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EARLY CIVILIZATIONS AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF WRITING SYSTEMS IN THE WORLD. Prof. M. M. Ninan. Cave paintings. The oldest known cave painting is that of the Chauvet Cave , dating to around 30,000 BC. Petroglyphs. Petroglyphs from Häljesta , Scandinavia. Nordic Bronze Age.
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EARLY CIVILIZATIONS AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF WRITING SYSTEMS IN THE WORLD Prof. M. M. Ninan
Cave paintings The oldest known cave painting is that of the Chauvet Cave, dating to around 30,000 BC.
Petroglyphs Petroglyphs from Häljesta, Scandinavia. Nordic Bronze Age. The next step in the history of communications is petroglyphs, carvings into a rock surface. It took about 20,000 years for homo sapiens to move from the first cave paintings to the first petroglyphs, which are dated to around 10,000 BC
Four Rivers – Four World Cultures Humankind is defined by language; but civilization is defined by writing
Indus Script 2600 BC to 1900 BC Very short and brief texts. The average number of symbols on the seals is 5, and the longest is only 26. Dravidian?
3,500 B.C. Indus Script ? They developed a system of writing with around 250 symbols. They carved their writings on soft soapstone. No one has yet deciphered their language. This civilization died out, whereas the other two continued to grow.
Around 4100-3800 BCE, the tokens began to be symbols that could be impressed or inscribed in clay to represent a record of land, grain or cattle and a written language was beginning to develop.
Summerian Accounting On Clay Tablets
Evolution of Writing? • Writing itself undergoes changes before and after the invention of cuneiform. • Tokens-precursors of numeration • Pictograms • Ideograms • Syllabary • Alphabets
Pictograms Pictograph from 1510 telling a story of coming of missionaries to Hispaniola Pictograms were used by various ancient cultures all over the world since around 9000 BC, when tokens marked with simple pictures began to be used to label basic farm produce, and become increasingly popular around 6000-5000 BC.
Eventually, the pictographs were stylized, rotated and in impressed in clay with a wedge shaped stylus to become the script known as Cuneiform. The pictograph for woman, as seen above became .
Sumerians and the first writing system in the world 4000 - 3500 BC The Sumerians developed a form ofpictographic writing that used word pictures like bird, fish, ox or grain etc.,
Ideograms The beginning of the Lord's Prayer in Míkmaq hieroglyphic writing. The text reads Nujjinen wásóq – "Our father / in heaven"
Geometric signs (dots, squares, etc.) with no apparent depicted object = ideographs( symbols to represent ideas or concepts.)
Nowadays there is more-or-less consensus on a few points concerning the origin of writing. First of all, writing was invented independently in at least three places, Mesopotamia, China, Mesoamerica. Recent discoveries might also provide evidence that writing was invented in Egypt Indus independently of Mesopotamia.
I LOVE YOU .However, there are no wrong answers to this puzzle. Both of the other choices could also be correct. To eliminate confusion, the writer might use a determinative. These were special characters which had a special meaning and acted to clarify the statement
Egyptian hieroglyphs such as which was pronounced r'i meaning "mouth" became the pictograph for the sound of R with any vowel. The pictograph for "water" pronounced nu became the symbol for the consonantal sound of N. This practice of using a pictograph to stand for the first sound in the word it stood for is called acrophony and was the first step in the development of an ALPHABET or the "One Sign-One sound" system of writing.
Acrophonic pictograms make excellent phonograms because they establish a meaningful connection between the shape of the mark and the associated sound category. The technique is often used in literacy programs because paired associate learning is easier with a connected picture. A=avian/apple/ape, B=boot/book, C=cup/cat... The technique would even be more powerful if the name of the associated picture was also related to the letter name and letter shape. In Egyptian and the early Semitic scripts they were.
"Hieroglyphic writing was an offshot of direct pictorial representation. In this respect it resembled the original Babylonian script (circa 3200 B.C.) and indeed it is not improbable that there was an actual relationship between them, though it may have amounted to no more than a hearsay knowledge that the sounds of language could be communicated by means of appropriately chosen pictures. The subsequent development, however, differed very considerably in the two cases. Babylonian writing, using cuneiform (wedge-shaped) characters, quickly ceased to be recognizable as pictures, whereas the Eg. hieroglyphs retained their pictorial appearance... By virtue of this fact, the signs continued to mean what they represented." (p. 22f., Egypt of the Pharaohs, 1961).
Amduat - The Book of the Secret Chamber The oldest of the royal funerary books is the Amduat. Amduat literally means "That Which Is In the Afterworld" - is an important Ancient Egyptian funerary text of the New Kingdom. Like many funerary texts, it was written on the inside of the tomb for reference by the deceased. Unlike other funerary texts, however, it was reserved only for pharaohs or very favored nobility. It tells the story of Re, the sun god, traveling through the underworld, between the time the sun sets in the west and rises again in the east. It is understood that the dead pharaoh is taking this same journey, ultimately to unify with the sun god and become immortal. The underworld is divided into twelve hours of the night, each presenting various allies and enemies for the pharaoh/sun god to encounter. The Amduat names all of these entities, totalling many hundreds of gods and monsters. In fact, a prime purpose of the Amduat to provide the names of these creatures to the spirit of the dead pharaoh, so he can call upon them for aid or use their name to defeat them. The earliest complete version of the Amduat is found in KV34, the tomb of Thutmose III in the Valley of the Kings.
Pyramid Texts The Pyramid Texts are a collection of ancient Egyptian religious texts from the time of the Old Kingdom, mostly inscriptions on the walls of tombs in pyramids. They depict the Egyptain view of the afterlife, and the ascent into the sky of the divine Pharaoh after death. They were written upwards of five thousand years ago; thus, they are some of the oldest known writings in the world. The Pyramid Texts are also the oldest collection of religious spells known to us from ancient Egypt. This collection forms the basis of much of the later religious theology and literature of ancient Egypt. The passages were eventually separated and categorized, as well as illustrated and eventually evolved into the Book of the Dead, or more properly, The Book of the Coming forth by Day. The oldest of these text come from that Pyramid of Wenis, or more popularly these days, Unas at Saqqara. However, the first Pyramid Text that were actually discovered were from the Pyramid of Pepy I. This collection forms the basis of much of the later religious theology and literature of ancient Egypt.
The Book of the Dead Papyrus of Ani Ani (man with his wife bowing to the gods), while Anubis weighs his heart against Maat's feather of truth, and Thoth records the event, and Ammit the devourer waits patiently.
The scene depicted here shows the climax of the journey to the afterlife. Nany is in the Hall of Judgment. Holding her mouth and eyes in her hand, she stands to the left of a large scale. Her heart is being weighed against Maat, the goddess of justice and truth, who is represented as a tiny figure wearing her symbol, a single large feather, in her headband. On the right, Osiris, god of the underworld and rebirth, presides over the scene. He is identified by his tall crown with a knob at the top, by his long curving beard, his crook, and by his body, which appears to be wrapped like a mummy except for his hands.
This is the alphabet that was the precursor to Phoenician, Greek and Roman
The hieroglyphicsEgypt. HIEROGLYPHS symbols on Gerzean pottery resemble hieroglyphic writing. 4000 BC Earliest known hieroglyphic inscription was the Narmer Palette, at Hierakonpolis 3200 BC. Egyptians borrowed the idea of pictorial writing from Sumerians. Their hieroglyphics was as pictography or ideograms. Old Egyptian (3000 to 2200 BC), Middle Egyptian (2200 to 1600 BC), Late Egyptian (1600 to 700 BC), Demotic (700 BC to 400 AD) and Coptic (200 AD to about 1500 AD). Coptic was the only stage of the Egyptian language that had proper vowels and gave a clear idea of their pronunciations. But, for a very long time these writings remained unintelligible
2,000 B.C. Shang Dynasty Chinese The Shang on the Yellow River is the earliest known civilization that used Chinese writing. They used about 3,000 symbols for words and actions. The Chinese language of today differs very little from this early writing. This is because the Chinese civilization was isolated from the rest of the world for many years
The Assyrians. Akkadian language and Northeastern Semitic language (Aramaic) – 3000 BC to 1000 BC - in Mesopotamia. It had two dialects, Assyrian and Babylonian. It was written in cuneiform script. After 700 BC the Aramaic began to replace the Akkadian language, and died out by 1st century AD.
Historical development of “Head” 26th century BCSumeriancuneiform script in Sumerian language, listing gifts to the high priestess of Adab on the occasion of her election. One of the earliest examples of human writing. 2600 BC Sumeria
Pictographs were turned on their sides (2800 B.C.) and then developed into actual cuneiform symbols (2500 B.C.) -- as this clay tablet illustrates
A cuneiform table (c. 2100 B.C.) listing expenditures of grain and animals.
