Design inference: What do these Stone Age markings on beads mean?

From Ice Age Europe, about 20,000-13,500 years ago:

During this period, around 19,000 years ago in southwestern France at a site called Saint-Germain-La-Rivière, an adult woman dies and is prepared for burial by members of her society. She is adorned with 70 red-deer teeth that were perforated by a flint tool to be used as beads; many of which have a unique engraved design and were smeared with red ochre. These beads provide a window into the period, giving an insight into the way our Magdalenian ancestors negotiated relationships, and the importance of this meshwork of relations to their survival. The burial context of these beads demonstrates how these relations took centre stage in the social lives of Magdalenian people. Untangling the object biographies of these beads – the way they were made, used and deposited – can reveal the creative ways our ancestors used objects to negotiate and embody intricate human-animal-object-landscape relationships. Insight into the ‘lives’ of these beads can be achieved by contextualising the successive stages of their biographies within the environmental and social conditions of the Magdalenian.

Nigel Warburton, “What a deer-tooth necklace says about our Ice Age ancestors” at Aeon

The bone deer teeth with the symbols are here, along with a proposed guide to Stone Age signs.

When “evolution” becomes history, it knocks a lot of nonsense off its pedestal. Remember when people couldn’t think that way back then?

See also: Oldest jewelry found so far at 46 kya

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