As a species, human beings have been on this planet for about 150,000 years. For most of that time they resembled people, as we know them now, only physically. But around 47,000 years ago something dramatic seems to have happened. Here we begin to find archaeological evidence of ritual objects and ritual burials that suggest a culture that we can begin to recognize as human. One explanation for this relatively sudden change is the invention of something for which there can be no archaeological evidence: spoken language.

Spoken language involves abstract concepts and their recombination, and where spoken language leads, human thought will follow. With the birth of language came the birth of human consciousness as we know it today. The stream-of-consciousness thought process that we take for granted was a by-product of spoken language. Just try to stop thinking with words for a moment. For most people, this is almost impossible. Of course there is no archaeological evidence of ancient conversations, much less private thoughts. But just as children today seem to absorb language rather than ‘learn’ it, the human brain took to language like a sponge and shows no signs of ever leaving.

The evidence comes from scattered burial sites, and is particularly strong in those niches and cracks where this pre-historic cultural activity has remained unerased by the passage of time. Seeming almost miraculous when they were discovered in the mid-20th century, the cave art of modern-day France and Spain, including the famous caves at Lascaux, bring modern humans tantalizingly close to the once-living people of who created breathtaking work, with stable artistic conventions, from 40,000 to 20,000 years ago.

The specific purpose of these cave paintings is unknown and probably unknowable, but clearly they were an important cultural reference point. The dominant colors are red and black. The larger paintings are of very specific animals, rich in detail and in fascinating arrangements relative to each other. These portraits are skillfully woven into the undulating texture of the rock, for maximum effect when viewed by lamplight.

We also commonly find stencilled hand prints of red and black. It has been suggested that watching his hand merge with the cave wall as paint was blown through a tube maybe been a significant spiritual experience, a merging with an otherly underworld, but it might simply mean “I was here,” a statement that still compels writers today. An early theory to explain the missing and partially missing fingers of many of these hands was that the violence inherent in the culture of the time explained the number of scars and amputations of the average cave man. A more plausible explanation is that they are ‘clan signs’ or signals that involved the folding of fingers.

Even simpler marks, dots and lines, appear alone and in groups. These marks probably signify a count of something . . . but what? Without a living, talking human to explain them, these marks remain mute. But Susan Wise Bauer, in The History of the Ancient World, calls these simplest of signs “the seeds of writing.” In combination with pictographs, the simple marks that seem to represent an abstract concept, rather than a specific thing, and over the course of time, they will mutate and evolve into the characters we now know as our roman alphabet.

—Paul Dean, Letterforms, 2007.