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This is actually fairly common, as older words get adapted into “writing”. For example:
- Latin ⟨scribō⟩ I write ← PIE *(s)kreybʰ- “to scratch”
- English ⟨write⟩ ← PIE *wrey- “to rip”
They both backtrack to PIE… and as far as I know PIE did not have writing.
Well, I guess we need an idea/rough concept, before we do the actual thing
Edit: on second thought, how do we even know that it predates writing, when there are no records of it?
I don’t know if it applies in this case (Iroquois), but often through the reconstruction method. Basically: if you find clearly related words across multiple languages you know to be related, you expect the ancestor of those words to be present in the ancestor of the languages.
Predates Iroquois writing, it should be said
It’s common for words used to mean “write” to predate writing. “Write” itself predates writing by thousands of years.
