Discovery doesn't fail your criteria, however I don't think most people would agree that hand prints and tally marks are written language. Certainly doesn't pass the sniff test for me.

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lelanthran 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Well, for me the intention matters; is the intention communication (and yes, art is communication as well - it communicates the artists feelings at the time)?

If the intention is to communicate how many moons have passed, why is tally marks not considered written language?

We talk about the language of mathematics, and no one bats an eye, but tally marks still fall into the category of language of mathematics.

I am seeing the stated criteria as a distinction without a difference: The intentional mark `5` signifying how many moons have passed is somehow different to the intentional mark `|||||`, but no one is explaining what the difference is.

	▲	rcxdude 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		I don't think the linguists would consider arabic numerals on their own to be a language either. The main distinction, as I understand it, is having something like a grammar, i.e. a set of consistent rules about how to arrange the symbols to have meaning beyond just the sum of the meaning of each individual symbol. So no matter how you mark down your count, it's not language until you have some consistent pattern of signifying that that means how many moons have passed, or how many people are in the local community, or something like that.

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timeon 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> most people would agree that hand prints and tally marks are written language.

How about emojis?

	▲	lelanthran 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		> most people would agree that hand prints and tally marks are written language. > How about emojis? Goo question; those are literally to communicate :-/