Communication · c. 43,000 years ago

Tally marks (Lebombo bone)

Notches cut in a baboon fibula: the first surviving external record of a count.

The Lebombo bone from the mountains between South Africa and Eswatini carries 29 notches and is about 43,000 years old; the Ishango bone from Congo, about 20,000 years old, has grouped tallies. Tallies moved memory out of the head and onto an object, the idea behind all accounting and writing.

See it in the living tree Wikipedia

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 1

Engraved ochre (Blombos) 98k BCE

What it led to 1

Clay accounting tokens 8000 BCE

Related measurements

The dashed line marks when it first worked.

World population over a million years Latest: 6.27k million people (2000) Source: DeLong 1998, table 'Total World Population' (Kremer series); Kremer 1993, Population Growth and Technological Change: One Million B.C. to 1990, QJE 108(3)

World GDP over a million years Latest: 41k billion 1990 international $ (2000) Source: DeLong 1998, Estimating World GDP, One Million B.C. - Present; Wikipedia: Gross world product (DeLong table, cross-check)

Literate share of the world Latest: 87.7 % (2024) Source: Our World in Data