> That one man, in the 1800's, saw his thousands-year old culture had a need for a written language...
This is why the Americans were so intractably behind the rest of the world by the time Columbus found em. I think it's sad
Except many native cultures in the Americas had written languages, going back thousands of years. I think the large scale genocide was a bit more sad.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_languages_of_the_Am...
There's only so much you can pass on without writing. It's a massive benefit to a society to not have to keep everything in people's heads.