Join us as we explore the ways data have been visualized throughout history, from ancient times to the modern era.
Today, we look at tally bones, which are the oldest form of data visualization discovered to date!
What are tally bones? #
Tally bones are elongated pieces of bone marked with notches.
Although notched bones have been discovered originating as far back as 80,000 years ago, the notches on tally bones appear to have a functional meaning. The oldest tally bones are dated to between 40,000 and 20,000 BCE.
Tally bones may have been used as mnemonic devices to keep track of quantities or as calendars to keep track of dates. If this hypothesis is correct, tally bones would be the earliest mathematical tool.
Lebombo bone. #
Discovered in the Border Cave of the Lebombo mountains between South Africa and Eswatini in the 1970s, the Lebombo bone has 29 notches. These notches were made using a variety of cutting edges. The bone itself is a baboon fibula bone about 7.5 cm long.
Credit: Robert Hart, The McGregor Museum, Kimberley, South Africa. Image source.
Given the number of notches, it is speculated that the bone was used as a lunar calendar. Some have also speculated it could have been used to track menstruation, making Lebombo women the first mathematicians.
Dating back to around 40,000 BCE, the Lebombo bone is possibly the world’s oldest data visualization.
Ishango bone. #
Discovered in 1950 in Ishango, Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Ishango bone dates back to around 20,000 BCE. It is about 10 cm long and has 168 notches arranged into three distinct columns.
Credit: Thierry Hubin, Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences. Image source.
The arrangement of the notches is not random. Scholars generally believe the Ishango bone was more than a simple tally, serving some unknown mathematical purpose. Some have suggested that doubling patterns and groups of prime numbers could be evidence of early mathematical knowledge.
Criticism. #
When interpreting artifacts, we must be careful not to project modern ideas onto the people of the ancient world. We know that the patterns present in tally bones were made deliberately, and that these bones are similar to other tally devices used throughout history. Some tally sticks are still in use today!
However, their exact purpose is unknown. We don’t know enough about these ancient people to say for certain why they notched these bones. That the bones were created to record some kind of data for later reference is a likely explanation, but competes with others: the bones might be artwork or ritual objects that exhibit mathematical patterns by chance.
A single bone may well collapse under the heavy weight of conjectures piled onto it.
— George Gheverghese Joseph