The Second Speakers

Eventually humanity discovers a cetacean henge: an arrangement of stones and other objects on the ocean floor that form the written language we'll come to know as Cetacean. Once we identify one, we'll quickly identify others. Papers will be written about how cetaceans make regular journeys across the globe, reading the stones to their young, teaching them to read the stones in turn. Some routes are crowded with pods all making the same circuit, some pods have their own unique route. Some pods only know of one site, or none. Some sites are unique to one species, or even one pod; others are common destinations for multiple species of cetacean.

We'll learn to read them, and learning the written will help us translate spoken Cetacean, and suddenly the music of the whales will have lyrics.