In what may be a major archaeological breakthrough, an independent researcher has suggested that the earliest writing in human history has been hiding in plain sight in prehistoric cave paintings in Europe, a discovery that would push the timeline of written language back by tens of thousands of years, reports a new study.Ben Bacon, a furniture conservator based in London, U.K. who has described himself as “effectively a person off the street,” happened to notice these markings while admiring images of European cave art, and developed a hunch that they could be decipherable.Now, Bacon has unveiled what he believes is “the first known writing in the history of Homo sapiens,” in the form of a prehistoric lunar calendar, according to a study published on Thursday in the Cambridge Archeological Journal.“Overall, there is a remarkable degree of correlation between the numbers of lines/dots in sequences with and without and the position of and the mating and birthing behaviors of our analytical taxa,” the researchers said in the study.“Our data do not explain everything, but even taking imprecision and regional variability into account, the degree of support for our hypothesis is striking.” “Our data indicate that the purpose of this system of associating animals with calendar information was to record and convey seasonal behavioral information about specific prey taxa in the geographical regions of concern,” they added."