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I fail to see how counting months rather than kills makes this writing and not simply counting.

• ggm 4y ago
  A sequence is not the same as a sum. Counting is not the same as denoting a sequence in a set. A sequence implies communicating at least two and probably more concepts. Counting at best communicates two things, the amount and the aggregate type. A sequence communicates an order and the ordinal instances present and the type classifier and arguably the terminals of the sequence (both its length and denoted start and end or re-start) and for a cyclical sequence the fact it is a cycle. [Addition: If it's not 6to7 months out of 13 (lunar calendar) it even might have to indicate direction (left to right or right to left) and implicitly denotes summer and winter if not explicitly, the "best" hunting months being tied to seasons.]. Counting is not the same as marking "which" These are quite complex abstractions. They go to order in time and "best" months to hunt in. It's language.
• Someone 4y ago
  The paper goes into that, calling for a discussion on how to define “writing” and, for now, calling this ”proto writing”. I do agree this is a step up from counting. These messages say things like “(deer) give birth 3 months after the start of spring and disappear after 6”. Problem, of course, is that this language only has 2 or 3 words (3 symbols, but the paper argues two of them are synonyms), so it requires context such an image of an animal drawn next to it and implicit parts such as “after the start of spring”. That’s not sufficient to write complex texts, but it is a step up from just tallying stuff.