They can show it! They even have a moderately sized screen for pictorial communication.

...The locals seem a bit uncomfortable about the video recording, muttering to each other and such.

Is something wrong?

"I think we have different things we say are good and bad because you are aliens," the chief slowly replies. "'Video' is... It is hard to say, but it could be bad, like writing too much."

...bad how. What happens if you write too much.

"It's just wrong. It is... The best way to learn something is to remember it from the Well. The next best way is to do it and make mistakes, bad ways of doing it, and then make less mistakes. The next best way is to find a teacher, someone who says how to do it to you. Reading how to do it is just... Bad."

...Amentans have not found this to be the case, they say cautiously.

"I'm sure you can learn from writing. But why would anyone want to? It'd be like eating old fruit. No center. You're aliens, it's not the same for you."

All right. They aren't planning to ask the locals to read anything. And they don't have to watch videos if they don't want to.

"Some kinds of writing are okay. Mostly short things. Some kinds of video might be okay. But it's not something we imagined before now."

It requires pretty advanced technology.

Yeah, the shuttle made it obvious they have a lot of that. It's part of what's making everyone kind of worried rather than just excited.

Is technology also... bad?

Not the same way, it just makes the Amentans kind of scary.

They don't want to hurt anybody.

That's good! Technology seems useful and interesting! It's just that the Amentans have more right now.

How do they decide who gets to be chief of their insanely huge villages?

Elections! They explain the basic concept and then if the Dwellin are interested they can elaborate on how it works in their country at various levels.

Huh. Yeah, they do elections on the local level, but in a lot of places it's hereditary or some other weird process or just warlords. But the Savannah Guard is more or less their 'country'. They collect taxes and keep the peace and catch bandits, at least. They're led by the best fighter, there's a whole big tournament every summer.

So, 'countries' are sort of like kingships or empires? How does theirs work?

They can see a map of Tapa if that isn't too much, uh, information recording?

Maps are one of the few explicitly allowed kinds of writing, much like menus, warnings, and (acceptably brief) codes of law!

Here is a map of Tapa! The capital is over here, and there are all these provinces, and they have their own capitals for province level administration, and then there are cities with municipal administrations, and all these levels of government are elected, but you can only vote for locations you count as resident in.

Wow, just by number of layers of government Tapa counts as an empire. And a big one. It makes perfect sense that someone who lives here can't vote for someone all the way over there, though.

Yup. Though it doesn't matter where in Tapa you live for federal elections.

They like that the Savannah Guard leader isn't elected. It would be annoying and confusing to have to worry about who's fit to run a kingdom and an empire instead of just a village.

Amentans would mostly be worried that being good at fighting isn't much like being good at ruling.