[adastra22]

Leaving marks on trees and such is not writing. It is not the transcription of spoken language. We have examples of this kind of symbol-placement on ancient cave art stretching far back into the ice age. It is not considered writing.

[shakna]

Written language is rarely just a transcription. It usually has a number of distinct differences in both lexicon and syntax. There are languages that are only written.

Art is not writing, true. Distinct symbols and syntax are required for writing. But it need not be transcription of anything spoken.

[Koshkin]

Well, hieroglyphs are not exactly a “transcription”, either…

[adastra22]

They are in the same way that Chinese is.

[Koshkin]

Yes - not exactly a transcription.

[adastra22]

Written chinese is a direct transcription of the spoken language. It is not (entirely) phonetic, but it is still a 1:1 transcription.

[Koshkin]

Well, now imagine a mark on a boulder that means ‘danger’ (left there because, say, a tiger lives nearby). Same thing. (And it would not be unreasonable to suspect that that’s how writing began.)

[adastra22]

Which is not a transcription of language.

Yes writing systems evolved from earlier symbols used to indicate general concepts without a linguistic context. And those symbols go far back into the ice age -- we see such symbols on the walls of cave paintings in Europe, for example. In the case of Sumer, we certainly know that the writing system derived from accounting symbols for livestock and grain and such.

But going from simple context-free symbols to transcribing spoken language or thought with grammar and structure is a conceptual leap worth tracking.