The oldest surviving objects with proto-writing - the very earliest 'books' - may by the enigmatic Aboriginal 'cylcons' of Western New South Wales. The oldest cylcons - rock cylinders with scratched markings - found in dated archaeological contexts are about 20 000 years old. 1/
Older than churingas, cylcons date from the earliest period of Aboriginal occupation, some may potentially be 40000 - 50000 years old. The use and purpose of cylcons is unknown to current Aboriginal peoples, and they do not regard them as sacred objects as they do churingas. 2/
Among the suggestions made is that they're tally sticks - for counting people or animals; or maps - showing various routes, rivers in the wet and dry seasons etc; or calenders – counting days, or lunar cycles; or memorials for the dead; or ritual pointers for shamanistic use. 3/
More research is needed before these cylcons' real significance is better understood and appreciated. But we can already say, that together with the earliest petroglyphs & rock-paintings, cylcons represent the oldest surviving form of graphical communication yet discovered. 4/
The term cylcon is derived from the title of R. Ethridge's paper “The Cylindro-conical & Stone Implements of Western New South Wales and their significance”. Also of note is a piece written by Lindsay Black in 1942 on “Cylcons: The mystery stones of the Darling River Valley.” 5/
From the State Library of New South Wales, here are some examples from one of several albums of cylcon photographs taken by the pioneering Australian antiquarian and researcher Lindsay Black (1886-1959) between 1931 and 1941. 6/
archival.sl.nsw.gov.au/Details/archiv…
Cylcons are absolutely remarkable as stone-work objects, quite apart from their engraved symbolic & totemic markings. Sandstone fashioned into perfectly smooth tapered cylinders, and some of them, like the one shown below, are surprisingly large - this example is 55cm long. 7/
This cylcon was found in 1948 at Moondilla Bore, a remote Outback agricultural station near the equally remote town of Adavale (current pop. 20) in South West Queensland, nearly 1000 kilometers west of the state capital, Brisbane. 8/

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More from @incunabula

11 May
"Cut off from the world by military clashes, the fate of the Abba Garima monastery and its spectacular Garima Gospels is still unknown. But the area around the monastery is controlled by soldiers who have looted systematically since the start of the war."
theglobeandmail.com/world/article-…
The Garima Gospels are a two volume Ethiopian Gospel Book dating to the 5th century. Garima 2, the earlier of the two, is believed to be the earliest surviving complete illuminated Christian manuscript - an incomparably important heritage for Ethiopia, Africa and all humanity.
The abbott and a monk at the Abba Garima Monastery near Adwa examining the Garima Gospels, thought to be the oldest surviving illuminated Christian manuscript. Local tradition holds that this codex was written before the year 500, a date supported by recent radiocarbon analysis.
Read 6 tweets
8 May
Bonaventura Vulcanius’ De literis et lingua getarum, sive gothorum [On the Alphabet & Language of the Getae or Goths], published in Leiden in 1597, contains texts & wordlists in Gothic, Crimean Gothic, Anglo-Saxon, Frisian, Persian, Welsh, Icelandic, Basque, Romani & Rotwelsch. ImageImage
In this pioneering work of comparative linguistics, Vulcanius attempted to define the relationship between the Gothic language and High German, Crimean Gothic (after Busbecq's vocabulary, first published eight years previously in 1589), Anglo-Saxon and Frisian. Image
At the same time, he also considered the Persian, Welsh, Icelandic and Basque languages. When the book went to press, what would otherwise have been blank space at the end of the last gathering was filled with a Romani and a Rotwelsch wordlist. ImageImageImage
Read 7 tweets
7 May
Kōetsu Utaibon 光悦謡本 [Saga, Kyoto, 1607].
The 100 Noh libretti called "Koetsu-bon" represent an astonishing leap, something unprecedented in the history of the illustrated or decorated book: this was the first time a book had been conceived as a single unified work of art. 1/
Not until William Blake’s books two centuries later, do we encounter anything like this as a "Gesamtkunstwerk" in the West, and the creation on any sort of scale of books composed as integrated, decorated printed works of art.... 2/
.... did not arrive in the West until the private presses of the late 19th century Arts & Crafts movement in Britain, and the French livres d’artistes produced in Belle Epoque Paris in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. 3/
Read 14 tweets
3 May
One of the smallest extant medieval Psalters, measuring just 50mm x 37mm.

This miniature Ferial Psalter, written around 1280, shows however that the interest and complexity of a manuscript has nothing to do with its size... 1/12
Representing the end-stage of a miniaturization fad that had been accelerating from the mid-twelfth-century, this manuscript - and others like it - could only have been possible after the introduction of the lens.... 2/12
The Psalter is profusely ornamented, with a range of decoration including ten multi-line, sometimes page-size, puzzle initials in red and blue, with frogspawn penwork and red and blue extensions forming three- and four-sided borders, some with “firework” designs... 3/12
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1 May
"The Jewish Magna Carta"

The 'Statute of Kalisz' was the first major manuscript project of the artist Arthur Szyk. It celebrates the General Charter of Jewish Liberties, which granted civil and religious rights to Polish Jews when issued in 1264 by Duke Bolesław in Kalisz. 1/4 ImageImageImage
Printed in Paris in 1932, this is a visually stunning production. The integration of text and image is vastly better handled than in Szyk's more widely known Haggadah, and the reproduction of Szyk's artwork is outstanding: crisp, vivid, colorful, impactful. 2/4 ImageImage
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Read 4 tweets
27 Apr
This is an untouched box of the legendary Hagoromo Fulltouch chalk, made in Japan circa 2014. The company closed down in 2015, and while a version of the chalk is now made in Korea, purists mourn the loss of the unsurpassable original - the finest blackboard chalk ever made. 1/
Mathematicians in particular revered Hagoromo for its unequalled legibility, usability and durability. Here, by @jeremyjkun, is a teary goodbye to Hagoromo. 2/
link.medium.com/Bpcbj5TMMfb
"I tried it. It was love at first sight. I couldn't believe such a thing existed," says math professor Satyan Devadoss. Since then, he's been a Hagoromo Fulltouch chalk convert." 3/
cbc.ca/1.3116153?__vf…
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