The incredible channel Nativlang in YouTube, which concentrates on dissemination and original insights regarding writing systems in history, has uploaded an incredible video which is inspired by the research from my article “Towards a Complex Theory of Writing: The Case of Aztec and Mixtec Codices“, published in 2022 in the French journal Signata. Of course, my research is not the only source of this video, which also takes a deep inspiration from Jansen and Pérez Jiménez seminal work, especially their book The Mixtec Pictorial Manuscripts: Time, Agency and Memory in Ancient Mexico (2011). The video, called “Pictorial books from Mexico defy our definition of writing – Ñuu Dzaui pictography” is of a truly astounding quality, seemingly having taken 315 hours of work, as it animates in full colour with a very high level of visual talent some of the examples found on my article and in the work of other scholars, as well as displaying an excellent understanding of the material commented upon.
The channel NativLang is the creation of the linguist Joshua Rudder, a talented coder and animator, who is responsible for the short film Thoth’s Pill: An Animated History of Writing, also available on YouTube, as well as being the author of a number of books concentrated on the learning of different scripts for non-specialists. I am truly honoured that my work has inspired such incredible animation, and I am looking forward to watching the rest of his videos, as well as those to come. Truly a great way to end the year for this blog!
Tlacuilolli 