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Is the Alphabet the Only Path to Literacy? - The Origins of Writing in Ancient Mesoamerica | Sleepy Facts About History
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The alphabet is not the only path to literacy. In the valleys and lowlands of ancient Mesoamerica, peoples who had never encountered the scripts of the Old World developed entirely different systems for recording speech, time, and political authority. They did not write with letters. Instead, they wrote with signs that named days, counted in twenties, and carved the identities of rulers and captives into stone.
This episode explores how early Mesoamerican societies made time and political…
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