by kragen | 2025-05-29 17:19:39+00:00
The nice thing about written records is that the victory stela necessarily tells you the same story that it told the literate subset of Ramesses's subjects 3200 years ago. Oral history can be extremely well preserved, but it can also be tailored to the listener. And it can be hard to date reliably, though there are exceptions. For example, people in many places in the world have oral traditions of having lived there since the world began or for specific numbers of years that are much greater than the archaeological evidence supports.

> It's also worth noting that there is strong indication that pre-colonial states in subsaharan africa well outside the horn of africa did keep written language for the purposes of managing bureaucracies. (...) The technology was certainly not unknown. However, if indeed this was the case, it clearly did not spread far beyond the needs of centralized bureaucracy. However, if indeed this was the case, it clearly did not spread far beyond the needs of centralized bureaucracy, nor was it likely used for what we would now call private commerce, and we have no surviving records showing the scripts.

This is not correct. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbuktu_Manuscripts explains:

> Timbuktu Manuscripts, or Tombouctou Manuscripts, is a blanket term for the large number of historically significant manuscripts that have been preserved for centuries in private households in Timbuktu, a city in northern Mali. The collections include manuscripts about art, medicine, philosophy, and science, as well as copies of the Quran.[6] Timbuktu manuscripts are the most well known set of West African manuscripts. (...) Some 350,000 manuscripts were transported to safety, and 300,000 of them were still in Bamako in 2022.

> The dates of the manuscripts range between the late 13th and the early 20th centuries (i.e., from the Islamisation of the Mali Empire until the decline of traditional education in French Sudan).[11] Their subject matter ranges from scholarly works to short letters. (...)

> Scribes in Timbuktu translated imported works of numerous well-known individuals (such as Plato, Hippocrates, and Avicenna) as well as reproducing a "twenty-eight volume Arabic language dictionary called The Mukham, written by an Andalusian scholar in the mid-eleventh century."[15]: 25 Original books were also written by local authors, covering subjects such as history, religion, law, philosophy and poetry. (...)

> Some manuscripts contain instructions on nutrition and therapeutic properties of desert plants, whilst others debate matters such as "polygamy, moneylending, and slavery."[15]: 27 The manuscripts include "catalogues of spells and incantations; astrology; fortune-telling; black magic; necromancy, or communication with the dead by summoning their spirits to discover hidden knowledge; geomancy, or divining markings on the ground made from tossed rocks, dirt, or sand; hydromancy, reading the future from the ripples made from a stone cast into a pool of water; and other occult subjects..."[15]: 27 A volume titled Advising Men on Sexual Engagement with Their Women acted as a guide on aphrodasiacs and infertility remedies, as well as offering advice on "winning back" their wives.

This is far beyond the needs of centralized bureaucracy, and substantial numbers of records do survive despite the best efforts of Boko Haram.