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 cou

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.