Smells Fresher 2013-02-08

[Fairportfan]

Can't think where i saw it -

Human to vampire: So, you can come out in the daytime; why don't you?

Vampire, mildly snarky: We like to show off. Perfect night-vision isn't very impressive at 9:17 AM.

[Wyvern]

Modern Puebloans claim that the petroglyphs (images incised into rock rather than painted on it) common in the American Southwest are written language of a sort, with enough consistency of form and continuity that some of them can still be "read" by the modern people. This claim is somewhat controversial but many people who study petroglyphs (my MIL, the one who wrote the book mentioned above, is among them) think there may be something to it.

Good point; I'm certainly not as familiar with the petroglyphs of the region as your mother in law, but I'm aware they have a fairly consistent vocabulary of markings. (Do you happen to know if anyone's worked out the code for the water glyphs, if they are indeed directions?) We've never heard what detection threshold the Bibliothiki uses.

[bmonk]

The Anasazi date back to soon after the Clovis people existed... The Bibliothiki, of course, is Aeons older that any of those. It would be reasonable for a library annex/access point to exist in the middle of a flourishing, if remote, culture, to support those worthy of access to it...

Plausible...but the Anasazi didn't have writing, as far as we know.

Not altogether correct, although there is still some uncertainty. Modern Puebloans claim that the petroglyphs (images incised into rock rather than painted on it) common in the American Southwest are written language of a sort, with enough consistency of form and continuity that some of them can still be "read" by the modern people. This claim is somewhat controversial but many people who study petroglyphs (my MIL, the one who wrote the book mentioned above, is among them) think there may be something to it.

It is accurate, however, to say that the Anasazi didn't have anything like paper and pen, or other man-made things to write on and with, that we know of.

Unless they developed other non-writing forms. The Incas used knotted strings. Not saying it's likely--just that it's possible.

[Mark N]

[quote="bmonk"
Unless they developed other non-writing forms. The Incas used knotted strings. Not saying it's likely--just that it's possible.[/quote]


A point to remember is that the amount of knowledge that we do not have about the past far surpasses what we do know so they may have had a written language that just did not survive to the modern age.