Thoth's Pill - an Animated History of Writing
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN recommends it as a fun, amazing overview of writing systems whenever the alphabet or cuneiform comes up.
What it is
NativLang's 47-minute animated documentary traces the birth and evolution of writing, from early cave marks to modern scripts. It presents the history of the world's writing systems as a story.
Recommended by 3 HN commenters across 3 different months, 2019 to 2023.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec HocusLocus · 2019-12 · on “How writing began, and other unexpectedly funny stories about cuneiform [video]”
I also recommend Thoth's Pill, an amazing historical overview of writing systems that breaks new ground in animated video production... as they are describing alphabet systems and letter figures they are drawn in real time and presented on a clear crisp background. Where most documentaries we've seen over the years show glimpses of photographs of ancient writing samples, often dimly lit or weathered and faded, tending to make it more about documents than language -- these folk are writing script and glyphs on computer, presenting detailed traces or brushing the characters and building alphabets, explaining down to the character/sound. For children this is precious. If I had seen something li
Strong rec MrsPeaches · 2021-01 · on “Who Invented the Alphabet?”
Highly recommend Thoth’s Pill [1] for a fun video on the subject. Goes deep but keeps it relatively light. Has the added bonus of going into Mesoamerican writing systems which are often underrepresented in these analyses. [1] [this video]
Recommends 29athrowaway · 2023-03 · on “Abecedarium”
If you like these topics, you will enjoy "Thoth's pill - an Animated history of writing" [this video]