> If writing is a natural tech you unlock on an already exponential curve it would always correlate with progress.
That's a big "If". The observation we have is that civilisations that never invented writing simply died out with no tech-tree advancement; and this happened for 100k years at least.
We've got 100k years of "no writing, no tech". We've got around 5k years of "with writing came tech".
The actual tech to write was there for much of the 100k years (cave art), but without writing, the tech never improved.
That's a big "If". The observation we have is that civilisations that never invented writing simply died out with no tech-tree advancement; and this happened for 100k years at least.
We've got 100k years of "no writing, no tech". We've got around 5k years of "with writing came tech".
The actual tech to write was there for much of the 100k years (cave art), but without writing, the tech never improved.