[MikeBattaglia]

This article is bizarre. It reads like they've unearthed some long lost Rosetta Stone artifact from thousands of years ago. In reality, these people have "discovered" that everyone right around them writes using this language and this is just how they write and they all know about it. What is the "discovery" here?

Here's what I think: modern Western civilization - to say nothing of historical colonial societies - has attempted to pulverize these cultures utterly: it has removed their spoken and written language, music and art; altered their general societal structure; created a false narrative that they are "savages"; and so on. Some of these events are very recent, and some people involved are even still alive today.

Then, we like to do this thing where we go ahead and "study" the same people whose culture we just destroyed, pretending all the while as if it were an ancient civilization destroyed thousands of years ago through some natural process.

Tens of millions of people are walking around in Africa today who use this language. Now that we have "discovered" this, maybe some day we will also "discover" that they have music, art, jokes, and an entire culture.

No shade on Ngom, though, as I am sure he is doing his best to bring some of these things to light within the Western academic system.

[Terretta]

simpler explanation: a supposedly new thing to study gets grant money

not discounting your context, just grant seeking explains the article framing