Prehistoric Semiotics: The Cognitive Origins of Graphic Communication

[Indian edition]

In today’s world, being a graphic designer means living at the intersection of creativity and technology. Design software is as essential to our craft as the pencil once was to the draughtsman. But a recent design study we conducted at an eighth-century archaeological site pushed us to look further back, to question not just the tools we use but the very origins of why we design at all.

Long before Adobe, before the printing press, even before written language, humans were already designers. Since the dawn of our species, we’ve been driven by a restless curiosity, a desire to make life not only easier but more meaningful. Somewhere in that long evolutionary journey, our ancestors discovered something extraordinary: that a mark on a wall, a carved figure, or a pattern of color could stand for an idea. It could speak without sound. This was the birth of creative symbology, the first attempt to turn thought into form. It’s from these primal gestures that our modern languages eventually emerged, and with them, the roots of design itself. What’s fascinating is that the impulse to create symbols didn’t begin with us. Neanderthals were drawing long before Homo sapiens walked through Europe. The oldest known cave paintings, red ochre shapes in a Spanish cave, date back some 65,500 years, and they weren’t made by us but by them. Later, humans refined the art of representation, creating figurative drawings and carvings that have survived for more than 40,000 years in sites scattered from Indonesia to France.

For forty millennia, humanity has been building upon those first brushstrokes of meaning. Every visual culture, from the hieroglyphs of Egypt to the icons on your phone screen, can trace a lineage back to that first spark of prehistoric communication. And that’s really what our recent exploration led us to consider: that design, at its core, is not about aesthetics or tools. It’s about communication.

It’s how we read a brand, how we interpret an image, how we feel something from a color or shape. Every logo, poster, and typeface is a small act of translation between thought and perception. As designers, we’re not just creating visuals. We’re continuing a 65,000-year-old conversation, one that began when someone, somewhere in a dark cave, picked up a piece of pigment and decided to leave a message behind.

Bhima Devi Archaelogical Site, Panchpura

In an effort to unravel the silent language of prehistoric symbols, AFOI recently led an archaeological survey and guided tour of the 8th-century temple complex at Panchpura, a site often described as the Khajuraho of North India, where stone and myth still seem to speak across the centuries. The air there is thick with memory; every carving, every curve of sandstone, whispers a fragment of an ancient visual code.

For a graphic designer, especially one immersed in the modern grammar of brand identity, few experiences can match the thrill of stepping away from the glow of screens and into the tactile world where symbols were first born. At Panchpura, the icons aren’t vectors or pixels, they’re chisel marks, weathered motifs, and mythic narratives fossilized in stone. To stand before them is to feel design stripped to its essence: communication carved into permanence.

Long before modern design existed, humans were already encoding thought in stone and space. At the 8th-century temple complex of Panchpura, every carving and sculpted relief seems to breathe with intention, revealing a profound cognitive originality. These forms were more than decoration; they structured meaning, memory, and belief through a visual language that transcends time. Each symbol was an experiment in making thought tangible, enduring across generations long before typefaces or screens would ever exist.

For archaeologists, deciphering these symbols is an endless pursuit, a dialogue with the past. For graphic designers, the lesson is intimate and immediate. There is a power in understanding the timelessness, depth, and communicative force of these ancient forms. They remind us that design is more than aesthetics or persuasion; it is an act of connection, a way to shape how people think and feel. Designers in the Indian subcontinent, in particular, have the chance to mine this rich visual heritage, to explore a language of design rooted in culture, belief, and story. When approached with curiosity and care, that language can be shared with the world, carrying with it the weight and beauty of a civilization that spoke long before words.

For me, joining AFOI’s archaeological survey was more than a professional curiosity; it was a rare convergence of theory and wonder. It underscored a simple, enduring idea: before the language of design was written in logos and fonts, it was carved in symbols.

Through this encounter, I realized that understanding these semiotics could help today’s branding become not just seen, but felt deeply human, enduring, and profoundly connected. This learning led to a profound and striking contrast between the symbolic communication of the past and the way symbols function today.

In ancient times, symbols were vessels of belief, memory, and collective identity, crafted to endure and to be lived with. They carried narratives that shaped entire communities and guided daily life. Today, by contrast, symbols are often transactional, designed primarily to capture attention, convey a message quickly, or drive consumption. The depth, resonance, and ritualistic power of ancient symbols is rarely mirrored in modern usage, yet studying them offers invaluable insight into how design can move beyond mere visibility and achieve lasting cultural and emotional impact.

Below are five such important learnings we deciphered in our survey at Bhima Devi temple complex and museum:

Symbols as Living Narratives

Every temple carving, every sculpted relief functioned as a symbol of identity in its era, yet its purpose transcended commerce. Each intricate depiction communicated hierarchy, morality, mythology, and cultural ethos without uttering a single word. For modern branding, the insight is profound. Visual identity achieves true power not when it is merely striking, but when it conveys a story audiences can recognize, internalize, and emotionally inhabit. The ancients mastered the art of visual shorthand, and contemporary designers can only aspire to the same precision and depth.

Enduring Significance in Stone

Brand identity is not merely a question of visibility; it is a matter of resonance. The symbols etched by ancient artisans endure because they are imbued with meaning and collective memory. Modern brands, in contrast, often flourish briefly before fading into obsolescence, caught in cycles of style rather than substance. Panchpura teaches that longevity derives from embedding symbols in shared cultural values and narratives. Designers who seek enduring impact must consider not only aesthetic memorability but also emotional and societal gravitas.

The Primacy of Devotion

What we term branding, they called devotion. The influence of a logo pales in comparison to a belief that shapes lives. When communities surrounded temples, venerating their symbols daily, design became inseparable from lived experience. Contemporary brands rarely attain such intimacy, yet those that do, such as Apple, Nike, and Patagonia, succeed because they evoke identity, conviction, and belonging. Emotional veracity, rather than fleeting trends, is the engine of enduring symbolic power.

Design as Ritual

Ancient iconography functioned as a daily invocation of identity, culture, and values. Modern brands seldom achieve this level of intimacy, but when they do, it is no accident. The most compelling design is a ritual in miniature. Repetition and engagement with a symbol, whether carved in stone or enshrined in devotion, reinforce worldview and cultural memory. Brand architects can learn from this principle. Consistent, meaningful interactions transform visual identity into lived experience, fostering trust, loyalty, and relevance.

From Faith to Strategy

Where the ancients articulated existence through symbols of faith, today we articulate objectives through symbols of strategy. The intent of the ancient artisan was not tactical; it was ontological. For contemporary designers, the challenge is to imbue brands with comparable profundity. The goal is to craft symbols that transcend commerce, resonate culturally, and endure beyond quarterly metrics. By interrogating the semiotics of the past, we glimpse the future of design, not merely as a functional enterprise, but as a medium of cultural storytelling and collective memory.

As a practicing designer, I often reflect on the paradox at the heart of our craft: graphic design is inherently modern, yet its roots are ancient, deeply entwined with the semiotic practices of our ancestors. Working in India allows one to engage with design in a way that is both historically profound and culturally layered. Here, the visual language of temples, symbols, and traditional motifs offers inspiration that connects past and present, merging cognition, collective memory, and aesthetic principles into a practice that is not only functional but deeply human.