Project Description
2024-2028
Humans store information outside of their minds. This capacity for information encoding is reflected in symbols and written language, and it underlies artificial computing systems. It is a hallmark of human evolution. Traces of this capacity have "fossilized" in the archaeological record reaching back into the Paleolithic of c. 400 000 to 11 000 thousand years ago. The EVINE project (Evolution of Visual INformation Encoding) proposes to digitize large scale samples of paleolithic finds, and to compare their information encoding potential to ancient and modern writing. This enables us to pinpoint the transitions in information encoding from the first signs to the information age.
This project is funded by an ERC Starting Grant (ERC, EVINE, 101117111).
Visit at the Seminar für Ur- und Frühgeschichtliche Archäologie, Universität Jena
March 2026Ewa Dutkiewicz and Chris Bentz visit the Seminar für Ur- und Frühgeschichtliche Archäologie at the Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena for data collection. Thanks to Clemens Pasda and Enrico Paust for hosting us.
Article published on signs of the Swabian Aurignacian
February 2026First main article of the EVINE project on Humans 40,000 y ago developed as system of conventional signs published by Chris Bentz and Ewa Dutkiewicz.
