this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2023
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Linguistics

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Why was writing invented so few times throughout history? (lemmy.blahaj.zone)
submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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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?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

Just to build on that, writing is only really useful if lots of people can do it. And the most obvious type of system, logographic, takes a lot of work to learn even after the work of developing it. So I can see how it would be a hard sell until you meet a culture that already uses it to great effect.