History Of Writing Systems

While spoken or signed language is a more or less universal human competence that has
been characteristic of the species from the beginning and that is commonly acquired by
human beings without systematic instruction, writing is a technology of relatively
recent history that must be taught to each generation of children. Historical accounts of the
evolution of writing systems have until recently concentrated on a single aspect,
increased efficiency, with the Greek invention of the alphabet being regarded as the
culmination of a long historical evolution. This efficiency is a product of a limited and
manageable set of graphs that can express the full range of meanings in a language. As the
British classicist Eric A. Havelock wrote,
At a stroke the Greeks provided a table of elements of linguistic sound not only manageable because of
economy, but for the first time in the history of homo sapiens, also accurate.

The Polish American Assyriologist Ignace Gelb distinguished four stages in this evolution,
beginning with picture writing, which expressed ideas directly; followed by word-based
writing systems; then by sound-based syllabic writing systems, including unvocalized
syllabaries or consonantal systems; and concluding with the Greek invention of the alphabet.
The invention of the alphabet is a major achievement of Western culture. It is also unique;
the alphabet was invented only once, though it has been borrowed by many cultures. It is a
model of analytic thinking, breaking down perceptible qualities like syllables into more
basic constituents. And because it is capable of conveying subtle differences in meaning, it
has come to be used for the expression of a great many of the functions served by speech.
The alphabet requires little of the reader beyond familiarity with its orthography. It allows
the reader to decipher words newly encountered and permits the invention of spellings for
new patterns of sound, including proper names (a problem that is formidable for
nonalphabetic systems). Finally, its explicitness permits readers to make a relatively sharp
distinction between the tasks of deciphering and interpreting. Less explicit orthographies
require the reader first to grasp the meaning of a passage as a whole in order to decide which
of several possible word meanings a particular graphic string represents.
It must be remembered, however, that efficiency depends not only on the nature of the
writing system but also on the functions required of it by its users, for orthographies are
invented to serve particular cultural purposes. Furthermore, an orthography invented to
satisfy one purpose may acquire new applications. For instance, writing systems invented to
serve mnemonic purposes were subsequently elaborated and used for communicative and
archival purposes. Orthographies were not invented as art forms, but, once invented, they
could serve aesthetic functions.
Notions of explicitness of representation depend on the morphophonemic structure of the
language. An alphabet was a notable advance for representing the Greek language but not
necessarily for representing a Semitic language. Moreover, for languages such as Chinese
and Japanese, which have simple syllabic structures and a great number of homophones, a
writing system that depended on phonological structure, such as a syllabary or an alphabet,
would be extremely inefficient. It is with such factors in mind that late 20th-century accounts
of writing systems stressed how many different orthographies may function efficiently, given
the particular language they are used to represent. Just as linguists have abandoned the notion
of progressive evolution of languages, with some languages ranking as more primitive than
others, so historians of writing have come to treat existing orthographies as appropriate to the
languages they represent.
Nonetheless, all contemporary orthographies have a history of development, and there are
many common features in these histories. It is unlikely that writing was invented only once
and then borrowed by different cultural groups. While all Western writing systems may be
traced back to the beginnings of symbol making in Sumer, there is no reason to believe that
Asian writing systems were borrowed from the Sumerian form. Consequently, there are two
quite separate histories of writing, that of the writing system developed by the Sumerians and
that of the one developed by the Chinese.

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1. Introduction
The emergence of writing systems is regarded as one of the most significant milestones towards human
civilisation (Han, 2012). From primitive tool-making to modern-day technology, homo sapiens have
come a long way to replace their stones and bricks with pen and paper, or even smartphones and tablets in
recent decades. With at least 3,866 developed writing systems worldwide (Ethnologue, n.d.), it is believed
that the invention of writing was the result of an improvement to an ancient system of tallies and labels,
where things were depicted pictographically to reduce ambiguity and ease the process of recall (Fischer,
2007). While studies on language evolution have primarily focused their research on the various aspects
of spoken language, this WikiChapter aims to uncover the humble beginnings of writing systems and how
some of these systems have managed to flourish over the years, eventually developing functional and
communicative purposes, whereas others have diminished and gradually became obsolete. The chapter is
divided in three sections, detailing respectively the biological preconditions required for writing (covered
in part 1), how early forms of writing systems evolved historically into characters that we use today
(covered in part 2), and finally several challenges and limitations faced when documenting writing
systems (covered in part 3).

History is impossible without the written word as one would lack context in which to interpret
physical evidence from the ancient past. Writing records the lives of a people and so is the first
necessary step in the written history of a culture or civilization.
1.1 What is a writing system?
A writing system is a conventionalised method of representing verbal communication visually, which is
regarded as a reliable form of information storage and transfer (“Writing System”, n.d.). Although writing
systems generally use both phonetic and semantic symbols in their characters, there are three main ways
of classifying writing systems around the world (Elbow, 2012):

1. Alphabetic: composed of symbols called letters, which represent individual sounds (also known as
phonemes) and have no meaning unless they are combined with other letters, e.g. English.

Korean consonants

2. Syllabic: comprised of symbols or letters that relate to the sounds or syllables of words, which carries
more meaning than alphabetic letters, e.g. Korean – “밥” means rice (pronounced as “bap”).

Chinese characters for “Shanghai”

3. Logographic: consist of symbols or characters that carry the most meaning among the three writing
systems, i.e. they represent entire concepts, but they do not map to single sounds (phonology), e.g.
Mandarin Chinese.
1.2 Biological preconditions for writing
Even though speech relates directly to one’s biological predisposition whereas writing is an invented
product of different cultures without any biological roots (Elbow, 2012), there are still certain
prerequisites involved that are essential in making the skill of writing possible.

BRAIN: Firstly, writing and speaking employ different parts of the brain to function. Although
writing evolved from speaking, the two brain systems are so independent that one who lacks speaking a
grammatically correct sentence aloud may be able to write it flawlessly. Very little is known about
language and the brain, although we do know that most of the language processing functions are carried
out in the cerebral cortex. Most comprehension of language and ability to communicate (spoken, written
and signed) are processed in Wernicke’s area. However, what differentiates writing systems from other
forms of communication in terms of brain function? Specific areas are unknown but abnormalities in
visual-motor, linguistic, attentional and memory cognitive processes are shown to play a role in learning
disorder cases of written expression.

THUMB: Secondly, the human anatomy, in particular our hands

and thumbs, had to evolve in order to write i.e. allowing us to have a strong grip and control over writing
tools. As modern day humans evolved from primates that did not practise bipedalism initially, our early
ancestors did not have any free hands to utilise as their four limbs were consistently planted to the ground
for traveling, and hence writing was a skill that they could not learn to possess. After bipedalism
gradually developed, the function of our hands began to diversify, and this allowed our ancestors to
engage in tool-making. This activity required the use of a specialised thumb that is flexible, strong and
precise enough to grip things between the palm and the other fingers. From then on, these evolutionary
changes continue to provide modern day humans with an anatomical structure that is well-equipped with
the necessary conditions (e.g. gripping a pen, controlling the length and shape of strokes) for writing to
occur.
2. Origins and Evolution of Writing
Systems
Have you ever wondered where writing comes from? Why did people in the past start
writing? What exactly are the different ways to write?

Before writing systems were documented, it is possible that humans had a certain way of recording
important information, as objects found from ancient times had marks that may have been used as a
system of counting or a method of storing information. Researchers are still debating what the marks
represent, but it is fairly certain that all writing systems had to go through a period of evolution before
achieving the systematic and conventionalised forms that we know of today. Therefore, this section aims
to explore the earliest traces of writing systems around the world, and how these systems undergo historic
changes that allow them to remain relevant in the present era, or rendered them archaic in today’s
linguistic landscape.
2.1 Cuneiforms
What are cuneiforms?

Cuneiform originated from Mesopotamia – modern day Iraq and Kuwait

Cuneiform is a system of writing first developed by the ancient Sumerians of Mesopotamia c. 3500-3000
BCE. Mesopotamia is modern day Iraq and Kuwait and the first documented place in history where
writing achieved widespread use. All of the great Mesopotamian civilizations such as the Sumerians,
Akkadians, Babylonians, Elamites, Hatti, Hittites, Assyrians, Hurrians and others made use of cuneiform
(Mark, 2011). The word ‘cuneiform’ comes from the Latin word cuneus for ‘wedge’ owing to the wedge-
shaped style of writing.
It first began as a system of pictograms in the fourth millennium BC. A writing implement known as a
stylus is pressed into soft clay to produce wedge-like impressions that
represent pictographs (disconnected and fragmented drawings of fundamental objects and ideas)
and phonograms (syllabic signs and symbols representing primary oral sounds). To understand how
cuneiform works – one would pat the wet clay tablet, then press the stylus to it and start writing. After
which, the clay tablet is put under the sun to dry and let it last. The pictograms and other
symbols were usually used to represent trade goods and livestock. Overtime, people began to
develop a numeral system to represent multiple instances of the same symbol rather than
inscribing them all. Hence, these symbols became stylised and eventually evolved into a
complete writing system (“Sumerian”, 1998)
 Stylus

Example of cuneiform illustrating the distribution of barley

Scribes learning cuneiform:

Sumerians attended ‘Eduba’ which is the name of a scribal school, to train to be a Scribe. They learnt
cuneiform by writing down proverbs and riddles that teachers gave them. Indeed, the Scribes played a
vital role in society. Without them, letters would not have been written or read, royal monuments would
not have been carved with cuneiform, and stories would have been told and then forgotten (Mesopotamia,
2015).
Evolution:

In the third millennium, the pictorial cuneiform became simplified and more abstract as the number of
characters in use grew smaller. It is known as Hittite cuneiform and consists of a combination of
logophonetic, consonantal alphabetic and syllabic signs (“Cuneiform script”, n.d). (Logophonetic refers to
two major types of signs that denote morphemes and sounds. Consonantal alphabetic has no vowels
written and syllabic signs are basic signs that contain a consonant and a vowel). The original
Sumerian script was later adapted for the writing of a few languages such as the Akkadian (Old Assyrian
language), Hittite and Urartian languages. Over time, this adaptation led to the development of Ugaritic
alphabet and the Old Persian cuneiform, a semi-alphabetic cuneiform script.

Hittite cuneiform
 Ugaritic alphabet

Old Persian cuneiform

Extinction:

Cuneiform was gradually replaced by the Phoenician alphabet when the Assyrian and Babylonian empires
fell in the 7th and 6th centuries BC. By this time Aramaic was becoming the common language of the
area, and the Phoenician script became widely used (Hollar, 2011). Also, by the second century CE, the
cuneiform script had become extinct, and all knowledge of how to read it was lost until it began to be
deciphered in the 19th century again (“Cuneiform script”, n.d). In other words, the reason for the
disappearance of cuneiform was largely because it was a non-alphabetic way of writing. It could not
compete successfully with the alphabetic systems being developed by the Phoenicians, Israelites, Greeks,
and other peoples of the Mediterranean (Hollar, 2011). Cuneiform required a plethora of symbols to
identify each and every word, hence, the writing was complex and limited to highly-trained scribes. The
alphabetic systems were simple enough for people to learn and draw, making its use much more
accessible and widespread (Schumm, 2014).

Phonetician alphabet

2.2 Hieroglyphs
What are hieroglyphs?
 Egyptian hieroglyphs were the formal writing systems used in Ancient
Egypt
Have you ever wondered if the typical Egyptian symbols that you see in the movies or used on book
covers and designs have any meaning to it? Or is it just for show? How long have they been around and
what are they called? Is it an actual language? Well this section would answer your curious mind and
hopefully shed some light on this topic. The symbols that are commonly seen on palace walls and ancient
Egyptian monuments are called hieroglyphs. Hieroglyphs are characters used in a system of
pictorial writing. The word hieroglyph came from the Greek hiero ‘holy’ glypho‘writing’. In the ancient
Egyptian language, hieroglyphs were called medu netjer, ‘the gods’ words’ as it was believed that
writing was an invention of the gods. (Scoville 2015). It was believed that the hieroglyphs were given by
an Egyptian god. Similar to most ancient scripts, there is poor understanding of the origin of the Egyptian
hieroglyphs.

Some motifs depicted on these rock images are also found on pottery vessels
of early Pre-dynastic cultures in Egypt.

Although there are several claims about the origins, one of the more convincing view claims it
derived from rock pictures produced by prehistoric hunting communities living in the desert west
of the Nile especially during c. 3200 – 3000 BCE. (Mertz, 2009)

Cracking hieroglyphs:
 There are 3 different languages on the Rosetta

stone. From top down: hieroglyphs, demotic and ancient greek. Thomas Young

For many years, hieroglyphs were not understood as no one could decipher the meaning behind the
hieroglyphic symbols. It was believed that the symbols were just pictures representing objects and held no
special phonetic meaning. It was until the Rosetta Stone, a decree of Ptolemy V (the fifth ruler of the
Ptolemaic dynasty) of the same text written in ancient greek, demotic and hieroglyphic writing, was found
(“Rosetta Stone”, n.d). There were a number of attempts made in deciphering the text on the Rosetta
stone by scholars. Thomas Young was one of them close to deciphering it but he gave up midway because
he had a sickness called biasedness! He couldn’t believe that hieroglyphs could be a syllabic language.

Jean-Francois Champollion
In the 1820s, his glory went to someone else called Jean-Francois Champollion, who continued Young’s
work and unravelled the mystery when he identified the name of Ptolemy V written on the Rosetta Stone
by comparing the hieroglyphs with the Greek translation. This revealed that the ancient Egyptian
hieroglyphic writing was a syllabic language. Champollion’s accomplishment in deciphering the Rosetta
Stone opened up the once kept secret of ancient Egyptian writing system and allowed the world to read
into their rich history.
Evolution:

Coptic script Hieratic script Demotic

script

Egyptian writing evolved during its long history. Different versions of the hieroglyphic script were
developed: hieratic and demotic. Hieratic allowed scribes to write quicker and less time-consuming
compared to hieroglyphs. It was much more standardised and was used only for religious texts. (Scoville,
2015) Demotic script replaced hieratic while hieratic was used by priests up till the 3rd century AD.
Coptic is the latest stage of the Egyptian language (Bard, 2015). During the Ptolemaic and Roman period
in Egypt, the Greek and Roman culture became more influential and Christianity started to displace some
of the traditional Egyptian cults, introducing coptic. Egyptians began writing in coptic alphabet to adapt
the Greek alphabet, with several signs from demotic which represents Egyptian sounds that the Greek
language did not have. Coptic was the first alphabetic script used for the Egyptian language and it is still
used today.
Extinction?

Today, hieroglyphs, hieratic and demotic scripts are no longer in use. Coptic is not generally used in the
contemporary world except by members of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria to write religious
texts (Takla, n.d). So how do the Egyptians write today and what language do they use? Like most
countries in the world today, there are a number of languages used in Egypt but the national language of
modern Egypt is Egyptian Arabic which slowly replaced Coptic as the everyday language after the
conquest of Muslim Arabs.
2.3 Chinese characters
What are Chinese characters?

Chinese characters were gradually developed over the years across

dynasties in ancient China

Chinese characters are also called ‘square forms’ or fangkuaizi (方块字) as their meaning is expressed
using a combination of various strokes going in different directions within the two-dimensional space
given in a square frame (Han, 2012). Interestingly, there are two writing systems present in modern day
written Chinese. Firstly, the characters of traditional Chinese are standardised forms that trace back to the
ancient Han dynasty, and are prevalent among countries such as Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau
today. Secondly, the characters of simplified Chinese were developed only in 1954 as an official script
used in the People’s Republic of China, which has now been extended to other Chinese-speaking
countries such as Malaysia and Singapore (Shei, 2014).

China – there is no heart in their

love. (心 means heart, the ‘Love’ character in Simplified Chinese) vs. Hong Kong – keeps traditional
culture in the character. (the ‘Love’ character in Traditional Chinese)

The birth of Chinese characters:

Examples of pictograms or xiangxingzi (象形字) in Chinese characters

Chinese is said to be the oldest writing system among the East Asian scripts, and is the only one to have
arisen ex nihilo (out of nothing), as there is no evidence of any other fully developed writing systems in
East Asia that could have influenced the formation of Chinese characters before it was discovered
(Daniels & Bright, 1996). Furthermore, Chinese characters likely developed from pictograms
or xiangxingzi ( 象 形 字 ), which are stylized illustrations depicting objects or actions, and eventually
became ideograms that represent abstract ideas, often as a result of combining different characters to form
new compound words (Dale, 2004).
Evolution:
In general, Chinese characters are believed to have gone through five major stages of changes in their
physical shapes:

1. Oracle Bone Inscription, or jiaguwen ( 甲 骨 文 ): First appearing in north-central China (modern

Anyang, Henan province) around 1200 BCE during the Shang dynasty, the earliest Chinese writing was
found to be records of royal divinations that were in the forms of inscribed ox scapulas and turtle
plastrons, which featured thin, rugged lines and long shapes with sharp edges (Daniels & Bright,
1996; Zhao & Baldauf, 2008).

2. Bronze Inscription, or jinwen ( 金 文 ): By the Zhou dynasty (1066 BCE – 256 BCE), Chinese
characters were inscribed on bronze vessels instead of bones for ceremonial and ancestral worship
purposes, as writing on bronze allows for consistency in size, positioning and format of texts, resulting in
a more rounded shape with thicker lines, simpler and smooth strokes, as well as achieving more
symmetry overall (Chan, 2016; Zhao & Baldauf, 2008).
3. Seal Script, or zhuanshu ( 篆 书 ): Towards the end of the Zhou dynasty and during the Qin dynasty
(221 BCE – 206 BCE), the Qin empire managed to unify all of the states in China after a period of feudal
wars, and the seal script was conferred as the official script in China to standardise orthographic
instability and variation (Zhao & Baldauf, 2008). These Chinese characters were complicated, lengthened
and curved, and were mainly used to inscribe names on seals, even though they were also written on
bamboo strips, silk pieces, rocks and even precious stones (Chan, 2016).

4. Clerical Script, or lishu (隶书): Since the seal script proved to be very tedious to write, the clerical
script was developed by local officials during the Han dynasty (206 BCE – CE 220), which had straighter
and less number of strokes, combined with several modifications (e.g. different components were merged
into one) to create a more simplified version of the seal script, in order to save time while copying large
amounts of administrative documents. This gradually became accepted as the official way of formal
writing, and is known to be the turning point between ancient Chinese script and modern day written
Chinese, as the characters move away from the pictographic style to one that resembles the appearance of
modern day Chinese characters (Chan, 2016).
5. Square Script, or kaishu ( 楷 书 ): To further simplify the clerical script, the square script was
eventually formalised during the Sui dynasty (581 – 618) and the Tang dynasty (618 – 960), which
became easy for the layperson to master as it consists of few simple and abstract lines that conformed
themselves within a square frame. This created utmost stability across users and learners of written
Chinese, so much so that it has remained largely unchanged for a thousand years, until the reform of
simplified Chinese in the 1950s (Zhao & Baldauf, 2008).
Rise of Chinese as a global language:

With a sizable land mass and home to the world’s largest population, China has faced many trials and
tribulations in the past with its writing system, but has now achieved a stablised writing system that is
widely used even among other Chinese speaking populations around the world. Spoken by approximately
1.35 billion people in mainland China alone, literacy rates are said to be at 84%, according to the 1990
census of China (Taylor & Taylor, 2014). From the information presented in the previous section, it can
be postulated that modern Chinese characters are direct descendents of the Chinese script that was used
back in the Shang dynasty, as their basic structural principles are fundamentally logographic even up till
today, where one character represents a single syllabic morpheme (Daniels & Bright, 1996).
The success of written Chinese today could only be made possible by a scholar named Xu Shen, who
compiled a lexicon of about 9500 characters (amongst them were 540 semantic classifiers) in “Explaining
the unit characters and analysing the compound characters” or shuowenjiezi 《 说 文 解 字 》 around 100
BCE, which was the first tangible step towards orthographic standardisation. Coupled with the combined
efforts of scholars in the Qing dynasty, the Kangxi dictionary or kangxizidian 《 康 熙 字 典 》 was
commissioned in 1710 by the emperor, Kangxi, as the amount of Chinese characters present in that era
grew so rapidly and had to be condensed into a definitive lexicon. As a result, this dictionary was
completed in 1716, and contains over 47,000 characters, of which 214 of them were semantic classifiers,
which is commonly known as radicals or bushou（部首）that are still in use today.

3. Challenges and Limitations

Compared to spoken languages, we can find physical evidence of ancient writing systems as they
preserve (on materials such as stone tablets) and provide clues as to when our ancestors began writing.
However, there are still a few challenges and limitations faced in the compilation of the origins and
evolution of writing systems:
3.1 Difficulties in preserving physical evidence

There are many artifacts of ancient scripts that are traceable to the period of
time where it was inscribed, providing evidence of the use of writing systems from centuries ago.
Specifically, the earliest ancient script that was found traced back to approximately 5000 years ago, but
the question of whether writing systems developed before that remains unanswered. This is because
despite the amount of evidence available, it is a challenge to trace back to the first writing system, simply
because it may not have been recorded, or that those records may be lost due to a lack of preservation
techniques and technology in the past (e.g. stone/clay tablets may be corroded due to harsh environmental
conditions). Therefore, writing systems do leave behind some traces of evidence that shed light on the
topic of language evolution, but it may be incomplete as it does not reveal the specifics of how and why
writing systems were created.
3.2 Inconsistency in research viewpoints

Secondly, a bulk of research has been done on the evolution of spoken

language. In comparison, there is significantly less research focused on the area of written expression, and
hence it is challenging to deduce the origins and evolution of writing systems based on the limited pool of
information. While gathering information from past studies related to this area of research, various
sources provided different claims and views on the origins of the particular writing system. In addition,
due to the nature of this research, it is difficult to have concrete stories and evidence of how people
started writing ancient scripts or how it evolved from patterns of drawings into a written form, as all we
have for reference are hypotheses and interpretations from different researchers.

4. Conclusion
In a nutshell, writing systems can be seen as part of the historic process of language evolution, as it
provides humans with a mode of communication that can be documented and read to aid future
referencing and visual recall, which is otherwise unachievable by speech. This specialised skill is only
made possible given the necessary biological preconditions that are present in humans after millions of
years of evolutionary changes. Since writing systems can be observed and is used frequently in our daily
lives, it is a highly relevant research area that is worth studying as it provides us with valuable
information that could possibly be applied to new writing systems among the generations to come.
 Emoticons – 2000 ACD* (After Cognitive Disintegration)

From Mesopotamian cuneiforms to Egyptian hieroglyphs and Chinese characters, this WikiChapter has
explored the origins of some of the world’s oldest writing systems, with the purpose of illustrating the
evolutionary processes that are involved and how these systems extend to modern day writing systems
around the world. Future research could look into the motivations behind the increased usage of emojis
among the younger generations, as technology has proven to be more and more prevalent in our daily
communication, and we rely heavily on the use of electronic devices such as smartphones and tablets.
Interestingly, emojis are ideograms that relay emotions using facial expressions in the form of graphic
symbols, and even have the function of communicating concepts and ideas such as the weather (Novak,
Smailović, Sluban, & Mozetič, 2015), which parallels the origins of writing systems in a reverse fashion,
since writing is said to derive from pictograms in the beginning.

A Short History of Written

Communication
Before paper was invented, civilisations across the world developed
many different solutions to the problem of communicating knowledge
over distance and time.

 3000 BC Sumerians invented writing on clay tablets

 2000-2500 BC Egyptians invented hieroglyphics and papyrus. Strips of reed were overlaid
and dried to form sheets on which the hieroglyphs were painted.
 2000 BC Minoans wrote on clay tablets.
 1500 BC Animal shoulder bones with Chinese writing (pictograms) have been found dating
from this time.
 1500-1000 BC Aztecs used beaten bark. There were three main types: tapa; amate and
hunn, on which designs were painted.
 600 BC The Greeks developed parchment. This was made of sheep skin which was
stretched and soaked in lime for over two weeks in order to preserve, thin and harden it.
It was then made into long scrolls. Both parchment and vellum (which was similar, only
made of calf or goat skin) were used by the Romans.
 200 BC In China the first known development of paper, made up of torn silk shreds, but
very expensive.
 105 AD More economical paper produced in China from a variety of materials.
 500-1000 In the West all information and books were copied out by hand. Parchment, made
out of animal skin, was used as there was no paper.
 593 First printing press invented in China
 600-750 Paper making techniques spread when China invaded Korea and Japan. The
knowledge spread throughout Asia and the Middle East.
 The Japanese developed and refined the art of paper-making and it became a very
important part of their culture.
 900 Chinese printed using wooden blocks for pictures and text.
 It was at about this time that the first Japanese folding pieces (Origami) came into being,
linked with their message sending tradition.
 1100 Knowledge of how to make paper spread to the European countries with the
expansion of trade.
 Early 1200s, type characters cast from bronze first invented in Korea. The oldest extant
metal type printing is ‘Baegun Hwasang Chorok Buljo jikji simche yojeol,’ abbreviated to
‘Jikji,’ which was published in 1377 Cheungju, Korea and is currently kept in France's
National Library.
 1238 First European paper mills went into production in Spain.
 1440 Introduction in Europe of movable metal type, which could be reset and used over
and over again.
 1470 Wood cuts introduced in Europe to illustrate the printed word.
 1476 Caxton, the first printer in England, set up a press in Westminster.
 1500 Printing presses set up all over Europe.
 Even at this early stage during the development of print, there were mechanisms, pivots
and string pulls being used in complex scientific and astrological text books.
 1798 The lithographic printing revelation was invented in Germany using an 'oil' versus
'water' separation process utilising Bavarian stone.
 The development of this printing process brought about the introduction of colour
'chromolithography', by using separate stones for each colour and over printing in
registered sequence. It was this breakthrough that those in the Victorian era took to
their hearts with a passion for the ornate and colourful, which could now be reproduced
with multiple copies, even though it was still labour intensive. The inventiveness of the
era transcended into the printed cards sent as a greeting. They became fanciful and
ingenious, incorporating moving parts in the form of pull outs and pop-ups.
 1860 With the advent of photographical processing, a revolutionary four colour
photomechanical lithographic printing process evolved, which revolutionised the printing
industry. It allowed for speedy, cost effective, multiple printing, ideal for mass
circulation.
 Luther Meggendorfer was one of the first to capitalise on the superior technical
capabilities of the German printing industry and produced movable picture books with
unfolding panoramas and pop-ups containing intricate die cuts for moving mechanical
parts, engineered to provide animated graphics.
 1930 World-wide revival of interest in origami, the Japanese art of paper folding,
traditionally handed down through the families which is still considered a 'therapy' in the
today's fast moving lifestyle.
 1950 Consumerism takes a hold, paper engineered items taking on a broader spectrum,
cross fertilisation of ideas across many disciplines.
 1960 Flower power era, gift and card businesses blossomed. Small creative enterprises
with very little capital were able to influence and generate sales throughout the world.
 1970 A number of these smaller 3-D card publishers withstood the test of time and
developed a world-wide market establishing the dimensional paper engineered card as a
proven vehicle for added value and sentiment.
 1980 A number of publishers developed the 3-D card to cross the divide from 'card' to 'gift',
establishing an unique market area creating a gift you could send flat through the post
which would become dimensional on opening.
To date the 3-D greeting card has become established in its own right, not only as a
distinctive form for the carrying of graphics, but also as an economically presentable gift
having a charm that has intrigued people into purchasing regularly on a world wide basis
for 'sending-on' or keeping as a collectable.

Writing
Definition

by Joshua J. Mark
published on 28 April 2011

Writing is the physical manifestation of a spoken language. It is thought that human beings
developed language c. 35,000 BCE as evidenced by cave paintings from the period of the Cro-
Magnon Man (c. 50,000-30,000 BCE) which appear to express concepts concerning daily life.
These images suggest a language because, in some instances, they seem to tell a story (say, of a
hunting expedition in which specific events occurred) rather than being simply pictures of
animals and people.

Written language, however, does not emerge until its invention in Sumer,
southern Mesopotamia, c. 3500 -3000 BCE. This early writing was called cuneiform and
consisted of making specific marks in wet clay with a reed implement. The writing system of
the Egyptians was already in use before the rise of the Early Dynastic Period (c. 3150 BCE) and
is thought to have developed from Mesopotamian cuneiform (though this theory is disputed)
and came to be known as heiroglyphics.
The phoenetic writing systems of the Greeks ("phoenetic" from the Greek phonein - "to speak
clearly"), and later the Romans, came from Phoenicia. The Phoenician writing system, though
quite different from that of Mesopotamia, still owes its development to the Sumerians and their
advances in the written word. Independently of the Near East or Europe, writing was
developed in Mesoamerica by the Maya c. 250 CE with some evidence suggesting a date as
early as 500 BCE and, also independently, by the Chinese.

Writing & History

Writing in China developed from divination rites using oracle bones c. 1200 BCE and appears
to also have arisen independently as there is no evidence of cultural transference at this time
between China and Mesopotamia. The ancient Chinese practice of divination involved etching
marks on bones or shells which were then heated until they cracked. The cracks would then be
interpreted by a Diviner. If that Diviner had etched `Next Tuesday it will rain' and `Next
Tuesday it will not rain' the pattern of the cracks on the bone or shell would tell him which
would be the case. In time, these etchings evolved into the Chinese script.

History is impossible without the written word as one would lack context in which to interpret
physical evidence from the ancient past. Writing records the lives of a people and so is the first
necessary step in the written history of a culture or civilization. A prime example of this
problem is the difficulty scholars of the late 19th/early 20th centuries CE had in understanding
the Maya Civilization, in that they could not read the glyphs of the Maya and so wrongly
interpreted much of the physical evidence they excavated. The early explorers of the Maya sites,
such as Stephens and Catherwood, believed they had found evidence of an
ancient Egyptian civilization in Central America.

This same problem is evident in understanding the ancient Kingdom of Meroe (in modern day
Sudan), whose Meroitic Script is yet to be deciphered as well as the so-called Linear A script of
the ancient Minoan culture of Crete which also has yet to be understood.

THE SUMERIANS FIRST INVENTED WRITING AS A

MEANS OF LONG-DISTANCE COMMUNICATION
WHICH WAS NECESSITATED BY TRADE.
The Invention of Writing
The Sumerians first invented writing as a means of long-distance communication which was
necessitated by trade. With the rise of the cities in Mesopotamia, and the need for resources
which were lacking in the region, long-distance trade developed and, with it, the need to be able
to communicate across the expanses between cities or regions.

The earliest form of writing was pictographs – symbols which represented objects – and served
to aid in remembering such things as which parcels of grain had gone to which destination or
how many sheep were needed for events like sacrifices in the temples. These pictographs were
impressed onto wet clay which was then dried, and these became official records of commerce.
As beer was a very popular beverage in ancient Mesopotamia, many of the earliest records
extant have to do with the sale of beer. With pictographs, one could tell how many jars or vats
of beer were involved in a transaction but not necessarily what that transaction meant. As the
historian Kriwaczek notes,

All that had been devised thus far was a technique for noting down things, items and objects,
not a writing system. A record of `Two Sheep Temple God Inanna’ tells us nothing about
whether the sheep are being delivered to, or received from, the temple, whether they are
carcasses, beasts on the hoof, or anything else about them. (63)

In order to express concepts more complex than financial transactions or lists of items, a more
elaborate writing system was required, and this was developed in the Sumerian city of Uruk c.
3200 BCE. Pictograms, though still in use, gave way to phonograms – symbols which
represented sounds – and those sounds were the spoken language of the people of Sumer. With
phonograms, one could more easily convey precise meaning and so, in the example of the two
sheep and the temple of Inanna, one could now make clear whether the sheep were going to or
coming from the temple, whether they were living or dead, and what role they played in the life
of the temple. Previously, one had only static images in pictographs showing objects like sheep
and temples. With the development of phonograms one had a dynamic means of conveying
motion to or from a location.

Further, whereas in earlier writing (known as proto-cuneiform) one was restricted to lists of
things, a writer could now indicate what the significance of those things might be. The scholar
Ira Spar writes:
This new way of interpreting signs is called the rebus principle. Only a few examples of its use
exist in the earliest stages of cuneiform from between 3200 and 3000 B.C. The consistent use
of this type of phonetic writing only becomes apparent after 2600 B.C. It constitutes the
beginning of a true writing system characterized by a complex combination of word-signs and
phonograms—signs for vowels and syllables—that allowed the scribe to express ideas. By the
middle of the Third Millennium B.C., cuneiform primarily written on clay tablets was used for a
vast array of economic, religious, political, literary, and scholarly documents.
The Art of War by Sun-Tzu

by Coelacan (CC BY-SA)

Writing & Literature

This new means of communication allowed scribes to record the events of their times as well as
their religious beliefs and, in time, to create an art form which was not possible before the
written word: literature. The first writer in history known by name is the Mesopotamian
priestess Enheduanna (2285-2250 BCE), daughter of Sargon of Akkad, who wrote her hymns to
the goddess Inanna and signed them with her name and seal.

The so-called Matter of Aratta, four poems dealing with King Enmerkar of Uruk and his son
Lugalbanda, were probably composed between 2112-2004 BCE (though only written down
between 2017-1763 BCE). In the first of them, Enmerkar and The Lord of Aratta, it is explained that
writing developed because the messenger of King Enmerkar, going back and forth between him
and the King of the city of Aratta, eventually had too much to remember and so Enmerkar had
the idea to write his messages down; and so writing was born.

The Epic of Gilgamesh, considered the first epic tale in the world and among the oldest extant
literature, was composed at some point earlier than c. 2150 BCE when it was written down and
deals with the great king of Uruk (and descendent of Enmerkar and Lugalbanda) Gilgamesh
and his quest for the meaning of life. The myths of the people of Mesopotamia, the stories of
their gods and heroes, their history, their methods of building, of burying their dead, of
celebrating feast days, were now all able to be recorded for posterity. Writing made history
possible because now events could be recorded and later read by any literate individual instead
of relying on a community's storyteller to remember and recite past events. Scholar Samuel
Noah Kramer comments:

[The Sumerians] originated a system of writing on clay which was borrowed and used all over
the Near East for some two thousand years. Almost all that we know of the early history of
western Asia comes from the thousands of clay documents inscribed in the cuneiform script
developed by the Sumerians and excavated by archaeologists. (4)

So important was writing to the Mesopotamians that, under the Assyrian

King Ashurbanipal (r. 685-627 BCE) over 30,000 clay tablet books were collected in the library
of his capital at Nineveh. Ashurbanipal was hoping to preserve the heritage, culture, and
history of the region and understood clearly the importance of the written word in achieving
this end. Among the many books in his library, Ashurbanipal included works of literature, such
as the tale of Gilgamesh or the story of Etana, because he realized that literature articulates not
just the story of a certain people, but of all people. The historian Durant writes:
Literature is at first words rather than letters, despite its name; it arises as clerical chants or
magic charms, recited usually by the priests, and transmitted orally from memory to
memory. Carmina, as the Romans named poetry, meant both verses and charms; ode, among
the Greeks, meant originally a magic spell; so did the English rune and lay, and the
German Lied. Rhythm and meter, suggested, perhaps, by the rhythms of nature and bodily life,
were apparently developed by magicians or shamans to preserve, transmit, and enhance the
magic incantations of their verse. Out of these sacerdotal origins, the poet, the orator, and the
historian were differentiated and secularized: the orator as the official lauder of the king or
solicitor of the deity; the historian as the recorder of the royal deeds; the poet as the singer of
originally sacred chants, the formulator and preserver of heroic legends, and the musician who
put his tales to music for the instruction of populace and kings.

Book of the Dead Papyrus

by Mark Cartwright (CC BY-NC-SA)

The Alphabet
The role of the poet in preserving heroic legends would become an important one in cultures
throughout the ancient world. The Mesopotamian scribe Shin-Legi-Unninni (wrote 1300-1000
BCE) would help preserve and transmit The Epic of Gilgamesh. Homer (c. 800 BCE) would do the
same for the Greeks and Virgil (70-19 BCE) for the Romans. The Indian
epic Mahabharata (written down c. 400 BCE) preserves the oral legends of that region in the
same way the tales and legends of Scotland and Ireland do. All of these works, and those
which came after them, were only made possible through the advent of writing.

The early cuneiform writers established a system which would completely change the nature of
the world in which they lived. The past, and the stories of the people, could now be preserved
through writing. The Phoenicians’ contribution of the alphabet made writing easier and more
accessible to other cultures, but the basic system of putting symbols down on paper to represent
words and concepts began much earlier. Durant notes:

The Phoenicians did not create the alphabet, they marketed it; taking it apparently
from Egypt and Crete, they imported it piecemeal to Tyre, Sidon, and Byblos, and exported it
to every city on the Mediterranean; they were the middlemen, not the producers, of the
alphabet. By the time of Homer the Greeks were taking over this Phoenician – or the allied
Aramaic – alphabet, and were calling it by the Semitic names of the first two letters, Alpha, Beta;
Hebrew Aleph, Beth.

Early writing systems, imported to other cultures, evolved into the written language of those
cultures so that the Greek and Latin would serve as the basis for European script in the same
way that the Semitic Aramaic script would provide the basis for Hebrew, Arabic, and
possibly Sanskrit. The materials of writers have evolved as well, from the cut reeds with which
early Mesopotamian scribes marked the clay tablets of cuneiform to the reed pens and papyrus
of the Egyptians, the parchment of the scrolls of the Greeks and Romans, the calligraphy of the
Chinese, on through the ages to the present day of computerized composition and the use of
processed paper.

In whatever age, since its inception, writing has served to communicate the thoughts and
feelings of the individual and of that person’s culture, their collective history, and their
experiences with the human condition, and to preserve those experiences for future generations.

RELATED CONTENT BOOKS CITE THIS WORK LICENSE

EDITORIAL REVIEWThis article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior
to publication.
 Bibliography
 The Origins of Writing by Ira Spar
 Durant, W. Our Oriental Heritage. (Simon & Schuster, 1954).
 Scarre, C. & Fagan, B.F. Ancient Civilizations. (Pearson, 2007).
 Black, J. , et. al. The Literature of Ancient Sumer. (Oxford University Press, 2005).
 Coe, M. D. The Maya. (Thames & Hudson, 2015).
 Ebrey, P. B. The Cambridge Illustrated History of China. (Cambridge University Press, 2010).
 Kramer, S. N. The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character. (University of Chicago Press, 1971).
 Kriwaczek, P. Babylon: Mesopotamia and the Birth of Civilization. (St. Martin's Griffin, 2012).
 Van De Mieroop, M. A History of the Ancient Near East ca. 3000 - 323 BC, 2nd Edition. (Blackwell Publishing, 2006).
 Wise Bauer, S. The History of the Ancient World. (W. W. Norton & Company, 2007).

The Evolution of Communication

By Jasmin | source:Here Apr 28th, 2012

Communication is the process of conveying information. Almost all species have some sort of
communication system. However, successful communication is the trait that has made humans the
most successful species.
Today’s infographic shows a timescale of how communication has evolved over time. It’s hard to
imagine communication long before the hustle and bustle of email and text messaging.
Technological communication has grown exponentially, leaving snail mail to be a thing of the past.
Facebook and Twitter is the most popular form of communication right now. These social giants are
changing the game of communication. Communication in the form of short spurts with hashtags or
tagging has become the norm. Social media has taken the complexity out of communication, it is no
longer organic, but short and to the point. Today’s style of communication represents the direction
society a technology is headed, towards efficiency.