The remains of a prehistoric civilization? Experts find shells with inscriptions 500,000 years ago, and the meaning is still unclear

Indonesia is located in Southeast Asia and is known as the country of ten thousand islands. In fact, the number of islands in Indonesia has reached 17,508, which has far exceeded the number of ten thousand, so the title of the country of ten thousand islands is worthy of the name.

In ancient times, each independent island was a closed space, which was isolated from external information for a long time. Therefore, for some experts, studying the activity trajectories of early humans on the islands can solve the problem of human evolution. trajectory.

Due to the small land area of ​​Indonesia, only more than 1.91 million square kilometers, its population is as high as 271 million, ranking fourth in the world. Although there are many islands in Indonesia, the population density is also very large, so the footprints of modern humans are all over the islands, and it is impossible to find indigenous people who live alone in isolation.

Therefore, if you want to find traces of ancient humans in these islands, you can only find out the traces of their existence through underground digging, and you can only conduct research in this way.

Among the more than 17,000 islands in Indonesia, there is one island that is quite special, that is Java Island. This island has a pleasant climate, fertile land, and various natural resources. The area of ​​this island is only 138,000, but Indonesia lives on it. people, accounting for about half of the country’s population, reaching 141 million.

Modern humans like to live on the island of Java. As ancient humans, they also like to live on the island of Java. Studies have found that as early as more than 1 million years ago, a group of Javan ape-men lived on the island of Java.

After more than 200,000 years of reproduction, their footprints were spread all over the island of Java more than 800,000 years ago. A relatively closed island, the Java ape-man that evolved independently has become some experts to study the mystery of the origin of mankind.

The Java ape-man belongs to Homo erectus. For a long time, after the Java ape-man was discovered, it was not recognized by mainstream science at that time. This situation was not confirmed until the Beijing ape-man skull was discovered. Human beings in the middle of the evolution process Link, that is, the existence of Homo erectus.

With the recognition of the Javan ape-man, some paleoanthropologists have also developed a strong interest in Java Island, because a relatively closed island has more research value than the ancient humans found in Eurasia.

In 2007, experts from Oxford University were invited to Indonesia to conduct excavation surveys. The excavation site was located near the Brantas River where the Javanese ape-man was first discovered.

In the process of this excavation, a trace of ancient human life was found. Unfortunately, during this excavation process, no ancient human fossils were found, but it was not without harvest. More than 100 pieces of ancient human beings were found. Shells with traces of life.

Why is it so certain that these shells are related to ancient humans rather than nature?

Because these shells are engraved with “characters”, of course, the characters on the shells are very different from the characters used by modern humans. They are more like some symbols or geometric lines, which are in uppercase letters in English. A, M , W class is somewhat similar.

At first, experts were not sure whether these “words” were marks left on the shells by being scratched by rocks or other hard objects during the impact of water.

In order to find out how the characters on the shells were formed, the research team invited Professor De Eric of the University of Bordeaux in France.

Looking at the microscope, Deeric was pretty sure that the marks were made by a single person with a sharp tool, independently over a period of time, because the scratches on the shells were done with the same technique and force, and at the inflection point of the serrated tail, there was a slight Pause, then write in the opposite direction.

And through Deeric’s guess, when ancient humans wrote on the shells, these shells were firmly fixed, otherwise even if there were sharp tools, it would not be possible to carve such simple and powerful lines on the smooth shells. .

Since it is determined that the characters on these shells were written by ancient humans, how long have these shells been from today?

After carbon 14 identification, these shells are about 500,000 years old, which means that the characters on these shells are about 300,000 years earlier than the ancestors of today’s human beings, Homo sapiens.

This not only makes experts question, how did ancient humans engrave on shells? What do these regular handwritings mean?

What tools did ancient humans use to engrave on shells?

The main component of the shell is calcium carbonate, and its hardness is relatively hard. It is obviously impossible to engrave such regular and smooth lines on the shell with ordinary tools.

This kind of tool requires sharpness and high hardness, and according to the scratches on the shell, it can be judged that the front end of the tool is relatively sharp.

The most likely tool, that is, metal utensils, was also invented by humans within thousands of years, and more than 500,000 years ago, let alone metal utensils, ancient humans were not even able to use simple tools, Mayan civilization. Even in the last few hundred years, there has been no record of large-scale use of metal utensils, let alone ancient humans more than 500,000 years ago.

So where are the shells found, are there any tools to do this?

Yes, that is shark teeth, which can meet the requirements of engraving on shells.

But sharks are not so easy to catch. Even now, it is not easy for a person to use primitive tools to catch sharks, let alone 500,000 years ago.

So if you want to catch sharks, 500,000 years ago, you need the sincere cooperation of everyone, and there is a certain social division of labor, which is the embryonic form of human civilization.

The conditions for the birth of human civilization are language and writing. Only when these two appear, human beings can understand each other’s intentions and complete multi-person cooperation. All of this may have happened 500,000 years ago, which is a bit incredible.

What does the lettering on the shell mean?

To be honest, it has been 15 years now, and experts still don’t know the meaning of the words on the shell, which has become a mystery that has not been solved in recent years.

For some pictographs, it is easy to understand, because the general graphic characters above can understand the meaning they want to express, and the “characters” similar to this kind of geometric figures are obviously incomprehensible if there is no comparison.

Just like giving English words to the ancients thousands of years ago, if there is no comparison table between English words and Chinese characters, even the learned ancients will not be able to decipher the meaning of English words throughout their lives.

And if the ancient human beings on Java Island more than 500,000 years ago learned to co-produce in the process of survival, then the words engraved on the shells must have their meanings, just like thousands of years ago, they were engraved on the back of turtles. the same as Oracle.

Either astronomical records, or digital records, etc., but since so far, only inscribed shells have been found in this place, and only such an example can be studied. Deciphering its meaning is even more difficult.

Conclusion:

Although the meaning of the lettering on the shell is still unclear, experts have also given their own guesses, that is, the 500,000-year-old ancient humans scribbled on the shell, that is, graffiti, just like the unconscious graffiti behavior of children Same.

Of course, this explanation is not accepted by all experts. When food was scarce in ancient times, it was obviously unacceptable that people would not go hunting to fill their stomachs, but spend their time and effort on useless things.

But at the same time, some other experts put forward their opinions, that is, whether these shell engravings are related to prehistoric civilization, that is, on Java Island, or they independently evolved prehistoric civilization, maybe their civilization is not very developed, but they are more intelligent than human ancestors. People learn to divide labor in society earlier, cooperate sincerely, and invent language and writing.

But over the course of time, this prehistoric civilization that was born was destroyed for some reason, and finally the human ancestor Homo sapiens established a modern civilization on this land more than 300,000 years later.

Do you think these seashell lettering are meaningful, or are they doodles that experts say are meaningless?