Originally published at: New evidence of African writing system that pre-dates European colonialists | Boing Boing
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I mean… I believe writing has been in Africa since ancient times… Is this a surprise?
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I mean even if you only count Egypt you’re looking at, what, approximately 3,000 BC for hieroglyphics. I am sure there are earlier examples
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Fucking Colonialists.
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I’m fairly certain that further south, that Punt probably had writing around the same period… and of course there is Ethiopia, which had writing well before it became the first (or second) Christian kingdom…
Always!
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Article also says its still in use today in some parts of Africa, but this researcher is “discovering” it and i’m puzzled at the wording of such a sentence. Still i think that its an important cultural aspect of African history that needs to be preserved and further studied
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The article says that Ngom found his father’s note in 2004, so he has been researching Ajami for nearly twenty years now.
But the earliest publication cited in the Wikipedia article is from 1971.
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Perhaps it’s “discovering” in the “…discovered a neighborhood in Brooklyn…” sense of the word…
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I got the same sense too but the phrasing bothered me
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Here’s an interesting piece about the marks cave people made on their paintings, which have been found to be an early form of maths/writing.
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Yeah, this. European colonialists didn’t get to Africa until fairly recently. There was at least some communication between Ancient Egypt and sub-Saharan Africa a couple thousand years before Europeans showed up. It would be amazing if Arabic-based writing systems weren’t in use in Africa before the start of European colonies.
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ajami is mentioned within the first 90 seconds, though the subject is more recent script inventions
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NativeLang is a great channel. I need to catch up on his videos. A real passion for the history and origins and language!
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The Wakandan alphabet in the Marvel movies was based on the Nsibidi writing system that has been around in Nigeria since at least 400 AD, probably much earlier.
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