The article is historically wrong. The oldest known cave murals etc. are 44000 years old [1], while cuneiform, heiroglyphics, Sumerian, Mesopotamian etc. are only about 3000-4000 years old [2]. A strange beautiful example of complex information presented visually which was in use until recently, are the Polynesian navigation charts [3]. Our primary method of communcation is probably visual and/or auditory.

The prominence and seeming economy of text in digital communications is probably because data is presented and transmitted as a one dimensional sequence of bits.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_painting

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_writing#Cuneiform_s...

[3] https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ap-art-history/pacifi...