Weird Ancient Writing Technique
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 21 ส.ค. 2024
- Boustrophedon is an ancient style of writing that involves alternating the direction of the writing between left-to-right and right-to-left in a zigzag pattern, like a plow turning at the end of a field. The term "boustrophedon" comes from the Greek word for "oxen turning," as the technique is said to resemble the way oxen plow a field.
Boustrophedon was used by many ancient cultures, including the Greeks and Romans, as well as early civilizations in China and the Americas. While it's not commonly used today, boustrophedon writing is still an interesting and unique technique that offers a glimpse into the rich history of written communication.
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This is actually kinda genius because a lot of times especially during long paragraphs we generally tend to skip a line or re-read the same sentence when going from the last word in the line to the next line
I was thinking the same thing
Exactly! I don't think it's necessarily adhd or dyslexia, like a lot of people say it is. I think we just need a writing style that's more intuitive
Is that really more difficult than reading backwards?
@@itsgonnabeanaurfromme if reading backwards was normalized then yes
Fr and then the sentence makes no sense
Its worse when it makes sense and then ur understanding of the text is completely wrong
honestly thats a superior method of writing, all those milliseconds of moving your eye between lines definitely adds up over the course of a book
I agree. It makes perfect sense!
the problem is that all of the turning of the letters may decrease readability, especially with our modern latin alphabet with letters like q, p and d, b
Lmao 🤓
@@hlaweardlaighonaghidau6543 would we though letters the flip to have
@@hlaweardlaighonaghidau6543 In my opinion it would be a matter of adjustment. Im 95% sure that if you tried reading like this everyday for a week it would become second nature. P and Q can be confused in left to right anyways. I think that the only concern is that cursive becomes useless, because writing it in both directions becomes unnecesarily difficult, so your best bet is print letters only.
Would absolutely love a boustrophedon chrome extension that can turn articles, ebooks and PDFs into this. Could be a huge asset for speed reading
That would be super cool! ^^
You are the kind of person any kid would want and need as a history teacher. You just make it interesting.
He doesn't just teach history, he is making history as the ruler of Ironland
@@playspeedcode😂❤ yes
Agreed.
It would also make more sense for larger carvings covering any sort of distance. You could have an entire wall covered in tiny writing, and be able to follow it without having to walk all the way back to the beginning
This comment is underrated. This point is REALLY good.
Oh damn, that's an EXCELLENT point.
Great point
Very good point sir!
Yep, go to Gortyne in Crete and that's exactly the case. Boustrophedon also doesn't separate words, and there's no punctuation (which is a way to imitate speach on writings), and words are often cut when you reach the end of the line, as to use as much of the space available.
I'm a senior student of Chemistry and it's not unusual for us to draw reaction mechanisms like that, it really helps understand the sequence of steps when there are a lot of them
Or you don't have to redraw the structure every line 😂
Yeeees!!! I do it too! I absolutely do not understand the teachers that casually continue on the next line
Just make sure you keep the symbols the right way round. You don't want someone confusing your bromine for your rubidium!
Even in biotech it is similar for writing things like downstream processes, pathways and such.
I would do something pretty similar with math equations, where once I got the the end of the line, I’d draw an arrow turning around and going back to the beginning to point to the next step on the next line. :P
My theory is that this was designed by left handed people so that everyone would have to suffer the ink smudges.
Ancient greeks didn't invent this. they were merely copying the system they borrowed from the Levantine Phoenicians and Ugaritics .. but the Westerners would like to believe that Greeks came up with everything under the sun on their own.
except it was carved
@@gavinrolls1054Ancient Egypt had parchment and would write on it. But parchment doesn’t survive thousands of years as well as carved stone does, so we have less of it.
It would mean that everyone has half their lines smudged😊
Don't forget Old Norse Runic script which is often written along a curved path . No mirroring, but upside down parts happen . However there's also left to right multiline inscriptions .
I'm gonna start using "as the cow turns" as an expression to describe something going back and forth just to see if it catches on.
Hell yeah!
I support this
Seconded
Same!
Yoink
I'm Greek and it's the first time I hear about this theory. Beautiful video with clear explanation! Thank you for covering that topic!
did you write Greek in backwards?
Me too lol
@@chainjail4834 as a Greek I can say that this was only in Ancient Greece. Nowadays we always write left to right.
It isnt a theory its straight fact
First thing my ancient Greek professor taught our class in 7th grade.
Ancient Tagalog script called Baybayin, front the Philippines can be written at any format, Left to Right, Right to Left, Up and down, and vice versa.
Holy crap! I was actually genuinely shocked at how easy it was to read the example text in English. I wasn't expecting that.
This actually makes a ton of sense and now I want to suggest it to the guy on TikTok who is making a dolphin language.
I love that guy!
Dolphin language? What?
Who
What
why do people just drop sick info like that and never clarify
When we were growing up and reading in Chinese, our text was always up to down and right to left across the columns. It also helped that the books started on the right hand side and finished on the left.
I’m fascinated by Chinese. To me, most of the worlds languages although may not use alphabets, use some sort of phonetic system - certain number of symbols cover every sound roughly that a language has, then simply it’s readable. However, Chinese isn’t so, from what I get - it’s a symbol like 就 and then what? If you’ve never seen it before, you don’t even know how to say it, something not in English, you see a word like “conjugating”, you may not know what it means, but you can say it or ask someone easily, with Chinese it seems you need to somehow take that symbol physically with you.
@@user-up7nb6id1f When I was growing up, my dad told me that there were three to five thousand words that I had to basically recognize to understand the language, but thousands more if you want to get into classical texts and lesser common terms. From what little I remember of my childhood Chinese lessons, a lot of words have parts that have a phonetic sound that you can use in conjunction with the context, but this was not always the case. In Taiwan, there is a phonetic alphabet (bepemefe - ABCD) that can be written adjacent to the hanzi to help kids, not unlike the hiragana/katakana of Japanese. But as far as I understood the language, there was just a lot of memorization.
@@AW-gi8ri Bopomofo is really weird because it's a Chinese alphabet which just sounds like a contradiction because China uses the most common and widespread form of writing in the world (Logography) meanwhile Bopomofo uses the type only created once (Alphabet).
@@DogDogGodFog Latin is written top to bottom then right to left???
@@dmicah3960 gah i got the directions confused
i really wish more languages were like this. I can't tell you the amount of times i've lost my place in a book or a wikipedia article or something because i had to jump to the next line and lost where the next line was because it was so long and the font was so small that i lost track of which line i'm hopping from and have to go back to where i was and start all over again. idk maybe i just suck at read and i'm too adhd and autistic but surely someone else has had this right? 🤣
I have that when I only use my left eye. Which has astigmatism and hypermetropia. Have you gotten checked?
Ancient greeks didn't invent this. they were merely copying the system they borrowed from the Levantine Phoenicians and Ugaritics .. but the Westerners would like to believe that Greeks came up with everything under the sun on their own.
The concept of readability
tnemmoc ruoy htiw eergasid dluow
I was thinking "but why go through the effort of reversing letters?" and then I realised I was seeing the words right away just in reverse compared to when I have to start interpreting the words when the letters are placed normally, but in backwards order. I never knew I had such a strong habit of recognising things and searching for their mirror images with same efficiency.
I think that this is a very neat feature of a language. As a Dyslexic person, I have difficulties finding the start of the next line in a text while reading a long text, so a writing system like this can be maybe solve this problem for me.
Wow, OmegaLink! If you try this, let us know. This could be transformative for a lot of people. If it works, it could be more universally used. Given that every other line would be printed backwards, I wonder if it would be using different parts of the brain?
I don't know about dyslexia. Is it associated with any brain miswiring? Is it associated with lefthandedness? Any other different wiring?
@@grovermartin6874 basically a miswiring in the brain in the language portions. Reading back and fourth like that wouldn’t really trigger any other parts of the brain but as a dyslexic I definitely think it would help me keep my place on the lines.
I replied to the top comment and tried it, reading but pain a was typing think I wasn’t too bad in my opinion, just weird
@@caedencollins7618 Thanks so much for responding! Maybe it's just something going on with my phone, that my questions were not showing up.
@Grover Martin I think that at my age there is a diminishing return, because I will nead to leard to read backward.
Although I'm also a Hebrew speaker, and we write from right to left, so maybe it wouldn't be that hard for me? I can give it a try.
@@omegalink314 This makes me smile, wonderingly. Once when we four children were fooling around, seeing how well we could write with our feet and our nondominant hands, our father came home to get some papers he'd forgot. When he saw what we were doing, he said, "Let me try that." He was righthanded, with a terrible scrawl. When he wrote with his left hand we were all breathless at how legible and graceful it was. He wrote lefthanded for the last 50 years.
May it work as well for you.
I might start writing like this unironically
Yeah that’ll be cool
dear ot drah tub
For us english speakers
@@DanielQwerty I'm sure eventually we would get used to it
@@anosmia6279 if you learned to read like that from childhood I’m sure it’d be quite easy
@@DanielQwerty do we have to flip the though letters
Welcome to the Neurotribe.
that would actually suit me super well, i always accidentally read that way and have to reread sentences
This channel is probably the most fascinating one on TH-cam.
I used to take notes that way. Drive my teacher crazy.
Did you write whole words, or do each letter backwards?
As a Taurus, I want to try writing as the cow turns. Seems appropriate
Your teacher reads your notes?
I hardly took much notes at school; certainly teacher never had to read them.
@@MsHojat a few of my teachers did. My high school biology checked notes periodically, usually to make sure we were getting the info right. She used them to correct misunderstanding and confusion without calling anyone out and embarrassing them.
@@recoveringsoul755 🤡.
I love this! I'll be sharing this with my colleagues who teach greek🎉
just don't be Turkish
@@lewakar umm I'm not sure what you mean
For anyone wondering (especially my fellow Greeks who have never heard about this), according to wikipedia Boustrophedon was abandoned by the 7th centurty b.c. That's why all the ancient greek we were taught in school is from left to right.
For reference this is 350 years before Aristotle, Thucydides and most known greek philosopher/scientist (including Socrates who was used as an example in the video).
The channel is always super educational. This guy educates me on things that I would have never thought to look up
Imagine a text written all across a wall. You might struggle to find the beginning of the next line with any other way of writing. I think it makes a lot of sense for the reader.
I took several years of ancient Greek and I never had to deal with this craziness. But my professor who was a expert in Greek epitaphs talked about them a lot.
The ancient south Arabian script does this as well. The letters are written right-to-left but the next line they can be written left-to-right with a few letters flipped. A cool thing is that this isn’t always the case, there are as many tablets or stone carvings that are just oriented right-to-left.
If you write a lot of poetry, this REALLY makes sense.
I love the image of a Spartan warrior chasing a cow across a field.
It’s certainly MORE EFFICIENT than having to reset your hand in place diagonal to where your last letter was. Dropping down one (character space) saves time, and if you think about it all those brief moments eventually add up. I can write equally well in cursive/print whether the letters are forward or backward, so this is going to be my new writing format🤣 I just wish Christmas was sooner so I had an excuse to bombard all my friends with it.
For me writing left to right is significantly slower and more unsure because I can't see the letters I just wrote because of my hand
You could just write them a get well
tsuj ev'uoy ehcadaeh eht ot eud ,drac
introduced them to. 😂
@@brentmartin6833 This just made me realise how easy it is to read in reverse 🤯
But what about the flipped characters 😅
Loseing about 1 or 2 seconds over the course of like 100 books isn't much of a reason to change the regular reading format
As a kid I used to wonder why we didn’t write like that
I built a ebook reader a while ago that presented text like this. Being dyslexic it made it so much easier to not loose my place and read the wrong line next.
tell me the name please
Hint: The US Army's Flight Aptitude test has one section where there are rows of "O" (Oh's) and inter mixed with some "C" letters, and you have to count how many "C" letters are there. Like this -
OOOOCOOOOCOOOCOOOOCOOO
Reading from Left to right, very hard to spot the "C" letters, reading RIGHT TO left, easy.
The point, check to see if a person "Scans" well. Fortunately, I did a lot of Word Search puzzles, and scanned in all directions to find a root letter of a word, so I figured it out quickly, and scored high on the test.
How many "C"s did you find going right? Going left?
Cool 👍 I found 4 both reading both ways.
I found 4 both ways rather fast, mostly cause I drunk on caffeine
The worst part about reading a book is when you read a line and then have to move your eyes to the other side of the page and find the next line among all of the other lines.
That's literally the definition of reading. You just don't like to read
@@itsgonnabeanaurfromme In really dense texts you can easily lose your place but it's easy to just follow the line with a finger or use a bookmark to slowly reveal text.
@@itsgonnabeanaurfromme you must have never read a book with small print because clearly they're just talking about the frustration that comes with occasionally skipping a line or rereading the same one
Same is true when you are copying something
@@itsgonnabeanaurfromme you’ve clearly never read an actual long book. ironic.
I wish this is how every language is written
As someone that can read backwards, I find this incredibly pleasing and my brain was happy to pick it up instantly. Totally makes sense.
This would also be great for braille. You could read with one hand if you wanted and not have to worry about accidentally skipping a line
Ah yes, yes, yes yes yes, especially since many braille users already practice interacting with backwards braille when using a slate and stylus. It would be a pretty quick transition for a good bit of them I think.
this is more intuitive than starting over from the same side again, especially for longer text that can make you get lost
Thats because your not reading your just seeing the words if you're focused on the text you shouldn't have an issue reading normally
I am Greek and this is the first time I heard about this type of writing. Very interesting video
This is actually one very interesting video from you.
The theory that I think is a little better is that these languages would have been carved into stone with a heavy chisel, so switching the direction is just physically more practical, since you dont have to heave it all the way to the other side.
Pretty sure Greeks wrote on expensive leather, while Egyptian wrote on papyrus and Mesopotamians wrote with light wedges on wet clay.
or it was just influenced by earlier writing system like the Phoenician and Egyptian. both of the writing systems also eventually transitioned to predominantly left-to-right writing.
In any scenario it would be more practical and efficient for the “writer” to move instead of the stone. So I don’t think this theory makes sense that much at all.
The other odd bit about this is that writing left-to-right as a right-handed person, you avoid smearing the wet ink, but lefties have a problem with it, having to avoid smearing the ink. Likewise, writing right-to-left has the ink problem for righties. Even so, for some reason, several languages settled on right-to-left, others on left-to-right, and some went top-to-bottom, with either right-to-left or left-to-right secondary progress as you write. But I'm not sure if anyone uses bottom-to-top writing. So for some reason, as a species, we are maybe wired to have top-to-bottom and/or RTL or LTR. Notice almost none kept the boustrophedon bidirectional mode, it standardized to one or the other. If we still did that, we/d ave to have two font styles for every single one we use now, roman or italic, lighter or bolder, plus directionality.
I think it's much easier to format boustrophedon (as the ox plows), since you're just mirroring text every other line.
In fact ancint greek borrowed paleo-hebrew letters, and latin borrowed the greek letters, but because greek did boustrophedon the latin letters are basically mirrored versions of paleo-hebrew letters...
from what i heardmost of the languages that write rtl are those that used stone carving originally, which is easier to do for righthanded people with chisel and hammer. slightly unrelated but still neat
@@pyrometheus4277 Here's a debunk for you: greek and latiin used hammer and chisel, and are written LTR (latin alphabet is designed to be chiseled), while arabic used ink and paper since conception (its letters are inherently caligraphic), yet is RTL...
@@adrianblake8876 oh neat! Thank you
We stopped using it specifically because of ink. You gave the answer yourself. If there was a larger period of time between smear free inks and the computer, we might have reverted to that system eventually.
Your videos are awesome dude. Keep em coming. Don't scale up or up your production costs. it's perfect just keep following the rabbit holes
I am so glad you turned up in my feed. Linguistics is so cool!!
One possible advantage of writing "plow-wise" on a stone tablet is that you could ink it up and start printing papers with it. The reversed print wouldn't even be noticed.
Great explanation and visuals!
I also really like the theory of why languages came about either written left or right sided. Most languages are left > right because we used paper and ink, and writing L > R would ensure the ink didnt smear, while arabic and Hebrew speakers didnt have much paper and used stone instead, so the wrote R > L so they could see the letters as they chiseled (most being right handed meant that the chisel would be held in the right hand and hammered in from the left)
The term boustrophedon in Ancient Greek means something like "As the ox turns" and is a reference to the similarity of this style of writing to ploughing a field, in case anyone was wondering.
Can someone write a program to convert a larger body of text into the boustrophedonic style? I think it could help speed readers & polyglots in various ways
It's actually pretty easy to take a text file and reverse all the characters of every second line using a few lines of python
pX lnɟdlǝɥ ƃuᴉǝq ǝlᴉɥʍ ƃuᴉlloɹʇ ǝʞᴉl ʇlǝɟ I ʇnq 'pɐǝɥ ɹᴉǝɥʇ uo ɯǝɥʇ ƃuᴉuɹnʇ ʇnoɥʇᴉʍ sɹǝʇʇǝl ǝɥʇ ǝsɹǝʌǝɹ ʇsnɾ oslɐ uɐɔ ʇᴉ 'sǝ⅄ ˙ɯoɔ'ɹǝsɹǝʌǝɹʇxǝʇ ǝʞᴉl sᴉɥʇ op uɐɔ
ʇɐɥʇ sǝʇᴉsqǝʍ ǝɹɐ ʎpɐǝɹlɐ ǝɹǝɥ⊥
@@hanneswiggenhorn2023 Could I have those few lines of Python please?
@@stormveil
t = open("Reverse.txt", "r")
text = t.read()
t.close()
rows = text.split("
")
i = 1
while i < len(rows):
rows[i] = ''.join(list(reversed(list(rows[i]))))
i = i + 2
w = open("Reverse.txt", "w")
for j in rows:
w.write(j + "
")
w.close()
Keep in mind that this program can't differentiate between reversed lines and non reversed ones, so you should only apply it to fully finished texts. Reverse.txt is the name of the text file with the text where half the lines should be reversed
TH-cam & Internet are such amazing places sometimes, where a stranger would casually write a program to help the curiosity of another stranger… Thank you @@hanneswiggenhorn2023!
The Harappan script is regarded as pictographic since its signs represent birds, fish and a verity of human forms. The script was "boustrophedon", written from right to left on one line and then from left to right in the next line. The number of signs of the Harappan script is known to be between 400 and 600The Indus Script begins with the Harappa Phase (2600-1900 BC). There are three phases of Indus script and seal use based on excavations at Harappa and other sites. The Indus writing in its fully developed form can be dated to about 2600-1900 BC..
I think this type of writing would help me read alot, i always mix up which line i just read and have to re read lines. If the subsequent line was reversed it would be way easier to not get lost
The only example of reverse Boustrophedon I can think of is the language of Rongorongo. Which to this day remains completely undecipherable. It’s an interesting language of glyphs and is read from the bottom up in boustrophedon.
It would help you not lose your place when you read. You ever skip to the wrong line and get confused?
If I was writing in that style, I would write on a piece of glass and flip it everytime I finish a line so I would be able to read the way I am used to😅😂
One of my favorite quotes is actually from Socrates on his opinion of writing: "For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them." I love it as a quote because its a wonderful reminder that people have ALWAYS been resistant to change and the development of new "technology" for as long as humans have existed. And thats okay! Its always important to recognize the potential downfalls of new things before they are introduced, but that also means we have to recognize that we probably can't stop them from being implemented in at least some way!
I like this. Not just because it saves eye movements, but also because you're less likely to hit the wrong line. Like what happens sometimes when you hop all the way back.
So cool! Is this something constant throughout ancient years or there where period in which it was used and periods in which it wasn't?
I think it was prevalent during Archaid period (8th to 6th centuries bce.) Imo the greek doesn't necessarily think that writing is somewhat inferior to oral speech rather it's just socrates thing y'know? It's his preference and his unique methodology.
the more likely theory albeit not as interesting on why the greek at this point of time use boustrophedon writing may have been influenced by the directionality of earlier writing systems, such as those used by the ancient Phoenicians and Egyptians.
@@adikurniawan1816No, the belief books were inferior was very widespread. Books were seen as a crutch and only any good for communication, recordkeeping, learning, etc. A professional shouldn't need reference books.
If you went to class at an Academy the professor won't bring any notes and you'd be expected to remember what you're taught.
The idea is to not depend on carrying books around, but instead internalize that knowledge. Similar to why the Celt druids memorized their holy "scriptures" which in fact were never written down, they were expected to recall from memory all sorts of useful teachings.
Muslims have a practice to memorize the whole Quran and bring up phrases from memory.
A scholar should remember his specialty with this sort of dedication.
@@crusaderACR books made of stone??? They didn't even have books bro, they couldn't even use books for learning as you suggest.
Most ancient stuff was written like this, this is why so many English letters are flipped Egyptian hieroglyphics. At some point different cultures just decided to stick with one form or another
My kid flips letters too 🤷🏻♀️
if anyone's wondering, some are also written top to bottom such as hieroglyphs.
As someone who struggles when reading multiple lines i find this to be way better.
That’s actually smart, I wish we wrote like that, reading would be so much easier
Ancient greeks didn't invent this. they were merely copying the system they borrowed from the Levantine Phoenicians and Ugaritics .. but the Westerners would like to believe that Greeks came up with everything under the sun on their own.
And in Egyptian hieroglyphs they go both ways, but you need to look at certain symbols to tell, like the bird will face the direction that the line is facing/ moving
When I started learning to write, I sometimes used to write the first sentence left to right and the second sentence right to left, and then I would get confused because I wasn’t able to read it. I grew out of it, but it’s cool to know it was also an ancient way of writing lol
This makes so much sense. It would make it so much easier for our eyes to track
WTF THATS INCREDIBLE. The Greeks knew a lot more than we commonly think.
I like that Japanese has a quirky reading/writing style, too. If the writing is vertical, it's read top to bottom, right to left. If horizontal, it's read left to right. Languages are fun
I like that. It would help me reduce my visual fatigue if things were written like that.
This channel is one of the most interesting channels in yt
Takes a second to adjust but I actually like it. Flows nicely. I'd be interested to read an entire book written this way.
Chinese and Japanese (and also Korean and Vietnamese when written only in Chinese) used to be written from top to bottom & right to left.
that's honestly the most intuitive system I've seen
Imagine writing this way with calligraphy.. how satisfying!
Dude this would make finding the next line so much easier
first time TH-cam shorts recommended me something that's actually interesting. Great vids!
A wonderful system for staying on track with creative thought processes while writing.
Honestly like the cow turns writing actually seems nice, if you are reading for a long time it's easy to lose your place by accidentally skipping a line going back, especially in really long paragraphs. Just going down then back would probably stop that from happening
I LOVE your videos, great for lore construction on language for writer and such an amazing way to learn new things!!
Oh nice! Are you working on a conlang and/or story project?
This is a great video, you did a great job! Thanks for making this ❤
This channel never disappoints. 😀
I struggle with going from one line to the next. Like I sometimes miss a line or start reading the one I just read so this would be a big help.
Now that is 100% the most interesting thing I've learned from TH-cam today. 👌🏼👍🏼
Actually this method was used only for the very early stone epigraphs. Once they used papyrus more frequently, they accustomed to regular left to right. So this is really a rarity, every archeologist and epigraphist gets excited about and writes papers on it :D
This way was actually significantly easier for me to read. Im dyslexic and can also read backwards&upside down. So, this was somehow just better
Holy shit this is genuinely life changing that is such a superior method of writing like I feel like I’m going to cry right now we are missing out on the concept of a lifetime
This makes sense, but as a musician, i have to look ahead to the next line while im still playing the previous one so i don't loose tempo. Same thing with page turns, you turn the page while your playing the first page still. People can adapt very well to become efficient at what they do despite something being a little bit limiting.
For a world I made in which I run a Pathfinder game for a few friends, one of the languages use this style of writing. I did not know a language used it in real life until today and I'm blown away by how awesome that is!
I can read mirror writing as fast as normal, perhaps thats a throwback to that writing style.
You look/act so similar Jason Murphy from Modern Rogue it's insane, you even talk like him sometimes. Great informative video btw
Hieroglyphics go in either direction: left to right or right to left, or even top to bottom.
Direction was often chosen for ascetic reasons, particilarly on monuments where a line could be written both ways to add symmetry.
at first I thought it sounded stupid but after watching the entire thing I'm pissed we don't use this. Imagine how easier it would be to deliver speeches? the C- back in high school still haunts me. I'm reminded of it from time to time like it's mocking me.
I think it makes a lot of sense; I remember in my early reading, I'd loose track of which line I was on.
When I was a kid I wished books were written like this because I lost my place a lot of times
That method actually makes some sense, efficiency-wise. I believe writing it would be faster, but speed-reading would probably be slower.
We need to bring this back
This method is actually in wide use in the United States today, but not for writing language. In American land measurements and divisions, townships are made up of 36 sections (usually 640-acre squares of land arranged in a 6x6 grid) which are counted in boustrephedon, with Section 1 being the northeasternmost section in any given township and Section 36 being the southeasternmost.
Ancient Greeks going both ways is just comedy writing itself.
The most incredible thing about this video is that I found out I had no problem reading the inverted letters. That was the only thing I thought we would have issues with if written like this. I cant tell you how many times I have skipped lines switching my eyes from end of a line to the beginning in textbooks with really fine print. I have literally wished for the line continuing from right to left. I dont know why we dont write like this.
When I was in middle school, I was frustrated that we didn't write like this because it is more efficient for reeding and writing.
This is something that I do to save time when writing to continue my thoughts quickly. I write in an altered shorthand from left to right and then from right to left in backwards letters. People didn’t ask to borrow my notes in uni because they were impossible to read 😂
Mate I just want to say: you’re so cool, and your knowledge always makes me smile and brightens my day