(ENEM (todos os anos) 2015) - Question Medium of History

Indigenous narratives are sustained and perpetuated by a tradition of oral transmission (whether the true stories of their ancestors, recent or ancient facts and wars; or fictional stories, such as those of the jaguar and the monkey). In fact, indigenous communities in the so-called 'lowlands of South America (excluding the Andes mountains, for example) did not develop writing systems like the ones we know, whether alphabetical (like Portuguese writing), ideogrammatic (like Chinese writing) or others. Only in indigenous societies with social stratification (that is, already divided into classes), such as the Aztecs and the Mayans, did some form of writing emerge. The history of writing seems to clearly show this: it emerges and develops - in any of its forms - only in stratified societies (Sumerians, Egyptians, Chinese, Greeks, etc.). The fact is that indigenous peoples in Brazil, for example, did not employ a writing system, but ensured the preservation and continuity of accumulated knowledge, past stories, and also the narratives that their tradition created, through oral transmission. All indigenous technologies were transmitted and developed in this way. There were not a few: for example, it was the indigenous people who domesticated wild and often poisonous plants, creating corn, cassava (or manioc), peanuts, pumpkins, and many others (and also developed them a lot; for example, from corn alone they created about 250 different varieties throughout America). Writing and orality, in various cultures, serve different purposes. The excerpt points out that, in Brazilian indigenous societies, orality enabled