be lot of soot on the roof of the ceiling. I believe this wasn't always the case, so I'm rather thinking they used to bring the material for making the fire and lit a fire that lasted several hours. A follow-up thought is, what in the world these people do in such remote parts of caves for so long? My memory suggested a solution: for example, the Native Americans had an initiation ritual where young men on the brink of adulthood went to a remote place to keep vigil and dream and follow their dreams. When they kept vigil for several days and nights (plus ate who knows what mushrooms or herbs which could have brought the visions even more reliably and sooner), they got dreams/visions and they remembered them. Then they went back to their tribe and let their shaman know and he would help them interpret the dreams. On the basis of this, they got their warrior name, and searched for some essence of that dream and when found, prepared it and made their own "medicine" that they wore in a pouch hanging around their neck. So, what if these places were likewise the places of their young men's vigil or initiation rites? What if the pictures on the wall were the expression of their dreams and visions?

Fascinating. Great to hear someone speak so knowledgeably and with such enthusiasm. Great talk. Thank you.

maybe the cave floors weren't so high 40k years ago. lotsa water could have flowed through since then and added dirt to the cave....

All I could think about when I watched this video was "hobo" signs. Perhaps signs telling others of what benefits or dangers lurked in the surroundings, like a treasure map for a transient population. It certainly points to a certain level of awareness that separate "others" might benefit from this knowledge. I am a not at all familiar with this area of study though, so I could just be restating the obvious.

I find it funny that these brilliant scientists always forget to ask the most basic questions. If you're 250m under the ground without any of the technologies we have access to today, I'm sure a large portion of the symbols goes towards knowing your position and finding your way back to the surface. I once went deep into the ground with two friends in Mexico. We had a Mexican boy as our guide who was about 14 years old. He had around 10 lamps in his bag and pointed out that if we ran out of light there we were all going to die for sure. It might seem logical when you're reading this but it becomes far more significant when you're deep down in that cave. I simply can't imagine how these people got that deep without any battery powered lamps, but I can imagine how much effort they put into getting back out. So why wasn't this brought up in this video as an explanation of the purpose of some of these symbols?

I am still waiting for the next episode of this talk !