Post AzFDzWQCGXgOnW7f72 by clew@ecoevo.social
(DIR) More posts by clew@ecoevo.social
(DIR) Post #AzFCnnKpSMNfpBSKdE by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-10-15T20:24:59Z
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Do we know if people writing in cuneiform in clay with a stylus could write fast? Has anyone ever had a contest to see how fast people can write numbers that way (in sexagesimal obviously) ?I think that if you try to do these things sometimes you make discoveries that just staring at a photo will never make evident.
(DIR) Post #AzFD78O9P6SkchEPlw by lydiaconwell@todon.nl
2025-10-15T20:28:26Z
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@futurebird I'm sure you could finish a tablet of text within a day, and I'm sure that would have been sufficiently fast.I'm no expert but I imagine they were mainly writing down rules and taxes and things.
(DIR) Post #AzFDGFUkLsS5Glf9zk by CStamp@mastodon.social
2025-10-15T20:30:06Z
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@futurebird Wouldn't a fair comparison be Asian language writing: Chinese, Japanese, Korean? Having to actually press a stylus into clay would likely add time, but if you are used to writing in a pictograph-looking alphabet, would a pen or pencil be much different from the stylus?
(DIR) Post #AzFDIeygZtvwslofqa by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-10-15T20:30:36Z
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@lydiaconwell but not everyone could write— you might be very busy if you could.
(DIR) Post #AzFDsEO6urRYq9fc6i by catmisgivings@stranger.social
2025-10-15T20:36:58Z
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@futurebird aaa aaa i think my dad might've had an ideai'm certain an article he read on cuneiform tablets came up in conversationyou have to do it before the clay dries, and you can tell how fresh the clay was when it was written on (and where it was corrected by putting a fresh layer of clay over it and overwriting it)there are so many opportunities to geek out over cuneiform tablets
(DIR) Post #AzFDt8fleOqFP8MVP6 by JeffGrigg@mastodon.social
2025-10-15T20:37:07Z
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@futurebird @lydiaconwell 'Indeed, speed in writing was much appreciated in the ancient Near East, at least if we generalize the Sumerian proverb according to which “a scribe whose hand can keep up with the mouth, he is indeed a scribe!”.'https://cdli.ox.ac.uk/wiki/doku.php?id=cuneiform_writing_techniques
(DIR) Post #AzFDzWQCGXgOnW7f72 by clew@ecoevo.social
2025-10-15T20:38:16Z
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Irving Finkel is the film star for this (actual scholar, just ... incredibly charming)https://youtu.be/XVmsfL5LG90There are a couple of sub-questions because cuneiform was a working language for THOUSANDS OF YEARSAre you writing a poem? In your language or in a classical language? A whiny letter about copper or fancy duds? A recipe? A spreadsheet? A curse? These aren't the same when I write them in my native language, don't know why they would be in any other. @futurebird
(DIR) Post #AzFE98D18tH0bEXYJc by spork@furry.engineer
2025-10-15T20:39:58Z
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@futurebird There are videos on youtube of Irving Finkel teaching people to write cuneiform. He seems like he is pretty quick at it.
(DIR) Post #AzFEG8BFe9jgXR3Goi by clew@ecoevo.social
2025-10-15T20:41:17Z
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found a better video! shows the palm-sized tablets moving to make the subtle angles of the strokes easy. https://youtu.be/zjDFBb4IDqkAlso, a vid from Iraq, which seems more than fair!@futurebird
(DIR) Post #AzFFCqPzKWLeXDwR96 by mspcommentary@mastodon.online
2025-10-15T20:51:51Z
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@futurebird in all likelihood they did their calculation elsewhere and only used cuneiform to record the result, so I would say that writing it quickly was not especially important. The same goes for roman numerals.
(DIR) Post #AzFG2k5i6CCtyDCgJE by waitworry@sakurajima.moe
2025-10-15T21:01:16Z
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@futurebird if you did that test you would probably also have to assume someone who had been writing in cuneiform their whole life could go even faster
(DIR) Post #AzFGAYdSZgmul2iT6u by Moss@beige.party
2025-10-15T21:02:40Z
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@futurebird A speed texter with wedge shapes attached to their thumbs, holding the wet clay tablet like a phone
(DIR) Post #AzFGfgaL4H40OG6ECG by michael_w_busch@mastodon.online
2025-10-15T21:08:19Z
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@futurebird There are cuneiform exercise tablets that were used for daily lessons. Apparently they would be resmoothed and written over several times before the clay dried: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/321878
(DIR) Post #AzFJURurZARrZY26xk by wigglytuffitout@elekk.xyz
2025-10-15T21:39:53Z
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@futurebird this is not cuneiform at that point, but i know that for ancient romans, wax tablets were kinda the original post-it-note - scrap paper before scrap paper lol - so i wonder if wax you could get writing at a pretty good clip with, and then for a clay tablet (or especially a stone engraving...) you write it out more properly. i seem to remember some evidence that the babylonians did the same...?we gotta get some people learning to write cuneiform so we can make them do Mavis Beacon Teaches Writing In Clay And-Or Wax and gather data for average performance. and as you can probably tell, that rapidly became less and less of a joke as i wrote that sentence
(DIR) Post #AzFJVflbYUCUoqHn5E by SpaceLifeForm@infosec.exchange
2025-10-15T21:40:09Z
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@futurebird You have to write fast. Before the clay dries.
(DIR) Post #AzFLQVHDKVpMkEjYeG by Disputatore@masto.pt
2025-10-15T22:01:32Z
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@futurebird there probably weren't many incentives to write fast.
(DIR) Post #AzFLwsllWHn2sBSnPU by LewisWorkshop@mastodon.online
2025-10-15T22:07:27Z
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@futurebird yes, they could write fast. There's a misconception that tablets were all important documents, but many run along the lines of "stop selling Steve any beer until he pays his tab" - think of them as post-it notes used by shop keepers etc. That would get mushed at the end of the day. Those were never intended to be preserved in the long term but things like a building burning down, or just dumb luck of drying sometimes saved them.
(DIR) Post #AzFN34iQ7LJlcAPpBo by n_dimension@infosec.exchange
2025-10-15T22:19:45Z
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@futurebird They had a seal cylinder for signatures.So they could roll it across the clay and leave behind a unique signature fresco.So technically, they could write at the speed of rubber stamp.#cuneiform
(DIR) Post #AzG6zshkucrfO2WHzM by SkylerHandler@woof.group
2025-10-16T06:54:37Z
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@futurebird Yes we do know they could, since we can and we don't study as they did
(DIR) Post #AzGGBJgjpMfDqcZUSu by cstross@wandering.shop
2025-10-16T08:37:27Z
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@futurebird A side-comment:I suspect—cuneiform aside—the dynamics of writing with a stylus were thoroughly explored at Palm in the 90s back when they were inventing Graffiti for the Apple Newton, another stylus-on-tablet writing system, this time hampered by trying to vaguely resemble upper/lowercase roman letters and arabic numerals.Quite probably nobody has yet found the speed limit for that sort of text input. It'd be a useful field for computer research if not for multitouch.
(DIR) Post #AzGt54tHpPDUQdSOLw by PizzaDemon@mastodon.online
2025-10-16T15:53:24Z
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@futurebird well now I'm going to have to watch this Nova. Thanks for the homework, teach. (They say numbers came first)https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/a-to-z-the-first-alphabet/
(DIR) Post #AzH31K4gQrGPu5dU4u by mrdk@mathstodon.xyz
2025-10-16T17:44:45Z
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@futurebird Here (https://www.reddit.com/r/oddlysatisfying/comments/s4kpy9/cuneiform_writing_on_a_clay_tablet) is actually an example. But an expert could write faster, I think.
(DIR) Post #AzHSvjvA1L2F8TBDu4 by emmadavidson@aus.social
2025-10-16T22:35:03Z
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@futurebird tangential, but I remember in the early 00’s in Silicon Valley, it was not uncommon to see Palm font on office whiteboards because people were so used to handwriting that way. I know when I used Cirth in my notebooks for daily meeting notes, it was not quite as quick as regular handwriting or typed notes (I can do verbatim for that) but still very fast.