This story is a gobsmacker. The standard chronology for the origins of writing systems begins about 5,000 years ago, but now we have a strong hypothesis for the possibility that human writing began many thousands of years before then.
This discovery accords with my view that human beings have been what we are today for at least 200,000 years. That is: just as intelligent, possessing a comparable volume of practical knowledge and dealing with the same interpersonal and social issues as we do.
A big mystery for me, though, is why did people 50,000 years ago crawl on their naked bellies deep into cave systems to draw pictures on the walls? What in the world were those Upper Paleolithic Einsteins thinking?
Tidewater News and Opinion Forum 
That is fascinating.
Whether crawling into a cave or walking might be just a matter of caves changing to close up an area. Plus light would be an issue.
Still, the decoding of lines and dots would be telling.
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Light in a cave is certainly a problem. I also wonder, How did the artists practice their skills and develop their paint technology in a world without paper?
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Plenty of wall space I suppose. Good thing they did not have papyrus or paper. They would be long gone after 50,000 years.
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