I've always been fascinated by the history of writing, and one of the things I've always read is that some form of writing, or at least record-keeping, is crucial for administering cities and states. With that in mind, did the Mississippian Indian cultures of the pre-Columbian South and Midwest have some form of proto-writing? It seems like at least a partial script, to keep track of tribute and inventory goods, would have been vital to administer a city like Cahokia, with a population of 12,000 to 15,000. Anyone have any good info?
It’s likely they had some sort of mnemonic device for record keeping, but nothing that survives as easily identifiable proof of this.
However, they did have a symbol set of several motifs that likely had a deeper meaning that was easily understood by Mississippian peoples, but we don’t quite understand today. See some of the symbols and their current interpretations here. Some archaeologists have gone as far as to say this is a proto-glyphic writing, though this is far from agreed upon. A good example of Mississippian iconography coming together to form something that resembles a record keeping system is this palette found at another Mississippian site known as Moundville. A lot of translations of these motifs are mostly guesswork, and there’s lots more to be deciphered from them.
