A new study suggests that some of the world’s earliest botanical art was much more than decoration.
Researchers have found that people living over 8,000 years ago were already using mathematical ideas when they painted flowers and plants on pottery.
The study, published in the Journal of World Prehistory, focuses on the Halafian culture of northern Mesopotamia, which flourished between 6200 and 5500 BCE.
Prof. Yosef Garfinkel and researcher Sarah Krulwich of the Hebrew University examined pottery from 29 archaeological sites and discovered hundreds of beautifully painted plant motifs.
These early artists had moved beyond the traditional prehistoric focus on human and animal figures and began portraying the plant world with great attention and care.
Their work marks one of the first times in human history when plants were chosen as a central artistic theme.
The researchers found a wide variety of plant depictions, including flowers, shrubs, branches, and large trees. Some images look quite realistic, while others are more stylized or abstract. What they all share is intentional design.
According to the authors, choosing to paint plants shows a shift in how people viewed their environment.
As communities settled into agricultural village life, they became more aware of patterns, symmetry, and visual balance. This new way of seeing the world began to appear in their art.
One of the most striking discoveries in the study is the presence of clear mathematical patterns in the pottery designs.
Many bowls feature flowers with petals arranged in numbers that follow a geometric pattern: 4, 8, 16, 32, and even 64. These repeating sequences do not appear to be random.
Instead, they suggest that ancient artists understood how to divide space evenly and create harmonious, structured images. This kind of spatial awareness shows an early, intuitive form of mathematical reasoning—developed long before written numbers or formal equations existed.
Garfinkel explains that the ability to divide space so precisely may have grown from practical needs in daily life, such as sharing food equally or dividing farmland within a village.
The study belongs to the field of ethnomathematics, which explores how mathematical ideas appear in cultural traditions, crafts, and art forms.
Interestingly, none of the plant images depict crops such as wheat or barley. Instead, the pottery features flowers and other non-edible plants.
Flowers often evoke positive feelings, so the researchers believe their presence in art may reflect beauty, joy, and emotional expression rather than practical concerns related to farming or ritual ceremonies.
The findings push back the timeline of mathematical thinking. Written mathematical records from Mesopotamia appear thousands of years later, but Halafian pottery shows that humans were already exploring concepts such as symmetry, repetition, and geometric sequence much earlier.
By documenting these early plant motifs and uncovering their hidden mathematical structure, the study offers a fresh look at how ancient communities understood both nature and numbers—and how creativity and early mathematical thought developed side by side.
Source: KSR.
