The Art, The Oral and the Written Intertwined in African Cultures

Over millennia people have applied different ideas with the view to make ephemeral oral communication, or at least the ideas carried by spoken words, last longer. The tools applied to different thoughts have changed and developed, but the main aims remained the same since the most ancient times. They are: to be able to remember what was once said, to “freeze” and save what was once said or thought for future generations and also to use simple signs to make references, so that the others think about exactly the same ideas in the same context as expected.