32 geometric signs repeated across European Ice Age caves for 30,000 years

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Key facts

• Canadian PhD student Genevieve von Petzinger cataloged geometric signs (dots, lines, ladders, zigzags, triangles, spirals, hand stencils, penniforms, claviforms, tectiforms) in caves across France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy in the early 2000s
• Only about 32 recurring sign types were identified across hundreds of sites spanning roughly 30,000 years
• The same shapes appear across enormous distances — e.g., a ladder sign found in northern Spain and southern France; rows of dots found in the Pyrenees and 600 km away
• The span between the oldest and youngest signs runs to around 30,000 years; all recorded history fits inside the last 5,000 years
• The Chauvet painters lived more than 15,000 years before the Lascaux painters, yet shared the same symbolic vocabulary
• Chinese script, the oldest writing still in use, goes back barely a tenth of the duration of these cave signs

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