Au Gravettien, dans la grotte Cosquer (Marseille, Bouches-du-Rhône), l'Homme a-t-il compté sur ses doigts ?

Negative hands, occasionally with incomplete fingers, are often found in Paleolithic caves but so far have received no definitive explanation. Nowadays they are more commonly seen as the expression of a gestural language. In this paper, we suggest that the negative hands visible in the Cosquer cave and dating from around 27 000 BP could represent counting on fingers. Several arguments are developed to support this hypothesis. Furthermore we also suggest that the dots and dashes often associated with negative hands in numerous caves, might be another, more advanced way of representing numbers.