[1] Graphism began some 30,000 years BC, not as a photographic representation of reality but as an abstraction that was geared toward magical-religious matters.
While it can be claimed that language merely represents a logical development of the vocal signals of the animal world, nothing comparable to the writing and reading of symbols existed before the dawn of homo sapiens.
[1] It has been hypothesized that graphism first appeared in the form of tight curves or series of lines engraved in bone or stone.
However, there has been no substantial proof to support this hypothesis, with the only comparison being the Australian tjurunga, stone or wood tablets engraved with abstract designs (spirals, straight lines, and clusters of dots) that represented objects of religious significance.
Prehistoric art records are very numerous, and statistical processing has allowed us to unravel the general meaning of what they represented.