Talk:Mesoamerican writing systems

Writing in the early Americas was nominated for deletion. The discussion was closed on 20 August 2023 with a consensus to merge. Its contents were merged into Mesoamerican writing systems. The original page is now a redirect to this page. For the contribution history and old versions of the redirected article, please see its history; for its talk page, see here.

Writing systems Top‑importance

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Epi-Olmec script

Maunus, congrats on this new article -- a nice survey indeed. I could do a copyedit of the article if you'd like, fixing redlinks and the like.

Also, there is an article on the Isthmian script at Epi-Olmec script. As mentioned in that article, there are several names for this script and when I wrote the article I chose Epi-Olmec as the title since:

That is the name used on the Ancient Scripts website.
That name has more Google hits than the other 2 names.
That is the name used by Justeson and Kaufman, who seem to be the academics who've studied the script the most.

Justeson and Kaufman also claim that they've deciphered the script, a disputed claim.

By the way, I took a small bit of your recent La Mojarra Stela 1 photo, blew it up, and added it to the Epi-Olmec script article.

Anyway, good work. Madman 19:33, 9 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Go ahead Madman the article is yours to edit and fix up, I appreciate any assistance. I Agree with Epi-olmec and just giving Isthmian a mention in there somewhere.Maunus 20:28, 9 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

India?

No one with cross-disciplinary experience would include India in the list. Indus Valley Script is even widely accepted as being derived from Proto-Elamite, which is only logical.

Before I'm done, it might be widely accepted that Chinese is from there, too. Look at the timeline and the state of Chinese once it finally appears in what's been excavated. Also, compare writing system mechanics, esp. with Mayan. But this will have to wait until I've published.

Yeah, yeah, super great article. You deserve major kudos for writing anything for this horrid site, run by sell-outs funded by the man. This place is more about small-time politics than Academia, and that takes a lot of doing.

Epigraphist (talk) 14:51, 26 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Nature of writing

The assertion that postclassic cultures like the Mixtecs and the Aztecs didn't have writing is disputed. I know a few Aztec scholars (like Mike Smith) who would disagree, given the narrative structure of Aztec codices and the logophonetic elements listed in the article. I also know Mayanists that would argue that the Maya had the only real writing and that the others don't really count. Other than Maya, most of the mesoamerican scripts tend to straddle the boundary on what is and isn't a writing system and it often comes down to what definition you're using. Should this article include a brief description on theories of the nature of writing systems for reference, or would that be too much of a sidetrack from the main topic? Perhaps different perspectives on the issue should be included in the section on each individual script. Does anybody have any thoughts on this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Snickeringshadow (talk • contribs) 11:19, 17 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Dubious

Including India here as a region, along with Mesoamerica, where writing emerged independently is dubious at best and blatantly factually inaccurate at worst. The cited "writing system" that supposedly emerged in India, the Indus Valley Script, has no evidence that conclusively shows that it is indeed a proper writing system. Instead, there is overwhelming evidence that it is a type of proto-writing consisting of pictograms, ideograms etc.

The statement at the beginning of this article that writing emerged independently in India contradicts the Wikipedia article on writing systems and also the Wikipedia article on the Indus Valley Script itself. I propose that "India" be removed from this article unless someone can show, with proof beyond that of a reasonable doubt, that it should be included here. As of now I've marked it as Dubious.

Jdbtwo (talk) 22:49, 23 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Egyptian is dubious as well. — kwami (talk) 23:57, 23 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]