WritingHistory

A Brief History of Writing

Note: If this looks familiar, it's because it is is a modified version of the essay, Decoding the Past: Epigraphy and Decipherment, which appears on my Humanities pages. That version contains more information and a new sources page.

Human beings have attempted to create a permanent record of their thoughts, observations, surroundings, etc. for at least the last 30,000 years. The earliest of these records appear in the form of paintings and drawings on rock surfaces, and also as calendars. One interpretation of the purpose of cave paintings, in fact, suggests that our ancestors kept track of the migrations of flocks and herds by creating their images on cavern walls. Calendars make good religious and agricultural sense in cultures whose livelihood depends on remembering when a certain animal will appear after a winter migration, or when to plant a particular crop. And when populations increase, with the resulting increase in social and economic complexity, keeping account of various kinds of transactions becomes imperative.

It is not surprising, then, that the first writing appeared in neolithic cultures such as those that arose in the Indus River valley, Mesopotamia, along the Nile, and in China, where agricultural success led to rapid economic and political development. In all of these locations, writing systems began to emerge around 5,000 years ago. With the inception of full systems in a variety of forms--from pictograms to syllabaries to alphabets--the "information age" truly began. The resulting accumulation of information that led to increasingly rapid technological innovation changed the world dramatically and irrevocably.

PICTOGRAMS AND IDEOGRAMS

The earliest writing systems depended on signs which referred to a concept, rather than on words that represented the concept itself. For instance, a picture of a sun might signify the concept of light or of warmth, or it might represent the sun itself. Both Sumerian cuneiform writing and early Chinese are examples of pictographic systems that evolved into ideographic forms. The limits of logographic ("word picture") writing become obvious when we consider the potential size of a system designed to depict a language with a very large vocabulary. One reason the Chinese, who invented moveable type in the early 12th century AD, never made significant use of it, is that their largely ideographic system was simply too large to make typesetting practical. But the major problem with logographic writing arises from ambiguity; if a single sign can represent several different ideas or objects, clarity becomes difficult to achieve. Because of this, most logographic systems eventually evolved naturally into syllabaries.

REBUSES

All true writing attempts to reproduce sounds. A significant step in the development of full writing systems occurred among the Sumerians and Egyptians who began to use pictograms not simply as representations of objects, but of the sounds that made up the object's name. Today, rebuses are used primarily as a children's game. But the television game show Concentration also required contestants to solve puzzles that consisted primarily of rebuses for common sayings and clichés.

SYLLABARIES AND ALPHABETS

To avoid the limitations of logographic systems, which use a single sign for each word, a more complete, or "full" writing system must maintain a fixed correspondence between the signs and elements of the language it represents. Syllabic systems, such as Cretan Linear B and modern Japanese, have signs for each different syllable that occurs in the language; alphabetic systems, like English, contain signs for each separate sound in a language.

Economy and clarity seem to be the forces behind the development of syllabaries. By using a single sign for a particular sound, writers could use far fewer signs and assure their readers of much less ambiguity. Whereas a logographic system might require a minimum of 500-600 signs, a purely syllabic system might need only 100. Syllabic writing, because it is purely phonetic, reduces ambiguity by indicating how each word is to be pronounced.

Syllabaries consist of both consonant-only and consonant-plus-vowel systems. Each sign in Cretan Linear B, for example, represents a consonant-vowel combination. Ancient Hebrew was a consonant-only system that relied heavily on context; the reader could only tell what vowels followed the consonants by understanding the context of the message. The ancient Hebrew verse from the Song of Songs that means "This is my beloved, this is my friend," written without vowels can also be read as "This is my uncle, this is my shepherd." Modern Hebrew attempts to correct this difficulty by adding vowel signs.

During the so-called "dark ages" in Greece, after the fall of Mycenaean civilization, the syllabary known as Linear B was lost; but soon after 1000 BC, the Greeks borrowed the Phoenician writing system, divided the consonants from the vowels, and invented the first alphabet (named after its first two letters, alpha and beta--or alef and bet in the Semitic Phoenecian system). To form the vowels, the Greeks adapted five Semitic sounds for which there were no equivalents in Greek: alef, a; hey, (epsilon) e; yodh, (iota) I; ayin, (omicron) o; and vav, (upsilon) u.

Further research: Look into the history of a writing system such as Egyptian or Mayan hieroglyphs, or Cretan Linear B. As you do, consider the importance of writing in our own culture and in the history of cultures in general. Although oral traditions have always played a significant role in cultural life, imagine what life might be like without writing. What kinds of technologies might exist if we relied primarily on our own memories and voices to transmit information? Does writing inevitably develop along with increasing complexity in political and socio-economic systems?

Consider as well the impact of writing on human consciousness and cultural evolution. How does the introduction of writing alter the way in which human beings communicate? How have writing technologies influenced the development of our culture(s)? The concept of literacy has become one hallmark of civilization. How did the invention of moveable type and the wide distribution of books help this concept to develop? In terms of the future, how will the newer technologies--computers in general, and hypertext in particular--affect the way we conduct human discourse?

For purposes of this class, it's also helpful to think about writing as a design problem: how does one go about designing letters and signs? This problem lies behind the idea of a "logo" for corporate identity. How does one design what is essentially a picture, or a sign, that communicates an idea, a sensibility, a product, an ethos, or whatever it is somebody wants to embody within a single image. As we study advancements in literacy during the Middle Ages, we'll be reminded of the role efficiency plays in the design of letterforms, and how the tools one uses to write affect the way in which writing develops. All of these issues point to the necessity of understanding the origins and development of writing systems in human history if we're to understand how important design is to communication in a rapidly changing world.

SOURCES: Georges Jean, Writing: The Story of Alphabets and Scripts (Abrams Discoveries, 1992); Peter James and Nick Thorpe, Ancient Inventions (Ballantine, 1994). P 211 .J43 2004 (Kelley Library catalogue number)