Here, it is called Rolling Thunder as the lines are said to represent clouds (and are a good omen for crops because clouds bring needed rain). Emerging in Ancient ChinaД¬rossing to yet another continent, we find the fret pattern next in China at around the same time. Images via MARINA ARABADZHI, Anastasia Mazeina, and Aghidel. It performs disappearing and reappearing acts, then pops up after long absences, inexplicably having traversed time and space. The communities of paleolithic Ukraine and fourth dynasty Egypt (separated by millennia) obviously could not have had conversations about this pattern.Д«ut, the Meander is curious like this. ItвЂ™s the same arrangement of squared geometric lines, but elegantly carved into Egyptian stonework. Still long before Greece adopted it, it appears on graceful borders in Egyptian tombs from the fourth dynasty (roughly 2600-2500 BCE). We pick up the Meander pattern again centuries later. We donвЂ™t know what the ancient Ukraine community called this pattern (if anything), and itвЂ™s impossible to trace it directly from the paleolithic period straight to now (because relics have a way of going unpreserved).

Image via Gianni Dagli Orti/Shutterstock and Werner Forman Archive/Shutterstock. There, in 20,000 BCE, on wide ivory bracelets made of mammoth tusk (which look like chic cuffs even today), there were carved designs of this fret pattern. Mammoths roamed the earth, specifically the earth in the Mezin area of Ukraine. After it appeared there, we can trace the motif directly to Rome, then to Europe at large.Д«ut, much longer ago, this pattern arose in some unexpected places. Greek culture used the Meander prolifically in much of their art and architecture for thousands of years. In every culture where the pattern showed up, its creators added their own visual flourish, and imbued their own meaning to it. (The word meander comes from a twisting river in Turkey called the Maender.) Image via Design Pics Inc/Shutterstock and L. But, many Greeks also called the pattern a Meander (as Homer did, in The Iliad) due to its backwards and forwards, decidedly indirect path. The Greeks felt this squarish design looked a lot like an old key. The winding, geometric pattern has at least a dozen names from a dozen (or more) cultures that employed it: rolling thunder, fret, stepped fret, meander, key, running dog, zigzag, labyrinth, jigsaw, and more. While Greek key is a common name for the pattern, it has had aliases from its many incarnations throughout time. Images via Kanunnikova Viktoriia, Martyshova Maria, kavalenkava, and Babich Alexander. For thousands of years, it adorned everything in Greek life-architecture, floor tiles, paintings. The Greek key pattern is the decorative, border-lying design seen on countless earthenware Greek pots as old as 300 BCE. The Greek Key Pattern has been around for centuries-and has yet to go out of style.

Greek meander pattern