Proto-writing

Proto-writing is a system of signs that conveys meaning directly, by what the signs stand for, rather than by spelling the words of a spoken language. A tally of sheep, a sign for barley beside a number, a seal naming an office: each records something, and a reader who knows the conventions can recover it in any language. Writing in the full sense adds a tie to speech, usually by the rebus principle, so that a sign can stand for a sound and any word can be written. The distinction matters for this site because an undeciphered proto-writing system has no language to decipher: the task is to reconstruct the bookkeeping, not to find the tongue. Damerow used the term for proto-cuneiform and dated full writing in Mesopotamia to the third millennium [@damerow2006origins]; the same question is live for proto-Elamite, the Indus signs and the Inka khipu. The test is whether the signs show any dependence on a particular language: phonetic spellings, word order, grammatical marking.