We read in the ARA One of those news stories that fascinates us Catalans. A study, published by the journal of the US National Academy of Sciences, concludes that "the first examples of writing appeared 40,000 years ago, engraved by our ancestors on stone objects," and not, as we thought, around 3000 BC. A German research team has analyzed several objects found at an archaeological site and has determined that they have the same "level of complexity and information density as the earliest examples of cuneiform writing from the ancient Mesopotamian civilization of some 5,000 years ago." In the photograph, we see a clay mammoth with a series of X's and dots engraved on it that don't seem decorative, but rather a record of a commercial transaction, as if the mammoth were the ledger or contract where we noted how many things were consumed. It's intriguing to see these crosses; exactly the same ones we would put on a chalkboard to remember things we've sold or bought.
There are nine Xs on one part of the mammoth's back, crossed by a line, as if the artist wanted to show that it was already done. Higher up there are a few more. Perhaps they were harvests, perhaps they were pieces of mammoth meat, perhaps they were mammoths and it was necessary to remember how many had been hunted, because perhaps they had been shared and things had to be asked for in return. The mammoth serves as a slate, and it is a mammoth, not a plain table, precisely so that it will be seen and not lost. It has to be present in the cave during the long winter, because in spring, when the cultivated plants come out, it will be necessary to remember that you gave me meat and I will give you fermented grapes. The mammoth is craftsmanship, and craftsmanship is the purest form of art. We like to surround ourselves with decorative objects in domestic life. We paint plates and ladles, and we buy cat-shaped figurines to write shopping lists. We are the same.
