To the Jew and Arab, this is no small thing, and anciently, was paramount in their daily lives. This birthright established the firstborn as being the head of the family, and entitled him to inherit the position and authority of his father, which afforded him greater honor and prestige than his younger siblings, and receiving a greater share or double portion of the family’s estate. Thus his younger brothers and sisters were expected to honor and respect him, much as children must honor and respect their parents.
In turn, the oldest son assumes responsibility for the family's welfare,and the birthright obligated the firstborn to preserve the sacred traditions of the family by fulfilling specific spiritual responsibilities, such as bringing sacrifices on behalf of the family, and to serve as the family's spiritual representative.
In fact, originally, bringing sacrifices to the altar was the privilege of the first born and until the Tabernacle was establish private altars were permitted, and the service was done by the Bechorot (first-born). Thus the “birthright” of the first-born in every family was to be its representative at the altar, to bring sacrifices for the family. It is as if every single family could have their own “cohen,” serving Hashem, which did happen, right around Matan Torah (the giving of the Torah). Thus, the fulfilling of these spiritual duties for the family was a sacred privilege, but also quite risky—improper service could result in death. It was simply something not to be trifled with, but here was Nephi, usurping it as far as Laman and Lemuel were concerned, who taught their children to hate the Nephites in turn (Mosiah 10:16-17).
When Nephi was commanded to flee their presence (2 Nephi 5:5), and took all those with him that were willing to follow him, he also took those few artifacts the colony would have held in great esteem, such as the sword of Laban, the Liahona, and the brass plates (2 Nephi 5:12,14). He even built a temple like unto Solomon’s (2 Nephi 5:16), which must have been the final blow to Laman and Lemuel in his usurpation of the rights of the bechora (בְּכוֹרָה).
As a result of this 1000-year-long-hatred of the Lamanites toward the Nephites, we can understand how important it was for the Lamanties to eliminate and remove all semblence of Nephite existence in order to justify their right to finally rule. Nephite writing, the sacred records, and whatever symbols or icons the Nephites might have had would have been destroyed. This is seen when the Lamanites were driving Mormon and his armies deeper and deeper into the north country and though they were in hot pursuit, the Lamanites took the time to destroy and burn to the ground all Nephite towns, villages and cities (Mormon 5:5), killing all Nephties who could not escape their pursuit (Mormon 5:7).
So what happened to that Lamanite written language? Why was it not being used 1000 years later when the Spanish arrived?
Which brings us back to the t’oqapu (tocapu) and also to another event in Incan history. First, the tocapu is a considered a type of signage—a language that, in addition to its characteristic form, some tocapu are enrolled in a quadrangular, simple and normal frame, which both art and semiotics, indicates that what is inside this graph limit has semiotic status.
Note also that, as a form of marking, is a trait that can also be seen on many objects non-Andean intended to communicate a story through graphics and text, for example, in "boxes sanctuary" and in some pictorial votive offerings, all products of the sixteenth century onwards, characteristic of European and churches present in Andean culture. One of the differences between the pictorial votive offerings and tocapu was that while it did not contain scenes; it took into account the shape (square, rectangular) that is assumed in the framework graphically limited tocapu to a drawing that said something.
Which brings us to an understanding of semiotic, which is a word derived from the Greek sēmeiōtikos, meaning the observation of signs, which comes from sēmeiousthai, the interpretation of signs, and from sēmeion meaning sign (sēma), dates to about 1880. This is the study of meaning-making, the study of sign processes and meaningful communication. This includes the study of signs and sign processes (semiosis), indication, designation, likeness, analogy, metaphor, symbolism, signification and communication.
It is in brief, a general philosophical theory of signs and symbols that deal especially with their function in both artificially constructed and natural languages and comprises syntactics, semantics, and pragmatics. If one is going to make sense out of a group of signs, symbols or even unrecognized hieroglyphs, one should be at least acquainted with the science of semiotics.
He also believes that qualitative research in education can help expand semiotics by serving as a source of empirical research and findings, thereby helping move semiotics away from its current nearly total preoccupation with theory and into a state where empirically determined issues play a more important and visible role.
It should also be noted that since qualitative research in education and semiotics have developed independently of each other, there are few people who understand the issues and ideas of both fields. However, once these definitions have been laid out, it is believed that the potential link between the two areas will be established by presenting an examination of its current state in the history of qualitative thinking, which can then be used to situate the comparisons between the two domains.
This, then, leads us to the second point.
(See the next post, “Quellqa: Ancient Written Language of Peru – Part V,” for more information on how the sciences are possibly changing and looking at new insights into an early Peruvian writing system and also why the Inca had no writing system when the Spanish arrived)
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