Piotr Michalowski

     A critical assessment of Schmandt–Besserat's work, it raises especially two major concerns. (1) Given the crucial importance of repeatability [i.e., distributional patterns] in establishing a semiotic system, it is difficult to so conceive the vast assemblage of tokens, which is too highly differentiated and spread over too wide a geographical area and too broad a temporal span. (2) The argument in favour of writing developing directly from tokens, and “literacy from numeracy” is not convincing: “The complex social and political changes [...] toward the end of the fourth millennium represent a quantum leap of unprecedented dimensions and not a gradual evolutionary historical development. The invention of writing was part of this punctuated metamorphosis; while the inventor, or inventors, relied on earlier communication systems, [...] proto–cuneiform writing was materially and structurally a completely new semiotic form.”

[G. Buccellati – December 2005]