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Title: I got options for ya
Review: Most people seem pretty disappointed by this book; on the other hand, I am very satisfied with this book: Before Writing, Volume I: From Counting to Cuneiform, by Denise Schmandt-Besserat. It refutes the very thesis that cuneiform developed out of nothing, instead, her theory is that it developed "from an archaic counting device." The foreword is by an eminent Assyriologist, and there's a volume II which is basically all the data (pictures of counting tokens), so the reader can judge for themself. If that weren't enough, she also wrote "'How Writing Came About' [which] draws material from both volumes to present Schmandt-Besserat's theory for a wide public and classroom audience. Based on the analysis and interpretation of a selection of 8,000 tokens or counters from 116 sites in Iran, Iraq, the Levant, and Turkey, it documents the immediate precursor of the cuneiform script." Anyone interested in this topic should be satisfied...
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