Symbols, Cavemen and the Conscious mind

David Jordan
Jul 30, 2017 · 2 min read

All across Europe, you can still find symbols scrawled across deep caves, rock shelters and even some open sites. Some symbols date back 40,000 years, which present humans, animals and abstract shapes. The geometric shapes far outweigh the images of animals and humans. This shows that symbols and icons have been used as a means of communication since the cavemen era. However, there is no proof that an alphabet was created that far back.

I wanted to start off with a brief introduction to symbols and icons, because I think this gives us a good insight into the human mind. Although there is evidence of social circles forming their own languages through speech, cavemen may have felt that graphical communication could be just as, or more effective. This is intriguing, because Cavemen had a pretty clean slate when it came to communication, and the human mind at it’s purest form, intuitively turned to symbols as a means to communicate some form of meaning. Is there really more evidence needed, to suggest symbols and icons provide clear and effective meaning?

For the Cavemen to interpret these scrawled images, they needed to create a new channel into the soul, where art could provide access to energy and meaning. Although, having said that, we do need to have the correct level of conciousness to understand and interpret certain symbols and icons. A cavement who had never contacted a certain animal for example, would struggle to interpret an icon of that particular animal.

Today, in our digital world, icons are used to support content and design. They help us to define content in a nutshell, draw attention and increase readibility. Our conscious mind will interpret an icon much faster than reading, say, three or four words. This is particularly interesting, as the human mind still functioned the same way, 40,000+ years ago. Before language became complex, with new words and meanings being born and coined, man decided that icons would be quickly understood and interpreted by their follow humans much faster. To this day, we are still using the exact same tactic. The only difference is, they drew theres on stone 100 feet underground, and we now design our icons for retina screens.

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade