Early humans living in Europe some 40,000 years ago developed a conventional system of geometric signs -- deliberate, repeatable markings that went beyond decoration and hint at an early form of structured communication.
Various Australian Aboriginal cultures had message sticks which were inscribed with marks that served as a mnemonic device to the carrier, who would recite their meaning, but didn’t go as far as encoding language independently.
They tended to be so committed to knowledge as a living system, a sort of society-scale memory palace continually rehearsed in songs, stories and rituals, that if anyone had come up with the idea of converting language into writing, it’d probably have been shot down at the suggestion phase as being unnecessary and/or something that could damage the systems they had for maintaining their culture if adopted.
Various Australian Aboriginal cultures had message sticks which were inscribed with marks that served as a mnemonic device to the carrier, who would recite their meaning, but didn’t go as far as encoding language independently.
They tended to be so committed to knowledge as a living system, a sort of society-scale memory palace continually rehearsed in songs, stories and rituals, that if anyone had come up with the idea of converting language into writing, it’d probably have been shot down at the suggestion phase as being unnecessary and/or something that could damage the systems they had for maintaining their culture if adopted.