I recently learned that a number of African cultures used "memory devices" in order to assist in the recall of oral histories. Essentially, positions of beads o

I recently learned that a number of African cultures used "memory devices" in order to assist in the recall of oral histories. Essentially, positions of beads on an intricately-carved board indicated to the practitioner what to speak next, out of a massive corpus of knowledge. Looking at the amount of background knowledge necessary to make Eurasian written documents intelligible, though, I begin to wonder if the common notion that SoS Africa had no written language before colonialism is inaccurate. In both cases, you have esoteric data recording methodologies that can't be deciphered without essentially already knowing what's being communicated, albeit not structured as presented. Makes you wonder how many other ways of recording history that we, raised in a Eurasian tradition of transcribed alphabets/syllabaries encoding lexical thought, completely overlook because we simply have no concept of recording and conveying thoughts another way.