[OT] [I mean totally OT] Re: What can you "new"

[Sean Kelly]

Walter Bright wrote:
> 
> Even writing has its problems. What are you going to write on? Bark? 
> Animal hides? How are you going to make paper? Ink? A hunter-gatherer 
> tribe may find it not worth the effort, and so the writing will not "take".

The Maya wrote on treated Birch Bark, which apparently worked great 
until Spanish Missionaries burned all their libraries :-)  Sumerians 
used fired clay tablets for writing, and treated animal hides were 
pretty popular until relatively recently (Vellum, for instance). 
Vegetable dyes would make decent ink, if needed.

The bigger problem with writing is the difficulty in transporting the 
books or whatever, assuming a hunter-gatherer culture.  Until 
agriculture, I can't writing being used much outside of "graffiti" on 
cave walls, trees, etc.  From your date of 20,000 BC, I believe you 
predate agriculture by at least a few thousand years (I recall hearing 
speculation about Human settlements in the teens somewhere).