WRITING
In many parts of the world – France, India, Zimbabwe, and elsewhere – cave drawings and bone carvings have been discovered that were made during the archeological period referred to as the Upper Paleolithic in Europe and Asia and the Middle Stone Age in Africa. Roughly, this period lasted from 35 000 until 10 000 BP (= before present). Some researchers interpret these drawings and carvings as the earliest precursors of writing. The relevance to us of such claims is that writing depends upon language, since it can be defined in the following way: