A ground-breaking new study suggests an early form of writing emerged thousands of years before experts previously thought. The sequences of mysterious signs and symbols carved onto artefacts found in Germany led researchers to challenge the theory writing began in Mesopotamia in about 3,000 BCE.

They suggest our Stone Age ancestors were carving signs on figurines, sculptures and tools some 40,000 years ago, according to new analysis by linguist Christian Bentz at Saarland University and archaeologist Ewa Dutkiewicz at the Museum of Prehistory and Early History in Berlin. Researchers suggest the signs share the same level of complexity as the earliest known proto-cuneiform script, which emerged tens of thousands of years later.

An international research team pored over more than 3,000 signs carved onto 260 prehistoric objects for the study, finding lines, notches, dots and crosses engraved onto the objects, many of which were found in caves in the Swabian Jura region.

This includes a craving of a small mammoth found in the Vogelherd Cave in Lone Valley in south-west Germany.

Researchers said the figurine was carved by a Stone Age human from the tusk of a mammoth and marked with rows of dots and crosses.

A plate made of mammoth ivory discovered in a cave in the Ach Valley includes a depiction of a human-like lion beast similarly engraved.

Professor Bentz told Eureka Alert: “Our research is helping us uncover the unique statistical properties – or statistical fingerprint – of these sign systems, which are an early predecessor to writing.”

Archaeologist Ewa Dutkiewicz said: “Countless tools and sculptures from the Palaeolithic, or the Old Stone Age, bear intentional sign sequences.”

She suggested researchers have only just begun to scratch the surface of the many sequences of signs to be found on Stone Age artefacts.

Ms Dutkiewicz said the artefacts date back to when Homo sapiens spread from Africa and settled in Europe where they came across Neanderthals.

Professor Bentz said the signs are unrelated to modern writing systems and don’t represent spoken languages.

He said the research team’s findings show that Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers developed a system of symbols with a density of information comparable to the earliest proto-cuneiform tablets from ancient Mesopotamia, which came 40,000 years later.

The expert explained: “Sign sequences in proto-cuneiform script are also repetitive and the individual signs are repeated at a similar rate. In terms of complexity, the sign sequences are comparable.”

One thing the study doesn’t do is reveal what Stone Age humans were trying to record in the markings.