These envelopes made of clay in the shape of a hollow ball had the disadvantage of hiding the tokens held inside. Some accountants, therefore, impressed the tokens on the surface of the envelope before enclosing them inside, so that the shape and number of counters held inside could be verified at all times Fig.
These markings were the first signs of writing. The metamorphosis from three-dimensional artifacts to two-dimensional markings did not affect the semantic principle of the system. The significance of the markings on the outside of the envelopes was identical to that of the tokens held inside.
About BC, once the system of impressed signs was understood, clay tablets—solid cushion-shaped clay artifacts bearing the impressions of tokens—replaced the envelopes filled with tokens. The impression of a cone and a sphere token, representing measures of grain, resulted respectively in a wedge and a circular marking which bore the same meaning as the tokens they signified Fig. They were ideograms—signs representing one concept. The impressed tablets continued to be used exclusively to record quantities of goods received or disbursed.
They still expressed plurality in one-to-one correspondence. Pictographs—signs representing tokens traced with a stylus rather than impressed—appeared about BC. These pictographs referring to goods mark an important step in the evolution of writing because they were never repeated in one-to-one correspondence to express numerosity.
Besides them, numerals—signs representing plurality—indicated the quantity of units recorded. The symbols for numerals were not new. They were the impressions of cones and spheres formerly representing measures of grain, which then had acquired a second, abstract, numerical meaning.
The invention of numerals meant a considerable economy of signs since 33 jars of oil could be written with 7 rather then 33 markings. In sum, in its first phase, writing remained mostly a mere extension of the former token system. Although the tokens underwent formal transformations from three- to two-dimensional and from impressed markings to signs traced with a stylus, the symbolism remained fundamentally the same.
Like the archaic counters, the tablets were used exclusively for accounting Nissen and Heine In all these instances, the medium changed in form but not in content. The only major departure from the token system consisted in the creation of two distinct types of signs: incised pictographs and impressed numerals.
This combination of signs initiated the semantic division between the item counted and number. About BC, the creation of phonetic signs—signs representing the sounds of speech—marks the second phase in the evolution of Mesopotamian writing, when, finally, the medium parted from its token antecedent in order to emulate spoken language.
As a result, writing shifted from a conceptual framework of real goods to the world of speech sounds. It shifted from the visual to the aural world. With state formation, new regulations required that the names of the individuals who generated or received registered merchandise were entered on the tablets.
The personal names were transcribed by the mean of logograms—signs representing a word in a particular tongue. Because Sumerian was mostly a monosyllabic language, the logograms had a syllabic value. A syllable is a unit of spoken language consisting of one or more vowel sounds, alone, or with one or more consonants.
When a name required several phonetic units, they were assembled in a rebus fashion. The verb was not transcribed, but inferred, which was easy because the name was common. Phonetic signs allowed writing to break away from accounting. Presumably, these funerary texts were meant to immortalize the name of the deceased, thereby, according to Sumerian creed, ensuring them of eternal life.
Other funerary inscriptions further advanced the emancipation of writing. For example, statues depicting the features of an individual bore increasingly longer inscriptions. After the name and title of the deceased followed patronymics, the name of a temple or a god to whom the statue was dedicated, and in some cases, a plea for life after death, including a verb.
These inscriptions introduced syntax, thus bringing writing yet one step closer to speech. After — BC, the Sumerian script became a complex system of ideograms mixed more and more frequently with phonetic signs. The resulting syllabary—system of phonetic signs expressing syllables—further modeled writing on to spoken language Rogers With a repertory of about signs, the script could express any topic of human endeavor.
Some of the earliest syllabic texts were royal inscriptions, and religious, magic and literary texts. The second phase in the evolution of the Mesopotamian script, characterized by the creation of phonetic signs, not only resulted in the parting of writing from accounting, but also its spreading out of Sumer to neighboring regions. The first Egyptian inscriptions, dated to the late fourth millennium BC, belonged to royal tombs Baines They consisted of ivory labels and ceremonial artifacts such as maces and palettes bearing personal names, written phonetically as a rebus, visibly imitating Sumer.
For example, the Palette of Narmer bears hieroglyphs identifying the name and title of the Pharaoh, his attendants and the smitten enemies. Phonetic signs to transcribe personal names, therefore, created an avenue for writing to spread outside of Mesopotamia. This explains why the Egyptian script was instantaneously phonetic.
It also explains why the Egyptians never borrowed Sumerian signs. Their repertory consisted of hieroglyphs representing items familiar in the Egyptian culture that evoked sounds in their own tongue.
The phonetic transcription of personal names also played an important role in the dissemination of writing to the Indus Valley where, during a period of increased contact with Mesopotamia, c. In turn, the Sumerian cuneiform syllabic script was adopted by many Near Eastern cultures who adapted it to their different linguistic families and in particular, Semitic Akkadians and Eblaites ; Indo-European Mitanni, Hittites, and Persians ; Caucasian Hurrians and Urartians ; and finally, Elamite and Kassite.
The invention of the alphabet about BC ushered in the third phase in the evolution of writing in the ancient Near East Sass The first, so-called Proto-Sinaitic or Proto-Canaanite alphabet, which originated in the region of present-day Lebanon, took advantage of the fact that the sounds of any language are few. It consisted of a set of 22 letters, each standing for a single sound of voice, which, combined in countless ways, allowed for an unprecedented flexibility for transcribing speech Powell This earliest alphabet was a complete departure from the previous syllabaries.
Second, it was consonantal—it dealt only with speech sounds characterized by constriction or closure at one or more points in the breath channel, like b, d, l, m, n, p, etc. Third, it streamlined the system to 22 signs, instead of several hundred.
The transition from cuneiform writing to the alphabet in the ancient Near East took place over several centuries. In the seventh century BC the Assyrian kings still dictated their edicts to two scribes. In all honesty, I used to be part of that crowd until moments ago.
This notion has been completely erased from my brain thanks to this post! On a more specific note, I was surprised to learn the Incas and the Sumerians had a similar bureaucratic issue and how they came up with useful solutions.
Although these cultures have never been in contact with each other, it is amazing to know they faced related issues somehow. This is applicable to other cultures as well. As a Peruvian, I shall say it is a pity Quipus were not durable enough because of their fabrication and, on top of that, they almost disappeared with colonisation.
I am guessing the debate whether they were a form of writing or not shall remain…. Thanks, Alex! It pushed me to be curious, research, and read more about the evolution of writing. The invention of writing happened independently in different parts of the world and it followed the same fundamental steps. Simple images can represent something tangible. Pictograms have evolved continuously over the centuries.
Today, we often pictograms to represent and simplify data, concepts, and objects. Thank you for your time and effort in creating all three versions. Thanks, T! First of all, thank you for the materials in three different formats. The content of the written text presents the information in detail. Meanwhile, the digital format, in my opinion, provides the main ideas of of the content. It is like a summary for written and spoken format. It is really helpful to start with the digital format so that readers can understand the main information.
After that, readers can get more detail information through the written and spoken formats. The affordance of the spoken one is a reader can listen to it while doing other things.
In comparison, the written format requires readers to fully concentrate since sometimes written text is confusing due to the use of high level of syntax and not to mention the use of difficult academic words. In conclusion, each of the formats has their own affordances and limitation. The readers need to know what sort of information they need general or detail , then they can search the information through the format that meets their need.
Thank you for the very interesting article this week, Ingrid. Also, the video you prepared was so appropriate that it helped me understand. I felt really interesting that most writing systems were inspired by other writing systems. It is a nationwide Korean holiday to commemorate the creation and proclamation of Hangul.
That much, King Sejong is one of the most important figures in Korean history. On the other hand, I thought it was a good thing that writing was in the world. Thanks for your fantastic works again!
Thanks, Subin! You are quite right — writing shows us how all cultures are connected and how artificial borders are! Such an interesting topic this week! It is so interesting to see how all writing is considered to be derived from one single writing system, and how we all have developed from there to properly suit our languages and make it logical for our languages. It is incredible how developed our language has become, and how writing has helped preserve important historical documents and history.
If we did not have any writing, imagine how much information we would have lost! No books, no articles, no journals, all would have been spoken stories from generation to generation!
Thanks, Chris! True but another way to think about it is that knowledge would be different: different kinds of knowledge are transmitted through stories and through writing local-global, concrete-abstract are just two relevant dimensions. That is very true! A good example of this is old traditional Viking history before they started writing with runes , which we still learn about in school in Norway.
A lot of information might be misinterpreted along the way and will change the entire story after generations. Indeed, each writing emerged from images or drawings, i can still recognize some writing or should be images used in ancient China by guessing their meaning even though i never use them in my life. No matter Chinese writing or Egyptian writing, they are all beautiful and related to a specific culture.
Thanks a lot! Thanks, Yuan Li! I agree about the beauty of all writing. Evening, Ingrid. Thank you for your recap lecture this week. It is an intriguing video and a really helpful supplement for the reading last week. Besides, owing to the super-quick recap thread on Twitter, I could swiftly recall major key points in the min-long video, which is likely to be superb handy for the upcoming quiz.
Great lecture! Very interesting, and visuals help a lot! I actually was learning Japanese first and Mandarin Chinese second. Knowing a few Japanese characters, helped me a lot when I moved to China as I could figure out in the local restaurant some dishes on the menu or find the exit in the subway, etc.
Japanese uses kanji, which are pretty much traditional Chinese characters, hiragana syllables used mostly for particles and grammatical endings and katakana that is used to write foreign origin words. Mandarin Chinese uses simplified Chinese characters. What was most interesting for me is the importance of stroke order when writing kanji, hiragana, katakana and Chinese characters. I tried to find out why it is so important to write strokes in a particular order, and I have found out that it is because when writing by hand, quickly, the character itself is not as legible but everyone can figure out the meaning by the stroke order.
When everyone uses the same stroke order for the same characters, they have a particular, familiar shape to them, and if someone would put the strokes in the different order it would lose the whole shape and would be intelligible for the reader.
If there are any native Japanese and Chinese speakers, please let me know if there are other reasons for the stroke order, also I wonder, does this rule apply to Korean as well? Thanks, Moni! When I was learning Chinese characters, I used a fun app trainchinese which is designed like a tetris game: in order to score you have to get the stroke order right!
Hi Ingrid and thank you for this interesting article. The question about who invent language really keep me wondering, as you wrote written languages usually inspried from other language, thus, what about the first thinker? Moreover, reading about written language invention reminds me of the story of my own language, Thai.
Scholars agree that our written language is inspried from our neighbour kingdom and this is what I believe too. However, some Thais try to make our children believe that our ancestors invented it originally by themselves because it would be more cool. I am not here to discuss about who is right or wrong but it reminds me that written language, more than keeping record, involves in nationalism as well.
Thank you again for writing about this topic. Thanks, Vichuda! Brahmi-derived scripts spread with Buddhism; the Latin alphabet spread with Christianity; the Arabic alphabet with Islam; outside China, the Chinese script spread with Confucianism and Buddhism ; the Cyrillic script covers the same area as Orthodox Christianity, … the list could go on!
Thank you for another great lecture. I listened to the lecture first and the addition of the slides made it easy to follow. I had to pause and rewind several times, as I kept getting interrupted to help my children with their homework! So, a notable affordance for me was the ability to get the best out of this, in spite of the circumstances under which I had to listen to it. I know writing is the medium that is characterised a formulaic but I found the lecture to be very methodical and organised also.
However, if I was looking for answers to a quiz, I would prefer the written version as it is easier to scan. I also always make notes while listening to a lecture and I prefer to refer to my written notes than have to go through a whole recording again. I am not familiar with Twitter at all but have understood from friends who use it in relation to their work that it can be overwhelming for users. Thanks, Tazin! I found it very interesting that you noted that our understanding of the history of writing has been through European eyes.
Literacy can be studies in the context of universities in African history and I think one of the first universities was actually in Fes, Morocco long before Bologna. Hi Ingrid and everyone! I began with the lecture on Youtube, which works very well for me because I can read the slides and listen to you explain things related to the topic.
Then, I continued with the Twitter version, which functions nicely as a summary covering key points. The post is useful because it is comprised of many hyperlinks to other websites containing related knowledge. So, I can learn more. Now, I am developing the feelings of gratidue to our awesome and creative ancestors who invented writing that I have taken for granted for a long time. Thanks to them, I can write this comment, engage with the lecture, and do many other great things associated with writing.
Thanks, Banie! Great order: learn new information; summarize and commit to memory; move on to critical engagement. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Notify me of follow-up comments by email.
Notify me of new posts by email. Email Address. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4. Press enter to begin your search. Who invented writing? By Ingrid Piller August 4, Literacies. Tags: Colonialism language and economy literacy writing. Literacies We, heirs of the multilingual Sumerians. Ingrid Piller July 18, Literacies What can Australian Message Sticks teach us about literacy?
Ingrid Piller August 18, Literacies Why are academic lectures so weird? Ingrid Piller July 27, Join the discussion 70 Comments. Arakah says:. August 29, at pm. Megan says:. August 11, at pm. Jenny Trang says:. August 10, at pm. Ingrid Piller says:. August 11, at am. Vatnak says:. August 8, at am.
Pingback: We, heirs of the multilingual Sumerians - Language on the Move. Religion, royalty, and business were the topics of the day. And while the very earliest writing stuck to hard business, this later but still very early form of writing allowed literate people to record more nebulous things like ideas. The earliest of these came in the form of hieroglyphs , which are pictographic symbols that represent objects. The depictions we have today typically revolved around religion and the afterlife particularly receipts for what the dead were taking with them to the afterlife.
Ancient Egyptians also used reed brushes as a proto-pen to write on papyrus scrolls, where other texts—ranging in subject from religion to business to royal matters—were recorded. Writing developed in Ancient Egypt in a similar way to how it developed in Mesopotamia. The pictures eventually moved to characters that represent syllables, and then to characters that represent letters that could be understood as words.
The oldest surviving form of writing from China dates back to BCE, and it has nothing to do with business. Offerings to the dead were found in Anyang in northern China with writing carved into ox bones and turtle shells. These oracle bones asked questions about future harvests, children, and wars. The carved records researchers have found include some 4, characters. Writings from the Zapotec followed sometime around BCE. Unfortunately, far less is known about the texts as is known about the earliest writing in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and China.
One thing is clear, however: some of the first written language was recorded in Mesoamerica, and it developed independently of other written languages. These texts are believed to be linked to the writing of the Maya. Written Mayan characters have been found and deciphered from carvings on thrones, altars, and palaces that date back to between and BCE. Like with all ancient writing, the texts that started it all may be lost to time simply because no writing surface lasts forever.
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