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Unearthing a long-ignored African writing system

bu.edu

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Re: Unearthing a long-ignored African writing system

#41

Post by aatd86 »

ninkendo wrote: post #37
shmageggy wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To me it’s weird because it’s so unimportant. Who cares which groups of who were advanced or not and what they were doing back then. The people colonizing those lands certainly cared at the time, and they used such beliefs to justify a lot of pretty awful acts. Given that the modern, western world is built on the legacy of colonialism, it's important (at least to me) to understand whether those motivating beliefs w…

I think that’s a pretty uncharitable interpretation of GP’s comment. They said you don’t need to feel better or worse about yourself due to what your ancestors did or didn’t do and when. It doesn’t mean nobody did any bad things or that we can’t learn from it, but that we shouldn’t let it cause more tribalism today. IMO, we’re all the same species, our history is littered with awful and good people, and lots of flawe…

As long as it is not also an excuse to not undo the wrongs that often persist with such multi-generational catastrophic human problems.

If I knew that everything I have is built on genocide, I would feel pretty wrong.

Those who do not are probably a bit strange imho.

Re: Unearthing a long-ignored African writing system

#42

Post by jfk13 »

idoubtit wrote: post #12

The story is great, but there are many inconsistencies. I believe it was decorated to the point the facts were bent to follow the story. After reading the article, I thought that reasearchers learned about the existence of Ajami just recently, far after the colonial powers were gone. That's not true. In 1970, a museum was created in Tombouctou for collecting the documents in Arabic and Ajami. https://en.wikipedia.org…

Yeah, I looked at the article expecting to find out about some writing system I hadn't previously known. Oh, it's Ajami? That's hardly news, it's been widely known (at least among people with an interest in such things) for a long time. E.g. the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajami_script page is far from new.

It may well be that they're now unearthing (or paying attention to) specific Ajami documents that have been largely ignored. But the writing system itself isn't that obscure.

Re: Unearthing a long-ignored African writing system

#43

Post by seti0Cha »

idoubtit wrote: post #12

The story is great, but there are many inconsistencies. I believe it was decorated to the point the facts were bent to follow the story. After reading the article, I thought that reasearchers learned about the existence of Ajami just recently, far after the colonial powers were gone. That's not true. In 1970, a museum was created in Tombouctou for collecting the documents in Arabic and Ajami. https://en.wikipedia.org…

I have to admit I got discouraged by the implausible narrative and didn't finish reading, so maybe it's addressed, but it seemed very strange to me that this scholar's father, his neighbors, and apparently many others around him, were engaging in writing without him ever noticing. He had "been told that these people were illiterate"...did he not grow up in that community? Why did his brother, who still lives there, not know about it? And how did he recognize that the script was written in his father's hand when he believed his father was illiterate? I really dislike this kind of info-drama.

Re: Unearthing a long-ignored African writing system

#44

Post by kimi »

aatd86 wrote: post #41
ninkendo wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that’s a pretty uncharitable interpretation of GP’s comment. They said you don’t need to feel better or worse about yourself due to what your ancestors did or didn’t do and when. It doesn’t mean nobody did any bad things or that we can’t learn from it, but that we shouldn’t let it cause more tribalism today. IMO, we’re all the same species, our history is littered with awful and good people, and lots of flawe…

As long as it is not also an excuse to not undo the wrongs that often persist with such multi-generational catastrophic human problems. If I knew that everything I have is built on genocide, I would feel pretty wrong. Those who do not are probably a bit strange imho.

> If I knew that everything I have is built on genocide, I would feel pretty wrong.

If I knew that everything I have is built on genocide is called human history.

And I have a feeling that if the victims had been more lucky as to be the winners, they would have made more or less the same things.

Re: Unearthing a long-ignored African writing system

#46

Post by seti0Cha »

aatd86 wrote: post #41
ninkendo wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that’s a pretty uncharitable interpretation of GP’s comment. They said you don’t need to feel better or worse about yourself due to what your ancestors did or didn’t do and when. It doesn’t mean nobody did any bad things or that we can’t learn from it, but that we shouldn’t let it cause more tribalism today. IMO, we’re all the same species, our history is littered with awful and good people, and lots of flawe…

As long as it is not also an excuse to not undo the wrongs that often persist with such multi-generational catastrophic human problems. If I knew that everything I have is built on genocide, I would feel pretty wrong. Those who do not are probably a bit strange imho.

> If I knew that everything I have is built on genocide, I would feel pretty wrong.

Well, isn't it? Human history is a bloody affair from the first days of farming to today. History is a long series of wrongs. How shall we undo them?

Re: Unearthing a long-ignored African writing system

#47

Post by [deleted] »

aatd86 wrote: post #41
ninkendo wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that’s a pretty uncharitable interpretation of GP’s comment. They said you don’t need to feel better or worse about yourself due to what your ancestors did or didn’t do and when. It doesn’t mean nobody did any bad things or that we can’t learn from it, but that we shouldn’t let it cause more tribalism today. IMO, we’re all the same species, our history is littered with awful and good people, and lots of flawe…

As long as it is not also an excuse to not undo the wrongs that often persist with such multi-generational catastrophic human problems. If I knew that everything I have is built on genocide, I would feel pretty wrong. Those who do not are probably a bit strange imho.

[deleted]

Re: Unearthing a long-ignored African writing system

#48

Post by coliveira »

nemo44x wrote: post #21
idoubtit wrote: post #12

The story is great, but there are many inconsistencies. I believe it was decorated to the point the facts were bent to follow the story. After reading the article, I thought that reasearchers learned about the existence of Ajami just recently, far after the colonial powers were gone. That's not true. In 1970, a museum was created in Tombouctou for collecting the documents in Arabic and Ajami. https://en.wikipedia.org…

Historic revisionism has become very popular so as to make everyone feel better about their ancestors place in the annals of history. That everyone was at the same level and made the same amount of contributions to the modern world, etc. And of course it was the singularly evil colonizers and their descendants that stole this history and claimed it for themselves, etc. To me it’s weird because it’s so unimportant. Wh…

[flagged]

Re: Unearthing a long-ignored African writing system

#49

Post by wikithrowwayy »

jfk13 wrote: post #42
idoubtit wrote: post #12

The story is great, but there are many inconsistencies. I believe it was decorated to the point the facts were bent to follow the story. After reading the article, I thought that reasearchers learned about the existence of Ajami just recently, far after the colonial powers were gone. That's not true. In 1970, a museum was created in Tombouctou for collecting the documents in Arabic and Ajami. https://en.wikipedia.org…

Yeah, I looked at the article expecting to find out about some writing system I hadn't previously known. Oh, it's Ajami? That's hardly news, it's been widely known (at least among people with an interest in such things) for a long time. E.g. the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajami_script page is far from new. It may well be that they're now unearthing (or paying attention to) specific Ajami documents that have been l…

To be fair, the article claims that the guy first started working in this area in 2004, which is before the wikipedia article was created. bu.edu isn't trying to say that this is a new discovery this year/decade, it's discussing a particular academic's career.

That said, I'm 100% sure that the article is distorting (perhaps radically so) the background here -- these sorts of publications always seem to.

Re: Unearthing a long-ignored African writing system

#50

Post by peanutcrisis »

idoubtit wrote: post #12

The story is great, but there are many inconsistencies. I believe it was decorated to the point the facts were bent to follow the story. After reading the article, I thought that reasearchers learned about the existence of Ajami just recently, far after the colonial powers were gone. That's not true. In 1970, a museum was created in Tombouctou for collecting the documents in Arabic and Ajami. https://en.wikipedia.org…

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