Anthropologist Genevieve von Petzinger is constructing a database of our earliest signs and symbols - markings drawn or painted by humans on cave walls up to 60,000 years ago. The interesting thing about this work is that certain symbols recur at different caves, geographically distant, and across tens of thousands of years. What does all this mean? Petzinger has no solid answer, but she does have some interesting theories. Entoptic patterns very similar to these symbols are seen by shamans in altered states of consciousness, and it could be that these oddly common cave art symbols arose directly from the human brain, and were accessed via religious trance.
Read more here: Human Ingenuity: A 100,000-Year-Old Story via forbes.com
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