Thank you Ingrid! I’ll have a look at it at my leisure. 😊

If you want to explore message sticks further, have a look at the additional resources by Piers Kelly mentioned at the end of the article. Piers is doing amazing research in this neglected area.

Oh, thank you Ingrid! Yes they indeed are limited since they only mean certain things instead of the broader aspect. But I was wondering if there was some special pattern in the message sticks that “speaks”. Like certain common paterns to indicate certain things. Is it so? Or were the patterns completely random?

Thanks for this fascinating excursion! I’ve added “Lost kingdoms of the Amazon” to my to-watch list. Sounds amazing!

Thanks, Siyao! You are right that scammers prey on the kind of automaticity we are talking about here … glad you got out of both these cases before any harm was done! We can’t be careful enough these days 😰

Thanks, Saraf – I also feel sad about all these message sticks being stolen and made meaningless in museums…
Sorry to hear mail is making you anxious … unfortunately, anything that still comes in the mail tends to be bureaucratic stuff … love letters and even picture postcards and such positive mail are mostly a thing of the past …
Hope you’ll feel at home here soon!

Thanks, NBT! These logos and abbreviations are similar in form but their meanings are more limited. The tally marks are a bit like the proto-writing we looked at in class …

Sorry to hear you caught covid! You are right, sad but true, a literacy event for which we no longer need to read the instructions…

– Lost Kingdoms of the Amazon – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDmKC_h9Www
– Gaspar Morcote-Ríos, Francisco Javier Aceituno, José Iriarte, Mark Robinson, Jeison L. Chaparro-Cárdenas, (2021)
Colonisation and early peopling of the Colombian Amazon during the Late Pleistocene and the Early Holocene: New evidence from La Serranía La Lindosa .

Thank you very much for sharing this article, which made me understand that simple activities in life, such as reading letters, can also be analyzed from the perspective of literacies. It reminds me of the spam messages I often received after I come to Sydney. The first time was a text message from an unknown number asking if I had time to see him on Friday. At first, I seriously replied whether he sent the message to the wrong person. Then he apologized and asked for my personal information. I realized it was a fraud message. However, once Auspost sent a text message saying that I have an uncollected package. If I need to deliver it again, please click the website link to fill in the information. As the writing format of this text message is formal, and there is [Auspost] written at the beginning of the text message. I thought that someone sent me a package, so I clicked on the link and filled in my personal information according to the prompts on the web page. I did not feel anything wrong until it asked me to fill in my bank card information to pay for the shipping fee. I exited the link and searched online to see if there was any fraudulent text message from Auspost, checked the phone number carefully and finally confirmed that it was not a real text message sent by Auspost.

I first tried reading the post to no avail as I was very confused about the message sticks being related to the bills. Then I took some time listening and re-listening to the audio conversation. Afterwards I re-read the post and I understood. The talk about the logo and the timing explaining what is in the envelope is indeed very similar to the use of message sticks. This reminds me of a few signs and symbols, for example: a certain version of tick mark indicating NIKE shoes. I can go for something more common that we see regularly, like the wheelchair symbol which is used to indicate access for people with limited mobility or the restroom signs or the traffic lights. Honestly speaking, if aliens were ever to come to earth they would not know the meaning of those lights or the public transport symbols (bus,metro,train, etc). There are also abbreviations (Mon, Wk, txt etc.) that we can read despite them being incomplete. We read so many signs and symbols like this in our day to day lives, we do not even need to look up the meaning of them anymore as we already know the context.

(The word limit is such a hassle! I suddenly remembered something that we used before but we do not use anymore. The tally marks, 4 vertical lines crossed diagonally by a 5th line from right to left. They seem very similar to the markings on the message sticks although a lot easier to understand.)

Tasnim.