protoliterate

With written language that is in its early stages.

Knowledge of a "fact" and its institutionalization in a society are quite distinct: murder, for example, was probably "discovered" in the Pliocene, but the institutionalization of murder in warfare does not seem to have occurred until the late Neolithic or the protoliterate period.

In the early stages of learning to read and write.

Of or related to the Protoliterate period.