"Lioconcha hieroglyphica" these venus shells with the squiggle writing make the head go Wot?

Images from this imgur gallery

...which also puts the shells adjacent to this image from the "Manly Palmer Hall collection of alchemical manuscripts"

...to emphasize the patterns similarity to an esoteric writing system.

Other sources point out that shells such as these grow forward along a growth line, producing a natural one-dimensional Wolfram-style cellular automata, specifically similar to Wolfram's Rule 30.

From a cellular-automata point of view, the conus textile is the poster child:

A closer observer, with sufficient learning in the relevant dialect of linear A1, would simply translate for us:

help i am trapped in a shell factory

References

• imgur: Lioconcha Hieroglyphica gallery
• Wikipedia: Lioconcha hieroglyphica
• Rule 30 - Wikipedia
• Conus textile - Wikipedia
• Internet Archive: Manly Palmer Hall collection of alchemical manuscripts, 1500-1825 : Hall, Manly P. (Manly Palmer), 1901-1990

See also

• Conway's Game of Life
• Esoteric Programming Concepts