The Modern Lives of Ancient Symbols

https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/the-modern-lives-of-ancient-symbols

by new_guy • 6 years ago

21 13 6 years ago

IncRnd• 6 years ago

It was tens of thousands of years ago when drawings were made on cave walls.

Did you know that

"After examining dozens of Ice Age cave sites across Europe, paleoarchaeologist Genevieve von Petzinger discovered our ancestors repeatedly used 32 signs." [1]

"That fits well with the discovery of a 70,000-year-old block of ochre etched with cross-hatching in Blombos cave in South Africa. And when von Petzinger looked through archaeology papers for mentions or illustrations of symbols in cave art outside Europe, she found that many of her 32 signs were used around the world (see “Consistent doodles”). There is even tantalising evidence that an earlier human, Homo erectus, deliberately etched a zigzag on a shell on Java some 500,000 years ago. “The ability of humans to produce a system of signs is clearly not something that starts 40,000 years ago. This capacity goes back at least 100,000 years,” says Francesco d’Errico from the University of Bordeaux, France." [2]

[1] https://ideas.ted.com/what-the-mysterious-symbols-made-by-ea...

[2] https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23230990-700-in-searc...

lostlogin• 6 years ago

That fits well with the discovery of a 70,000-year-old block of ochre etched with cross-hatching in Blombos cave in South Africa.

I did a hopeful check to see if it was a hashtag. It was.

SarikayaKomzin• 6 years ago

I was standing in Magic Kingdom at Disney World in Orlando about a year ago and had a very similar thought:

If alien archeologists ever came to a post-human Earth, they might discover the ruins of Disney World and mistake it for our temples. A tribute to a pantheon of gods.

I guess it sort of _is that_ in a way, ha.

clojurenoob• 6 years ago

Even more so if they could see the worship games we play in front of our own personal, illuminated alters.

082349872349872• 6 years ago

Besides colour schemes for national flags https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24257599 another way to guess ages is when regional flags' symbolism rampantly incorporate flagrantly male charges.

Contrast https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drapeau_de_la_Californie#/medi...

with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coat_of_arms_of_Bern#/media/Fi...

or even https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drapeau_et_armoiries_du_canton...

etc.

sriku4• 6 years ago

Is "wedjat" linked to "widget"?

throwaway_pdp094• 6 years ago

Literally 20 secs of googling would have answered that for you. No. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/widget

sriku4• 6 years ago

Not sure if you're seeing something different on that page, but for my view, the "widget" page makes no mention of "wedjat" and vice versa. But it is spelled "wadjet" instead .. and that page makes no mention of widget either.

The Modern Lives of Ancient Symbols

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