Is this the earliest writing in Mesoamerica?

[@jhonleonardobaezescobar9140]

I'm a spanish native speaker and I consider my english level high enough to get to understand your videos but sometimes I have pause the video up and read each word of the CC. I love watching your videos because I have a crush on languages too and I'm learning french and portuguese since I like them very much. Your videos help me to improve my english every day. Thanks a lot and greetings from Colombia.

[@zero_anaphora]

Tell us how NativLang's spanish pronunciations are ;-)

[@designate_om]

​@@zero_anaphora not that guy but, while my first language was brazilian portuguese, i speak a good bit of spanish and can at least say that his pronunciation is very good. certainly better than a lot of americans i've heard (i live in los angeles, a few of my friends are pretty much fluent in spanish but most of them pronounce everything with rhotic 'r's and/or the hard english 't')

[@TDG361]

@@zero_anaphora He speaks it very well, actually. Cheers from Mexico

[@theanon5906]

Keep going :)

[@J11_boohoo]

I've got to be honest, though I find nativlang's videos great, I find them quite unorganised he puts in information in the middle of a sentence that we don't necessarily know, or an entire sentence about things that aren't thoroughly explained so it can get a bit wobbly but I do still love the way he makes videos but I see issues with them

[@NativLang]

So many beautiful glyphs!

[@lime2333]

Hey Nativlang! Thanks for making great vids!

[@mrcastillo4240]

Hi I l love your videos and channel. I wanted to ask if you can make a video about the linguistics aspect of the maya culture in Honduras, please

[@NativLang]

@@lime2333 And thank you for watching them!

[@theguy4429]

The oldest writing in America was the writing of mayonnaise

[@lime2333]

NativLang omg omg omg omg you replied! Thanks sooo much!

[@seanbeadles7421]

One of my coworkers at a past job was from Oaxaca and he actually natively spoke a Zapotec language and had learned both Spanish and English as second languages.

[@XavierbTM1221]

but i thought all amerindians died in the 16th century????

[@seanbeadles7421]

Benjamin Miranda nah, plenty are around just in hugely reduced numbers and their cultures are all changed forever. But people speak all sorts of Native American languages across the hemisphere.

[@vatolocosforever803]

@@XavierbTM1221 There's a whole lot of them there. It's about 27% and growing cuz no one's trying to kill them anymore

[@vatolocosforever803]

@@seanbeadles7421 There's a lot of them out there that keep their same culture..

[@carlosmarte428]

Benjamin Miranda That’s only really true for the Spanish Caribbean. North, Central, and South America still have notable Amerindian populations.

[@Ouvii]

2:14 One takes the pronunciation of other languages for granted, but that shift in English accent for "Oxford" took me off guard.

[@kacperwoch4368]

Shifting accents within one sentence is surprisingly difficult.

[@wachamcaulit]

Kacper Włoch as a Filipino, it is not really hard

[@odysseus231]

It was rather overdone for a British accent, but that's what made it unexpected and very funny (at least I thought so)

[@andrewdunbar828]

Just wait till he starts pronouncing every word in every sentence according to whether it came from Latin, Greek, Norman French, or Anglo Saxon (-:

[@moondust2365]

@@wachamcaulit True. At least, as a Filipino. Being bi-, tri-, or quadri- lingual and mixing languages via code-switching really helps with that.

[@samneibauer4241]

I think we have a MAJOR MOMENT IN THE HISTORY OF WRITING on our hands here

[@broccoliflorette1970]

Does anyone know who that narrator is? And why we haven't heard her since?

[@xmvziron]

@@broccoliflorette1970 as far as I know she's Josh's (Nativlang's) sister.

@@xmvziron for a second I read girlfriend xD

[@amehak1922]

Wish she could do audio books.

[@conlangknow8787]

Yeas

[@komaedanagito4real]

NativLang Thank you so much for this video. As a kid I was always made fun of for my love of history and language. Your channel has helped me realize that so many others have the same interests. Thank you.

[@celebres4672]

Sey Mi Gutang We Tandro Gutang We Tandro

[@MedinaDLuis]

Mexican here. Your pronunciation on spanish/prehispanic words is pretty natural, I never expect english speakers to be so fluent on spanish words when speaking english, specially with words of indigenous origin. You clearly know what you're talking about, loved your video

[@nickzardiashvili624]

Someone is talking to us from over 2000 years ago. We have to hear them out :)

[@doomyboi]

They're probably just telling us how much grain they imported that week. The grain's surely gone off by now.

[@someinteresting]

@@doomyboi Yes, the oldest written form of languages is hardly glamorous or sensational.

[@Nadia1989]

If it's _yet another_ saga of complaints about a local shady businessman, I'll-

[@deacon6453]

Doomrider Alternatively, it could be yet another pompous self-congratulating inscription by some ancient king of some sort. Think Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, etc.

[@kamilbiedron6125]

I think it's the pineapple mystery from "How I Met Your Mother".

[@theconqueringram5295]

That is really neat, Mesoamerica still has a lot of history waiting to be told.

[@nicolemartelli9033]

​@Prometheus311 Mesoamerica is archaeology on easy mode because of the the prevalence of stone _and_ writing. I guess the pacific coastal deserts of south america don't biodegrade or weather away at things as much, but you need to bring lots of water for that and you gotta go out to the middle of nowhere instead of just like, rural rainforest

[@purpleghost106]

@Prometheus311 Hmm... Depending on where and in what water it could be less than we might hope because water erosion can be very fast if there's any kind of current. (Salinity and acidity contribute to break down of rock too) 100 years can smooth over a surface to the point of unrecognizability if it had glyphs and was in a river or the ocean, meaning by the time it got covered by silt it'd probably already be wrecked. Lakes are different though, plant matter mulch and silt can build up quickly and there's rarely as much of a current to dislodge it. So! There might be some really cool things buried in under the bed of lakes, that'd be really awesome if we could get at those

[@hiramaguilar5639]

It never ceases to amaze me how well-researched and how attentive to detail your videos are. I find it even more special when the new video talks about the history and culture of my home country. By the way, you truly sound like a native when you do the Spanish bits.

[@evereststevens7034]

I’m a simple man. Nativelang uploads, and I put everything on hold to watch the video.

[@theoldman4371]

“Is that a pineapple?”

[@korngotmuted1112]

well *is it??*

[@mrcastillo4240]

The million dollar question. Is that a pineapple?

[@sbevebren1642]

No its patrick

[@Nilguiri]

It certainly looks like it. There are quite a few of them. There are also quite a few maize cobs.

[@semaj_5022]

I still need to know

[@andree1991]

This guy pronounces Spanish and mexican names absolutely PERFECT. I have never heard a gringo talk like that. MASSIVE RESPECT SIR!

[@andrewdunbar828]

He pronounces them better than any tourist from Spain I ever met in Mexico. In fact he seems to get the Nahuatl ones spot on too.

[@ShirinRose]

I also loved the perfect Oxford accent he used to say the word "Oxford" 😛

[@ASpectrethatishauntingEurope]

It's called using the International Phonetic Alphabet properly. It's an alphabet of symbols used to map almost every sound in human language, so if you know the language, and this IPA, you can very easily figure out how to properly pronounce a word better than any attempt at imitation.

[@andree1991]

@* Who said Mexican was a language you schizo?

[@villebooks]

@@ShirinRose haha, indeed x)

[@viracocha6093]

Mesoamerican cultures are soo fascinating

[@Just4Kixs]

Damn, this guy is so obsessed with Mesoamerica. I love it!!

[@sergeyrafirudov]

he basically kickstarted my interest in Nahuatl with his video. tlazohcamati NativLangtzin, axcan ninahuatlatoa, nicmati ichalchiuh iquetzal tlaltzin Mexico :)

[@gangstamack8397]

He's telling the story of my ancestors

[@Tony_B5828]

@NativLang , thanks for the video, I’ve been a huge fan for some time! If you are planning on going into Nahua language more, especially in terms of modern speakers, as an indigenous speaker of these languages and fellow linguist, I’d be happy to help answer any questions you might have!

[@MajoraZ]

Is there a place I can contact you? I do posts on Mesoamerican history and archeology and work with a few large channels like Ancient Americas, TreytheExplainer, Emperortigerstar, Invictahistory, etc. Keep in mind though KZbin tends to auto remove comments that mention or links to other social media stuff or emails, so just post a username or something I can search myself.

[@falnica]

I'm mexican and I'm always so sad when learning about all these things. So much destruction, so much was lost, and yet people still defend it

[@jibaritomx]

Still repeating that was a conquest, is not it was an *invasion* , still and will be an invasion no one is fighting to change the history books in mexico to an invasion..

[@BurnBird1]

@@jibaritomx What's wrong with conquest? (as in the use of the word, as opposed to invasion) It means essentially the same thing, with a conquest also implying that governing took place afterwards, wheras an invading force can just leave afterwards.

[@TheV-Man]

Yes I agree. Everywhere in the world where colonies were established, priceless artefacts, manuscripts, and relics were destroyed or shipped off and sold. What a loss...

[@cometmoon4485]

*European colonisers* : (Destroys or steals native art, literature, architecture and culture) *Also European colonisers* : "These native people have no art, literature, architecture and culture to speak of! I guess that means we must be the only civilised people on Earth!

[@shannonaguilar920]

@@BurnBird1 you are exactly right.

[@szilveszterforgo8776]

Few months ago I requested a video only about writing systems. I had to wait for it, but it definitely worth it :D

[@AncientAmericas]

This is a fantastic overview! Always love to see you cover American writing systems!

[@TheViolaBuddy]

Do we only know of writing in Mesoamerica, or are there other, more geographically distant cultures in the Americas that we know had writing?

[@connormurphy683]

For now we do not know of any writing elsewhere in the Americas

[@nakenmil]

There is the Incan quipu, which is a series of knots on a string that denotes numbers. There is no surviving examples that could show us it has been used for words and storytelling like letters, but it's hypothetically possible. So far as we know, it was a numeric system for accounting. So "writing" in the sense of physical symbols, but in a different medium, and for numbers only.

[@kokuinomusume]

Wampum were used to record treaties or important events and could be read to give out a narration. So in a sense they were writing, too.

[@walterbell7193]

Some Mississippi cultures had metal plates stamped out with various symbols

[@enternalinferno]

The Inuits had a writing system

[@aidanharrison3888]

The writing on the the light blue Maya cup says " Best dad in the world "

[@BeckVMH]

Haha very clever... and could even be accurate. You deserve more likes!

[@daveduvergier3412]

Ha ha. In fact I believe it says 'cacao' spelled syllabically in mayan, ie it's a cup for drinking chocolate.

[@Релёкс84]

I've deciphered it. It reads "We've been trying to reach you about your car's extended waranty"

[@evesage7231]

I love the speakers' easy movement into different beautiful accents. Looking for more with this narrator! So enjoyable. Edited to add: I just looked at the playlist for NativLang.....holy cow! Just found my new happy place!

[@matrythethird5464]

As a mexican I'm so glad every time I see my country in your videos and the interest people have in all the civilizations that exist and existed here

[@Jesse__H]

This is a fantastic video. Really well done, sir. I sat rapt for the duration.

[@mirror-images]

so many lives and so much knowledge has been lost to colonization, destroyed purposefully in the path to conquest. it's so good to hear people finding new pieces to reassemble some of that history and tradition. thank you for spotlighting this

[@semaj_5022]

One thing that excites me about this region though is how little we have scratched the surface in unearthing the vast(in land area and in time) history of the Americas. Seeing the LiDAR images of huge ancient city structures buried beneath the jungle canopy makes you wonder what else is buried with them.

[@PeKaNo]

really interesting! I still feel like there's a weird taboo in America with archeology when it comes to "for how long people have been living in America" but it's nice to see we have many examples in this area!

[@diegolopez000]

We always learn the “occident” view of things, why do you think there is this orient vs occident fight, because if you ask an Arab or Chinese he’ll tell you some stories of America and we’ll call it bullshit

[@AverytheCubanAmerican]

Mexico has such an interesting history. The pyramids of Teotihuacán are so cool

[@a.d.a.n.]

I was going to go to the pyramids near Cancún last month but the pandemic cancelled my plans.

[@pasofino2199]

My grandpa climbed it and at the top he had real bad bowl movement and had to relieve himself on the pyramid of the moon. There was like 60 people up there with us, just took a big old crap up there. He always thought the ancient gods had cursed him because of that.

[@JDRL96]

OMG, it is always so nice when you talk about native languages of Americas. Greetings from Mexico!

[@Lorand0O]

The image at 1:49 looks to me like some kind of fever dream where a mayan scribe has to play tetris against this serpent human. Cracks me up. Great video though!

[@ISO_-]

That's the best interpretation lmao

[@DerangedManiac12]

Kukulkan likes to show off why he's held the high score for 8 b'ak'tuns

[@Sandvich18]

Maybe it's one of those horrifying platonic solids nightmares you have as a kid

[@nakenmil]

@@DerangedManiac12 This is a lovely joke.

[@ADeeSHUPA]

@@DerangedManiac12 uP

[@lime2333]

Yess I’m finally early. Great job!!!

[@robertschlesinger1342]

Very interesting and informative video. I hope you post sequels to this excellent video.

[@merbst]

I hope to see these in the Unicode Standard!

[@jonathanvillanueva9206]

This channel is so good! I love your animation and content, it’s so fun coming around.

[@Daveomabegin]

Thank you for making content about the new world. In ten years, new discoveries will probably illuminate much more than we know now. It's an exciting time! 😊😊

[@gustavovillegas5909]

Awwww yeahhh Mesoamerican content is my drug

[@shalis16]

Great video once again NativLang! The quest for the early origins of Mesoamerican writing is indeed a thrilling and puzzling one. The discoveries made of over the past few decades increasingly push the origins of writing back further back in time. But one should not only take the dating of the artifacts in mind, but also the appearance and structure of the glyphs themselves. For example, the earliest forms of cuneiform can be traced back to a proto-script - tags and tokens that depict animals and other goods, simply for identification and accounting - before developing in a hieroglyphic script and eventuelly the wedge-shaped signs that gave cuneiform its name. Similarly, Chinese writing can be traced back to the early Oracle Bone symbols. While still largely undeciphered, some glyphs are definitely recognisable as precursors to later and even modern Chinese characters. In Mesoamerica however, we lack such a clear line of development from the simple (i.e. proto-writing) to the complex. Take for example the earliest Maya writing thus far found, the small painted glyphs inside a Preclassic pyramid in San Bartolo. They date to about 300 BCE, but the glyphs constitute an already (fully) developed script. Similarly, the earliest Zapotec writing comes from around 600 BCE and is made up of two glyphs (the San Jose Mogote monument). Yet just a few centuries later, more elaborate inscriptions appear at Monte Alban, the new regional capital founded around 500 BCE. With the Cascajal block, we finally may have found the "proto-script" or precursor to the development of later scripts, assuming(!) that it indeed functions as a precursor. With so many different scripts and cultures close together, it is hard to pinpoint who influenced who. Still o much to debate and discover.

[@3l_Raro]

Great video! And I'm always amazed by your pronunciation. KEEP UP THE GREAT WORK!!

[@helomt]

OMG, I was missing your videos!

[@yzwariij]

I love your videos. They're interesting, fascinating and very well made. But, when the video reaches its peak, it ends. I would love if your videos were like an hour long! Please keep doing what you're doing! Thank you.

[@Carols989]

this may sound dumb and self-centric, I just wanted to thank you because you are one of the youtube channels that made me decide I want to be an archeologist. I start college next year, your content is amazing, thank you so much

[@elksalmon84]

0:02 there is a Glagolitic letter D slightly above the middle Ⰴ

[@Vienna3080]

Its pretty sad how many written artifacts have been lost to war

[@KnzoVortex]

So much knowledge as well. So sad that any forward movements in math or science made in the Americas have been destroyed so that people think they never existed.

[@KnzoVortex]

@owatahfuhlyem At least we learned about the Maya, Aztec and Incas in my middle school curriculum (I am currently in high school now) My sister didn't learn a single thing about the societies of the Americas! But yeah, this stuff is quite unfortunate. Being American, it should be of much higher priority that we learn the true history of the land we are living on.

[@RobinTheBot]

Not war, ethnic extermination. The war ended quickly, it was the decades of spanish religious rule (and the related efforts to destroy all evidence of culture) that did it. We don't get to talk about our ancestors forming racist borderline slave empires, systematically executing all leaders, destroying all culture, and then still call it something as neat as war. You need to know this, because the people who were almost exterminated also remember, and if you want their wisdom you need to understand what you're asking.

[@KnzoVortex]

@@RobinTheBot This is a little uclear. By our ancestors do you mean the Spanish or Native Americans?

[@RobinTheBot]

@@KnzoVortex The Spanish, and europe in general. The spanish were uniquely thorough but not unique. Afaik the native peoples didn't carry out extermination the way the spanish did, unless you count cultural obliteration by slavery.

It is good to see that in your sources are citing both, texts in Spanish and English! It would be great if you continued like this, with updated content!

[@muqingapologist]

You have no idea how happy these videos make me😭

[@torrawel]

mesoamerican scholar here. Great job! (a bit late though, since the Cascajal block was found in the late 90s and first formaly published about in 2006). I really liked your Maya, San Bartolo, update. Now let me see if there are some questions in the other comments that I can answer..

[@Roarshark12]

Beautiful illumination of the evidence, thank you so much for your video!

[@Isumaeru4Cheshire]

This is amazing! Still, as far as I know, only the Maya script has been identified as a true writing system, while the rest of the Mesoamerican scripts are considered to be proto-writing. But that's just what I was taught, maybe new information has been found concerning those scripts.

[@nikanashkan9456]

Besides the Mayans, the Olmecs and the Zapotecs also had phonetic writing. The Nahuas also developed phonetic writing, but ideography and pictography were more prevalent. The Mexica and Mixtec codes are a kind of mental maps and it is a script that evolves to communicate regardless of the language that is spoken.

[@torrawel]

Somewhere above I wrote about the definition of "true writing". That is actually quite complicated, believe it or not. That being said, like the Maya (and like Nikan Ashkan wrote 4 days ago), the Zapotecs & (epi)-Olmecs (= Isthmian) had a system that really looked like the Maya and that we know functioned more or less the same. The same goes for the script of Kaminaljuyu. Aztec & Mixtec writing were different (indeed more pictographic), but definitely not "proto-writing". It seems clear now that they directly descend from the Teotihuacan writing system (itself only "recognized" in 2000). The Aztec phonetic system was only "discovered" in 2008 (the guys name, Lacadena, briefly made it into the video). At university (in the 2000s) I was taught by 2 of the leading experts on the Mixtec script. It clearly has phonetics as well. And most scholars studying writing systems agree that if the system at hand has phonetic elements, it qualifies as "true writing".

[@Isumaeru4Cheshire]

@@torrawel Wow! I wasn't aware of this, thank you so much! I was taught that Mixtec and Aztec writing weren't phonetic and that they were mostly a mnemonic system in which the pictographs served only as visual aid for an oral recitation. Do you know any books or articles where I can consult this information? And, again, thank you very much!

[@torrawel]

@@Isumaeru4Cheshire Hi, here is the Lacadena article (quite technical though): www.mesoweb.com/pari/journal/archive/PARI0804.pdf & Zender's introduction: www.academia.edu/8311625/An_Introduction_to_Nahuatl_Hieroglyphic_Writing. About the Mixtecs, just look for Gabina Aurora Pérez Jiménez (Mixtec herself) and her husband Maarten Jansen. For Teotihuacan, look for Karl Taube (for example: Teotihuacan and the Development of Writing in Early Classic Central Mexico). Even more recent work is being done the Danes Jesper Nielsen & Christophe Helmke (see for example their fantastic 2014 articles in the Polish "Contributions In New World Archaeology" journal ("If Mountains could speak" & "House of the Serpent Mat, House of Fire: The names of buildings in Teotihuacan writing"). The funny thing is that we finally know that Teotihuacan had a writing system, but that we still don't know the language. We are desperately seeking a Rosetta Stone!! :)

[@inari7637]

Todas las maromas que dan para no reconocer las escrituras mesoamericanas como escrituras. En fin, el video no comete ese error etnocéntrico, y eso es muy refrescante en una red social donde predomina el sesgo occidental en la historia.

[@manosbaroulakis9446]

Also, please make a video about vowel harmony 'cause I want to understand it or maybe 1 about the native languages of Africa

[@gabor6259]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vowel_harmony My language, Hungarian, also has vowel harmony. Both NativLang and Langfocus did a video on Hungarian, if you're interested. Langfocus also has a video about Swahili, a native language of Africa.

[@manosbaroulakis9446]

Thanks bruh

[@ceruchi2084]

I hope he does one about noun classes in some African languages!

[@abdielgonzalez6656]

Your spanish pronunciation surprises me! Saludos desde Panama City!

[@alainarnaud9528]

Tu pronunciación de los nombres en español es estupenda. Gran video, como siempre.

[@Mad_Rabbit69]

8:31 is no gonna talk about how that one glyph looks like a earth globe ?

[@franchufranchu119]

It can also be a partial solar eclipse

[@odanilooliveira]

I think this is Egyptian

[@franchufranchu119]

@@odanilooliveira yea

[@1stAmbientGrl]

Def does! How can that be an eclipse when it has a base and an axis going through it?

[@ADeeSHUPA]

@@odanilooliveira uP

[@lvs6775]

I love watching your videos! You present the information in a way that’s very interesting and easy to understand.

[@jam1966ful]

Superb as always. I found this one really interesting.

[@campingintheforest_]

Thanks for sharing. Good and informative video.

[@code4chaosmobile]

Excellent video. Thank you for all your hard work, you do great work

[@InsideInterpreting]

Good to see you again

[@ninamo3523]

Thank you! This is amazing news and your videos offer excellent information.

[@xmvziron]

I didn't expect this but I love it!

[@0NlRAPTOR]

facinating video. Thank you for your hard work researching such an interesting subject.

[@michaelharazin4920]

Lovely, beautiful glyphs

[@mobilizaropovo5176]

Great content. Thank you!

[@NinjaPastry]

Your videos have really made me interested in taking up classes about language history. My husband has a masters in Asian and African religious studies and history so he knows a lot about native languages and such! Maybe he can also help! Lol

[@Billy123bobzzz]

Fantastic! Fascinating and informative! Thank you!

[@ShAmcCANN]

Did the Inuktitut writing system form by itself or did outsiders create it for them? Curious

[@marsgal42]

Outsiders who were inspired by (mainly) Devanagari. The phonology of Inuktitut lends itself to an abugida rather than an alphabet. Tom Scott did a good video on this, albeit with a near-unsearchable title. :-)

[@YaMumsSpecialFriend]

Nice work mate, enjoy your channel very much🖖🏼

[@AvrahamYairStern]

I've recently been reading a classic called 'The Maya' by Michael D. Coe, I'd really recommend it to anyone wanting to the Early to Classic Mesoamerican Civilizations.

[@ikeekieeki]

i did not know about many of these. thank you for this visually educational video

[@SilverBrumby165]

Fascinating, as always.

[@moondust2365]

Ooh! I studied about those for our AP ( _Araling Panlipunan_ [Social Studies] ) Class. Well, _some_ of them. We were rushing lessons so the class was divided into groups and my group was tasked by making a brochure about Ancient/Classical Mesoamerica. I even "vectorized" the Zapotec writing. I didn't have time to make the entire picture from Wikipedia into a clear vector tho. The picture's still saved as a PNG file on my laptop just in case I decide to vectorize the whole thing on either PowerPoint or Inkscape.

[@feleslucis-emanueldearaujo6237]

Love these! :) I hope we end up deciphering these glyphs in our lifetime, they seem quite interesting.

[@1Falconrb]

I like it. Careful, and puts things in context.

[@coinvestnet]

Last time I was this early, Mayan writings were contemporary

[@albinakemet]

Not early.

[@dmathiass]

Great video, as always. how about a video about the Pedra do Ingá in Paraíba, Brazil?

[@sagacious03]

Neat animation video! Thanks for uploading!

[@haydenmccracken3073]

Good video! I did some work on scripts in the americas a while a go. Incan qhuipus are a very contentious but interesting example of a potential way of transferring information. Some have even argued it could function as a script!

[@alexandergomez7334]

Could you do a video on the uto aztecan language family. Mainly the takic branch

[@mr.osamabingaming2633]

YES!!!

[@zross8471]

Great video! Love it👍

[@gxramirez]

this is super nerdy 🤓 and fascinating. thanks for making it. 😍

[@designate_om]

the glyphs on that stone remind me a bit of the carvings on the "Ingá Stone"/"Pedra do Ingá" in Paraíba, Brazil - a similarly debatable chunk of carvings that may or may not be writing. granted, it's more likely to be artistic representations of flora/fauna/constellations/other unidentified symbols than actual writing. (note: there are unfortunately a lot of pseudoscientific theories - 'archaeoastronomy'/ancient-aliens shenanigans - as to the origins of the stone, but ignoring all that it's still an intriguingly mysterious pre-columbian artifact)

[@JosePineda-cy6om]

Makes sense, most likely writing (in Mesoamerica at least) started precisely as artistic depictions of flora/fauna/deities that latter got expanded to include more stuff and be able to represent speech rather than just abstract ideas...

[@bellezavudd]

Chiapas and Oaxaca are both such beautiful regions. The beaches, the rivers, the plants, the mountains are incredible as well as the people. Beautiful beautiful beautiful !!! 💜💚💛

[@BRUXXUS]

While I think all ancient art and scripts are beautiful, my favorite is definitely from Mesoamerica. I really love the highly geometric angular aesthetic of it all. It really does look like some futuristic sci fi stuff to me, which I find super appealing.

[@nyar2352]

*ears perk up at the name Whittaker* I had to check, and indeed, it is Gordon Whittaker. The man has been on a crusade to "prove" that Sumerian is descended from Proto-Indo-European. Us Sumerologists try to ignore him, sometimes we laugh at his antics, but cannot take him serious as a scholar. I fervently hope that his work on Nahua writing is of a better quality!

[@meltup3668]

I have a suggestion: how about some videos for Africa's languages? I know you already did a video on the lost African romance language, but there's a lot more to talk about. Here are some ideas: - The Ge'ez script and the languages of Ethiopia. - Tifinagh/Tamazight and the Berber languages. - The language families of Africa. - Indoeuropean African languages like Afrikaans. I'm subscribed because of your amazing videos on languages but I can't wait to see more about Africa.

[@OjaioFansub]

First of all that Spanish pronunciation was flawless

[@JosePineda-cy6om]

Not just Spanish. It amazes me that whenever he reads Japanese, Russian or even Nahuatl his pronunciation is flawless!!

[@hymanocohann2698]

I've been thinking on man and communication, fabric weaving, knotted string and tattoo are possible rich areas for expression of thought.

[@danielkover7157]

I am so fascinated by ancient and mysterious cultures. The older and more mysterious, the better. The Olmecs are one of those cultures. The peoples who inhabited lands before more famous--and more recent--people groups cause wonder and awe in my imagination and make me daydream about our human origins. Like the neolithic inhabitants of Ireland who pre-date the Celts by thousands of years; the Jomon of Japan, who may have some connection to the Ainu; the pre-Roman peoples of Italy; the Sumerians; the Harappans of the Indus Valley; the Mycenaeans and Minoans (the classical Greeks of the classical Greeks); Shang dynasty China; the aaaaaaaaancient origins of the Egyptian civilization; and the Asian-Siberian origins of my own ancestors, the Hungarians; as well as the other humans who once existed, Neanderthals, et al. And the language side of it all only deepens the fascination. "Old" Irish only goes back to around the time of Saint Patrick in the 5th century CE, but there were Celts in Ireland before Caesar hit Britannia in the last century of BCE. And the famous glyphs of the Mayans and Mexica have a grandparent in the great Olmec civilization. Ahhh...history, language, and culture feed the imagination!

[@pozhaluysta]

Let me give you a little advice: if you mark chapters in description only by start, KZbin will provide your video with automatic bookmarks. And thank you for great channel!

[@chicoti3]

Some Kid: draws a pineapple in a rock Archeologists 3000 years later: "Of course, this is a religious text that says they viewed pineapples as gods"

[@chicoti3]

@Saudi King Volintine Ander of Arabia I know Onfim, that's a cool kid.

[@lcmiracle]

@Saudi King Volintine Ander of Arabia yeah but he also wrote letters and shit. Scholars had no trouble figuring out which parts were writings and which parts was doodling. And we had zero trouble figuring out cave wall paintings are not writings, and nobody is saying drawings of a buffalo being killed is a religious depiction.

[@Elora445]

@@lcmiracle "nobody is saying drawings of a buffalo being killed is a religious depiction". Um... Have you ever met an archaeologist? No, but seriously, so many immediately jump to "it's religious" for pretty much anything. Including cave paintings. (Source: I've been studying archaeology.)

[@lcmiracle]

@@Elora445 My research consists of reading published, peer-reviewed scholarly researches into pre-historic anthropological works of art, which only shows there exist a school of thought that argues prehistoric art is a process by which humans discovered the link between symbols and ideas. It's argued that images developed into written languages, as can be seen from hierographic pictograms, is a sign that human developed the ability to associate abstract forms to complex concepts. Similarly, any links to religion argues from the point that these abstract arts might have given raise to religion by enabling/assisting/as a result of human associating incorporeal concepts to symbolic acts, ala "Animism", not that they themselves are religious works.

[@Elora445]

@@lcmiracle Well, you're not wrong, since there are all types of archaeologists. Some truly great ones, too. Very interesting reply, by the way. :) I just know what my teachers have said and what we have read have said. Let's just say, that some archaeologists are all to eager to list anything as religious in some way. Which just makes me shake my head at them, but some people, man... Maybe I'm still annoyed at a certain Swedish archaeologist whose book I read and whose interpretations were way out there. Sometimes a picture is just a picture and a stone a stone, y'know? Some people tend to go way overboard in their interpretations of certain finds. Understandable, but a bit sad. (One example not at all connected to this was about some prehistoric footprints - which some archaeologists tend to describe as "a man and a boy", when we have no idea what sexes those making the footprints were.)

[@imrukiitoaoffire1908]

I may not be the earliest, but I'm still somewhat early here. Lets see the latest masterpiece!

[@melissasalasblair5273]

Thanks so much, always looking for new ideas. 3:55 👈💭🌬🌌 5:38

[@carlfabian4640]

Did anybody else notice how at 8:30 there’s a glyph that looks like nativlang’s logo

[@carlfabian4640]

2nd row from the top and 3rd from left if you can’t find it

[@littlesnowflakepunk855]

if you're using blender for your 3d animations, i'd recommend scaling in edit mode or applying location, rotation and scale to get rid of the stretching/squashing in your rock textures here

[@sara_s_]

Much was destroyed because the local culture was a threat to Christianity for the Spaniards.

[@Zsparky]

Love your work and videos! I was surprised though that for this stone you did not mention that there appear to be some repeating patterns with some of the symbols, which could give more weight to it being a writing system. For example, the "pineapple" and blunted "pineapple" glyphs follow a two-lipped plant glyph more than once. And the upside down "pinapple" gylph follows a "corn" glyph twice as well. There are probably even some other examples.

[@safuwanfauzi5014]

Can you make video about Sub-Saharan oldest writing script systems please. We all know about North African Berber, Egyptian, Middle-Eastern Semitic Arabic, Aramaic, Hebrew, Phonecians, Akkadian, Persian, Indian, European Latin, Cyrillic, Armenian, Georgian, Greek, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Mongolian, Thai, Javanese, Cambodian, Malays, Bugis, Batak, Sundanese, Ibanese, Burmese etc. I love to leleran about "Sub-saharan" like Nok Script

[@سلمانقتل]

👍 good video

[@michagorka3789]

Great as always. As a Pole I;m waiting for western scientific point of view of how the Slavic languages and writing developed. Especially since i'm Silesian, I want to know how some dialects like Tesin- Silesian developed and are now called closer to old-slavic\ Polish more then to any other language.

[@alepartidav.7664]

Thank you, so much of our precolonial history is ignored by the world, but is actually so rich