LJS 51 Collection of alphabets and encoded correspondence

[DG97EEB]

I also don't really know, but in my experience things are rarely original. 
I saw this recently, Irving is one of my favourite people and so I can't avoid anything he does (thanks internet algorithms) 
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I'd recommend the whole thing rather than just this snip (here - You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.) It's 2 hours but I thought it was very worth while. However I think it's a good example of every time we think we found "the first" eventually that idea is pushed back and it came from somewhere previous. Irving is a leading expert in Cuneiform so he has every motive to support claims it was the "original" (as some experts do) yet he could not argue more strongly against. Essentially he says that the stone tablets with pictographic writing on found in Göbekli Tepe must be stamps and therefore must be writing, and this predates all forms of writing we previously had by an embarrassing amount (several thousand years). 



So while the VMS creators may have invented some things for the first time, I doubt it, and I think they probably saw things somewhere before which gave them ideas. Though obviously neither of us can know (yet!).

Yes Irving on Lex was brilliant!

Also, only somewhat related, I'm reading Proto by Laura Spinney at the moment about how Proto Indo European because such a dominant language.. highly recommend it..