ABSTRACT
Champions of the doctrine of the primitive mind, like their opponents, often took it for granted-without comment-that primitive peoples are preliterate. The failure to develop any art of writing was seen as being on a par with their failure to develop other arts and techniques. But treating literacy as the defi ning characteristic of civilized societies, and thereby equating the primitive mind with the preliterate mind, goes one step further. What anthropologists sometimes call the ‘Great Divide’ is relocated at the point where societies acquire a system of writing. But what, if any, is the connexion between being able to reason and being able to write?
