The Code on the Cave Walls

Written by John Abram

Early man was taught or he somehow developed a communication system that spanned the globe and lasted for thousands of years. Genevieve Von Petzinger made this discovery and annotated the symbols, which she found alongside cave paintings of animals in Europe. 

She concluded that the following 32 symbols were universal. They were used 65% of the time over a 30,000 year period. Written communication was born. 

As you can see, the symbols did all the talking. But what did they mean? Let’s look at a couple of approaches. 

Cave psychology says these symbols stem from within the mind. They are reproductions of the shapes we see in hallucinations and dreams. Man was in awe of the caves and thus created the symbols in response to being down there. Their meanings, therefore, lie within the psychology of the reasons we created them. The spiral, for example, could represent the divine. 

A more practical approach allows for the symbols to represent real things. There are sentences on the walls and the reader just needs to interpret them. Entire stories are held in the art. This Native American pictograph, for example, though it uses other symbols, records the defeat of a tribe. 

This piece tells the tale of a flood. Water is pictured running downhill and filling up a valley. 

Both approaches are good, but they are speculative, I believe when it comes to the pictured 32. And the thing I find most intriguing about these ancient signs is the fact that we are unable to decipher them. Although they were understood for thousands of years by people on different continents, they completely perplex us today. We have supercomputers and space stations but we can’t read these objects. 

In fact, I’ve begun to ask myself if it was a coded system if its meanings were meant to be encrypted. Was ancient man privy to knowledge that we do not possess today? 

At any rate, man drew them at cavernous depths so that they would be preserved. Their message was so important, we can conclude, that they made that effort. Therefore, we can ask ourselves, what it was that was so important about writing them down . . . and what they really mean. 

Images: Supplied by Author