I get kind of annoyed at how often communication on this site requires a person to cover every single possible thing that could be even somewhat related to what you're saying.
When I'm saying "they don't have a way of writing things down, they only have oral tradition" I am not saying "oral tradition bad" or "oral tradition not a useful method of giving on knawledge" - I even mention that Orcas DO pass on knowledge!
What I am saying is that "writing things down is pretty good for passing on knowledge and storing knowledge that isn't initially useful in a way that oral tradition can't". Oral tradition is rich and yadda yadda. It does not allow for long-term storage in the same way that written language.
Now I will get ahead of yet another thing I didn't write: Written language also has issues and is also not a perfect method of storage or anything. But it opens avenues oral tradition doesn't.

They don't have any sort of permanent record, which must be sucky

This is so tiring.

[–] mar_k@hexbear.net 3 points 1 day ago

I wasn't arguing with anything you said, just adding on stuff I find fascinating, like the possibility that even without that tangible record they perhaps have passed complex information across centuries or even millenniums