Category Archives: Language and Linguistics


How Bamboo Shaped the Batak Script


October 1, 2018 ||

Don’t crane your neck In the late 18th century, European travelers first began to penetrate the dense forests of the interior of northern Sumatra. From earlier reports, they expected to find tribes of headhunters and cannibals. What they found were highly literate cultures with centuries-old writing traditions and vast collections of books (and yes, a […]