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I like writing systems and scripts especially obscure or ancients ones. It never even dawned on me to think of my local region as I did ancient Egypt, Greece, I
by dghughes 3y ago
I like writing systems and scripts especially obscure or ancients ones. It never even dawned on me to think of my local region as I did ancient Egypt, Greece, Italy etc.
I was talking to a friend he is Mi'Kmaq here in Canada we call the people here First Nations in the USA it's Native American. He said that the Mi'Kmaq had an old writing system. I checked into it and it predates any contact with Europeans and is one of the very few writing systems by native peoples here. It's called suckerfish writing or suckerfish script the name inspired by the tracks the fish makes in sand.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mi%EA%9E%8Ckmaw_hieroglyphic_writing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mi%EA%9E%8Ckmaw_hieroglyphic_w...
- AlotOfReading 3y agoThe traditional definitions by linguist tend to exclude anything that can't represent "all oral communication" as proto- or partial writing systems, which are often pejoratively labeled mnemonic systems. Systems that can represent the full range of spoken expression are labeled "true" or "full" writing. This had the convenient side effect of neatly classifying all the American writing systems as protowriting in the early 20th century, as well as some more controversial examples like Chinese. Some of those have since been walked back (e.g. Mayan), but most remain in that limbo. We have a somewhat better understanding today that there was a huge variety of visual communication systems across the Americas prior to European contact, but properly redefining the term "writing" to include them is a slow, ongoing process.