this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2023
26 points (100.0% liked)

Linguistics

20 readers
1 users here now

This community was migrated to [email protected] (Kbin link).

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
26
Why was writing invented so few times throughout history? (lemmy.blahaj.zone)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
3 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

From what I’ve seen, writing was independently invented somewhere between 3 to 6 times. With so many languages and linguistic communities, why have so few independently invented writing?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

I’m sorry I can’t answer you, because I don’t know. But I love the question and have several more myself.

Do we know every invention of writing or just the surviving ones? What is writing? Are hieroglyphs writing? Where do hieroglyphs end and cave paintings start?