> There was no proto-writing stage.
Sequoyah was a great man, a genius, no doubt... but I think it is important to note that he didn't go straight to an alphabet.
It was his third try.
The first go was logograms: he made up symbols for words. Then he realised this would be too complicated and hard to remember, which speaking as an adult who learned to write a few words of Chinese and Japanese, I fervently agree with.
Then his second go was ideograms: symbols for ideas instead. The problem is similar and he dismissed that, too.
His third try was the Cherokee syllabary: one symbol per syllable, similarly to Hiragana and Katakana for anyone else who suffered through beginner's Japanese.
In a way, I think this makes it considerably more impressive. He worked through millennia of the evolution of writing in a decade or so. It's astounding.
(And I can't read it, and I'm ashamed by that, but then I do not know a word of Cherokee and live on a different continent.)
This is true.... but considering the timeline, I would call all this part of the process of. inventing.
Logograms and ideagrams were ideas that he tried out. An MVP before pivoting to a better one. That's how invention works, through expiremention.
To me the example represents the fact that it doesn't take a millenia. If the right person is on the job... it can be a one person job.