Empires erased writing systems at a measurable rate, new data shows

Researchers built a global database of 300 writing systems, tracking their evolution over 5,400 years. It turns out, writing systems change at a predictable rate, like a biological clock, but political interventions break this clock.

For the first time, we have a quantitative way to measure how imperial power destroyed cultural artifacts. The data shows that empires didn't just accelerate change, they actively rewrote the deep structural features of writing systems. This means we can now rank the destructive impact of different empires on cultural evolution.