Here’s a bunch of things that came in over the past few days:
– Margaret Atwood likens Twitter to Fairyland.
– Cherie Priest explains what aspects of publishing authors can and cannot control.
– The Science Fiction World saga rumbles on. News here (via Neil so you have probably read it). Analysis at World SF News.
– The Independent wonders whether the ancient inhabitants of Scotland were literate. Little do they know that when Pictish writing is deciphered it will turn out to be largely early drafts of Culture novels.
Unfortunately all the Pictish study proved is that they didn’t draw pictures totally at random. They have not by any means established that the inscriptions are a written language. (Given the timing of the story– the original press release went out on 3/31– some of the language blogosphere thought it was an April Fool’s joke.)
The marks found on the ostrich eggshells are proof that early humans could use symbols to represent concepts, but, again, are a long way from being a written language.
Sorry to throw cold water all over that, it would have been neat…
I wonder whether or not the symbolic ‘ marks found on the ostrich eggshells’ might have been related not to Spoken/ Written language as we understand it but rather to concepts based upon their own senses as they conceived them to be important … symbols for, say, … Smells Like , as say a Dog or a variant of the Human Species might sense it ?
A written Language but not Our idea, or concept, of a written Language and thus inexplicable since we can’t relate to it ?