Like it's some leftist rebus that he was creating.

仿佛那是他精心构思个左翼谜题。

Logograms for abstract words were often derived by the rebus principle.

抽象词语标通常是根据谜原理得。

Linguists term this decisive innovation, which also underlies puns today, the rebus principle.

语言学家将这决定性创新称为原则，它也是当今双关语基础。

It may be that all those who invented writing independently relied on the rebus (though Mayan shows scant clear evidence of it).

可能所有独立发明文字人都依赖于字谜（尽管玛雅人没有提供明确证据）。

But a few souls stumbled on the rebus principle, sketching either a pit in the ground or a stick-man with an arrow pointing to his armpit.

但是些灵魂偶然发现谜原则，在地上个坑或者个箭头指向腋窝火柴人。

There's other examples I'm sure of like a rebus where there's pictorial elements that are arranged in a way to make something like Paul Rand's IBM logo design.

我确信还有其他例子，比如字谜游戏，其中图元素以某种方式排列，形成像保罗·兰德为IBM设计标志那样作品。

But the rebus remains the core of the story, bootstrapping societies from complete ignorance of the very idea of writing to lives that cannot be imagined without it.

但谜仍然是故事核心，引导社会从对写作理念完全无知走向没有它就无法想象生活。

But at some point—the Sumerians of the third millennium bc are usually awarded first prize, though Ms Ferrara makes a case for Egypt—people stumbled on the " rebus principle" .

但在某个时候——公元前三千年苏美尔人通常会获得等奖，尽管费拉拉女士为埃及做个例子——人们无意中发现“字谜原则” 。