The Good Berry: A Wild Rice Domestication TL
- Thread starter PeterEzgo
- Start date
Thanks!
That's next on the agenda.
Big. It will be the biggest empire in the history of North America so far.
Been loving this TL since I found it. So different. I look forward to every new chapter!
Chapter 42: To Use Your Left Hand
Chapter 42: To Use Your Left Hand
Since the invention of writing in or around the year 300 BCE, different groups in Minisia had begun using different variations of Mowin Syllabics in order to better express the languages they spoke.
The most common variants of Mowin Syllabics during the Classical Period were used by speakers of Algonkian languages. The script that was originally created (or at least codified) by Medweganoonind is called by historians the Three Waters Script. It was the most common script throughout the Classical Period (300 BCE to 536 AD) and had barely changed in that time. It was used by the Three Waters Confederacy, the Kingdom of Cahokia [St. Louis, MO], the Kingdom of Manoomingamiing [~Minnesota], and the city states of Meskonsing [~Wisconsin].
The Black Swamp Script was a variation of Mowin Syllabics used by the Black Swamp Confederacy, the city states of the Wabashaang [~Indiana], the Kingdom of Minesing [Barrie, ON], and the Kingdom of Miyamee [Detroit, MI]. The Great Road Script was used by the city states of the Ohiyoong [~Ohio and Western Pennsylvania], especially those along the Great Road. To the north, the Cree used a simplified version of the Three Waters Script. Each of these scripts varied only slightly from one another.
Speakers of non-Algonkian languages adopted writing more slowly and had more variation in their scripts to deal with the unique sounds of their language families. The Ongweh’onweh [Iroquois] around Lake Ontario and along the Micta River [St. Lawrence River] were the first non-Algonkian people to adopt a version of Mowin Syllabics. It was still the most common non-Algonkian script by the time of the Shawnee Imperial Period.
The Ioway [~Iowa] were the only Siouan people who used a version of Mowin Syllabics. The Tunica Empire [West Tennessee and Arkansas] and Kingdom of Macha [~Louisiana], who spoke related languages, used the Tunica script. The Muskogee [North Georgia] Script was rare but had certainly formed by the end of the Classical Period. The Yuchi [Middle Tennessee and Northern Alabama] were literate before their destruction and enslavement by the Shawnee but there are very few examples and they have not been deciphered.
Approximate areas of different scripts based on Mowin Syllabics. Red is the Three Waters Script. Grey is the Black Swamp Script. Purple is the Great Road Script. Yellow is the Cree Script. Green is the Ongweh’onweh Script. Blue is the Tunica Script. Pink is the Yuchi Script. Brown is the Muskogee Script. Orange is the Ioway script . White areas remained illiterate.
Even within these areas, there was still significant variation. Spelling was not standardized. This meant that the same word or concept could be expressed completely differently from city to city even if they spoke the same language. As polities grew in size and power, they sent out edicts and wrote inscriptions in their native spellings. The most notable of this is the Three Waters Confederacy. They used the Mackinaw dialect for confederacy-wide proclamations and then later, as the center of power shifted, they changed over to using the Milliokee dialect.
Following the 536 AD event, there was a sharp reduction in the number of inscriptions throughout the Mishigami and Ziibiing. This period is often called the Post-Classical Dark Age. It would last until the rise of the Shawnee Empire in the late 600s and early 700s.
Many more histories, records, and letters survive from the Shawnee Imperial Period than from the Post-Classical Dark Age or even from the Classical Period. This material is invaluable to our understanding of the past. But we should keep a critical eye on it. Not everyone in the past was able to write, not everything was written down, and not everything that was written survives. It is often just as important to study what has been left out of the records as what has been left in.
As the Shawnee Empire expanded, they standardized glyphs and spelling. The Shawnee Imperial Script is derived from Black Swamp Script, which was used in Wapeksippu before the 536 AD event and was adopted in Mozcala shortly after its founding. The Shawnee Imperial Script also borrows heavily from the more popular Three Waters Script.
Standard Shawnee Imperial Script; new symbols are in red
Despite the proclamations of the Imperial court, many local peoples continued to use local scripts, especially in places where most people did not speak an Algonkian language (which is what the Shawnee language is). Some early emperors attempted to suppress this but most did not bother.
Being able to read and write using the Shawnee Script was a requirement for the civic exams to become an imperial bureaucrat. Bureaucrats (and all literate people) were called namanjinii, which literally means “to use your left hand”. This is because Mowin Syllabics and its variations are written right-to-left. If you use your left hand, then the ink won’t smudge as you move your hand across the page. In any case, the level of literacy in society increased during the Shawnee Empire. Civic exams encouraged more people to learn their letters than ever before.
As with all pre-modern societies, it is controversial just how many people in the Shawnee Empire were literate. Some experts think that as few as 10% of the population could read and write. Others think that perhaps a majority were literate. In many ways, it depends on what you mean by the word “literate”.
Most people would have learned what sounds the glyphs of Mowin Syllabics make. Using this knowledge, they would have been able to sound out written words. Many people would probably recognize common, simple words. Perhaps they could spell or read their own names. But they would not be able to recognize unfamiliar words or quickly read long, complex words, sentences and paragraphs as you can.
Sight reading, where you recognize words by the sequence of letters, (which is what you are doing right now) would have been rare. As attested in various letters, even priests and government bureaucrats sounded words out and moved their lips to read, though they would have done with much more quickly than commoners.
Nor would most people write very well, very much, or very often. Many people who failed the civic exams instead took jobs writing letters or records for private individuals and businesses. They bought their own materials and were paid a flat fee per line.
The materials needed to write were expensive. Often, scribes would use a shallow, rectangular wooden tablets filled with wax called a agaasiigad. They could write a draft, jot down notes or perform calculations. The wax was relatively cheap and could be reset and reused simply by applying heat. Bayberry wax was the most common wax used.
Wooden styluses and bone pencils were used to carve glyphs on wax, birch bark, koha [river-cane/American bamboo] strips, and pottery. Chisels carved on stone. Quills were made from turkey feathers or porcupine quills. Ink was made from soot mixed with sap or gum. Throughout the Shawnee period, paper and ink were used more and more often when compared to bone pencils and birch bark.
During the imperial period, writing came to be viewed not merely as a utilitarian way of record keeping but as an art. While men mostly continued to write government records, noble women were allowed to express themselves creatively. Noble women wrote letters, poetry and even fantastical stories while sequestered away in their homes. Many pined for a better husband, to walk the world, or for a more exciting life. Many of their writings survive.
As writing became cheaper and more widely produced, the nobility sought to distinguish their writing from the writing of others. Calligraphy became more and more common among the upper classes, especially women. Officials in charge of grading the civic exams gave more credit to those who wrote in a pleasing script . This was used as an excuse to favor the sons of nobles, who had the time to practice artful calligraphy, over the sons of merchants, who mostly used a utilitarian script for business transactions. Some scribes studied and practiced for years to achieve a beautiful script.
Nobles also began to commission elaborate artwork to be paired with their writings. The time to painstakingly copy the artwork, the skill to copy it correctly, and the use of expensive inks would have made such writings inaccessible to the common people. Most of this artwork was religious depictions of the Master of Life, spiritual beings, heavens, hells, and so on.
Next week, we will discuss the details of the Shawnee Script.
[1] Taken from: https://blog.education.nationalgeog...f-the-earliest-londoners/mola-london-cursive/
Comments? Questions?
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Very cool! I love this TL. Especially how you're building an entire society not just telling a history.
Thanks!
I very much doubt it. Similar devices were used in Europe until the 1800s. Paper was expensive back in the day.
twovultures
Donor
That's a good question. North America has bees, but nothing that produces wax and honey on the scale of the European honeybee IIRC.
That said, since they're reusing the wax tablets, it maybe won't take that much, especially since very little of the population is 'professionally' literate.
I did not know that North American bees did not make as much wax or honey in that regard...
Wax does not mean "beeswax". To quote myself:
Lots of plants and animals make wax. In OTL Native Americans used all kinds of waxes before European honey bees were imported during the Columbian exchange. Tallow, insect wax, plant wax, all kinds of stuff. I doubt they'd be producing enough to make cheap candles but I'm sure wax tablets would be fine. Like @twovultures said, they both reuse the waxes and have a relatively small class of people using them.
BTW, wax tablets are not a thing I made up for this TL. They were used by every society (Mesopotamia, Egypt, Ancient Greece and Rome, China, etc.) that had writing before the manufacturing of paper became cheap enough to outcompete them.
A combination of the Cherokee Syllabary, Canadian aboriginal syllabics, other syllabaries, and stuff I made up.
Yeah yeah I know, that's how I know you need LOTS of 'em
I'll be honest, I missed the bayberry bit
twovultures
Donor
Native Americans did collect honey, like the Mayans of the Yucatan for example. However, the European honeybee is an extremely productive insect compared to its wild North American relatives-I don't know if that's a product of being domesticated and bred, or if that's what caused its domestication. According to Charles Mann, they actually changed a lot of the plant landscape in North America because of this, and as a consequence there's historical descriptions of Native Americans treating their presence as a bad omen.
I wouldn't be surprised if the spelling of a prestigious learning center (temple, notable moundhouse, etc.) will become the standard form, if only to allow intercommunication.
Is there a reason why there's less inscriptions (economic crisis, societal collapse, war)?
Thereby allowing for literacy to spread among the larger population.
The birth of sociolects might have interesting consequences, especially if said sociolects evolve in full-fledged diglossia.
Would slades and chalk be a good alternative?
Yup
The 536 AD event is a real thing. It was a volcanic winter that caused crop failure throughout the world. TTL's version is described in more detail here.
To a limited extent, yes.
I wouldn't go that far. Its just that merchants would be less concerned about how pretty their writing is...
Although, now that I think I about it, that could be a cool idea. I don't know. I might use that later. Or not.
They would be used as well.
Supplemental: Shawnee Scripts
New
Supplemental: Shawnee Scripts
First, a quick reminder on how Mowin Syllabics functions. It is written right-to-left, similar to Hebrew or Arabic. Each glyph represents either a consonant+vowel pair such as pa- or he-, a vowel such a a-, or a consonant cluster such as -nd. A diacritic is a sign written around a glyph to indicate a difference in pronunciation. For example, the accent mark used in the word résumé. In Mowin syllabics, diacritics are used to lengthen vowel sounds (for example, turning si- into sii-) or to add a w sound to the consonant (for example, turning ka- into kwa-). To learn more about Mowin Syllabics , see Supplemental: Mowin Syllabics.
When writing Shawnee or any other script derived from Mowin Syllabics, there were no spaces between words and no punctuation marks. Paragraphs were sometimes separated by a blank line. All of this would have made reading difficult, especially reading quickly. Of course, such practices more closely mirrors how people talk. There are no pauses between words as you speak, after all. It is all one continuous series of noises.
All imperial edicts were issued using Mozcala dialect spellings. Officials out in the provinces often copied these spellings in their own pronouncements. The Mozcala dialect was seen as a more prestigious, official, and sophisticated way of writing. There was no officially mandated spelling guide, however, and many areas used their own regional variations. Especially in areas where most of the population did not speak an algonkin language.
Shawnee Script, being a descendant of the Black Swamp Script, used most of the same glyphs as Black Swamp Script with a few additions to make transcribing sounds from Yuchi, Ongweh’onweh [Iroquois], Natchez, Kusa, Muskogee, and Siouan languages easier.
Standard Shawnee Imperial Script; new symbols are in red
The most notable changes were the addition of 14 glyphs representing the syllables beginning with the consonant sounds l, r, sk, and the glottal stop as well as the syllable ending -in. The Shawnee also had to add symbols for larger numbers in order to more easily count the tribute sent to the emperor.
The most important changes the Shawnee implemented were how to handle syllable endings. Recall that the original versions of Mowin Syllabics dealt with syllables of the form consonant+vowel+consonant by writing a glyph representing the first consonant+vowel combination and then repeating or “echoing” the same vowel for the second glyph. So the word amik (meaning beaver) was spelled a-mi-ki. The i vowel was echoed from the mi- glyph to the ki- glyph to the represent the sound mik. If you wanted to be more clear, you would write the second glyph (in the example, the ki- glyph) small and high to indicate that the vowel was silent.
The Shawnee did two things to modify this system. First they began using the glyph with the a vowel for the syllable ending glyph. So amik could be written a-mi-ka. But rather than applying this retroactively to all words, they simply used it on any new or foreign words they came across. For example, apalgup (a natchez settlement) was written a-pa-la
The second thing they did was to use a universal “vowel killer” diacritic. Rather than write the entire second glyph small and high to signify the vowel was not said, a bar was written above the second glyph. That bar “killed” the vowel. This made it easier to distinguish when the vowel was being eliminated.
On the left, how A-mi-k
There were three Shawnee scripts. The blocky script was used when carving onto stone, to avoid curves that were harder to carve. The cursive script was used when writing on paper to prevent inkblots and paper tears. The standard script was used for birch bark, koha [rivercane/American bamboo] strips, and pottery.
During the Shawnee Imperial Period, the standard script would have been the most common, followed by the cursive script, and then the blocky script. Birch bark, paper, and koha strips decay rapidly so only a few instances of writing on such materials has survived to the modern day. Today, the Shawnee scripts are mostly known from stone inscriptions and pottery shards, which obviously preserve much better. For this reason, we know the most about the blocky and standard scripts.
Most of our knowledge of the cursive script does not come from the rare surviving examples of it we have found. Instead, certain things can be gleaned from the laws and proclamations surrounding the standardization of Shawnee scripts. The rest is deduced from the Shawnee script’s descendants which are still used today. Even so, our knowledge can be quite limited.
The glyph representing zhi- in standard script, blocky script, and cursive script.
Next week, we will discuss the Shawnee conquest of the Mishigami [Great Lakes Region].
Comments? Questions?