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The History of Writing

The history of writing began with pre-writing or photo-literacy, characterized by cave paintings that date back around 15,000 years. These early representations served various purposes, such as recording events or participating in rituals, leading to the development of pictograms, which communicated ideas through images. Over time, Sumerian pictograms evolved into a more complex writing system that included the rebus principle and syllabic writing, allowing for the representation of sounds and the formation of words.

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6 views2 pages

The History of Writing

The history of writing began with pre-writing or photo-literacy, characterized by cave paintings that date back around 15,000 years. These early representations served various purposes, such as recording events or participating in rituals, leading to the development of pictograms, which communicated ideas through images. Over time, Sumerian pictograms evolved into a more complex writing system that included the rebus principle and syllabic writing, allowing for the representation of sounds and the formation of words.

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Thương Thùy
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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1

THE HISTORY OF WRITING


1. The earliest stage of writing is called pre-writing or photo-literacy, and depends on direct
representation of objects, rather than representing them with letters or other symbols. Evidence for this
stage, in the form of rock and cave paintings, dates back to about 15.000 years ago, although the exact
dates are debatable. This kind of proto-literate cave painting has been found in Europe, with the best
known examples in Southwestern Franc, but also in Africa and on parts of the American continent.
These petrographs (pictures on rock) show typical scenes of the period, and include representations of
people, animals and activities. Most are astonishingly beautiful with a vibrancy and immediacy that we
still recognize today. They are painted with pigments made from natural materials including crushed
tones and minerals, animal products such as blood, ashes, plant materials of all kinds, and they produce
a wide of colors and hues.
2. Why did ancient people put such effort into making them? Various theories have been put forward,
but the most convincing include the idea that the pictures were records of heroic deeds or important
events, that they were part of magical ceremonies, or that they were a form of primitive calendar,
recording the changes in the seasons as they happened. These, then, are all explanations as to why man
started to write.
3. A related theory suggests that the need for writing arose thereafter from the transactions and trading
that went on. In parts of what is now Iraq and Iran, small piece of fired earth-pottery have been found
which appear to have been used as tokens to represent exchanged objects, much as we use tokens in a
casino or money, today. Eventually, when the tokens themselves became too numerous to handle
easily, representations of the tokens were inscribed on clay tablets.
4. An early form of writing is the use of pictograms, which are pictures used to communicate.
Pictograms have been found from almost every part of the world and every era of development, and are
still in use in primitive communities nowadays. They represent objects, ideas or concepts more or less
directly. They tend to be simple in the sense that they are not a complex or full picture, although they
are impressively difficult to interpret to an outsider unfamiliar with their iconography, which tend to be
localized and to differ widely from society to society. They were never intended to be a detailed
testimony which could be interpreted by outsiders, but to serve instead as aide- memoires to the author,
rather as we might keep a diary in personal shorthand. However, some modern pictograms are more or
less universally recognized, such as the signs which indicate men’s and women’s toilets, or road signs,
which tend to be very similar throughout the world.
5. The first pictograms that we know of are Sumerian in origin, and date to about 8000 BC. They show
how images used to represent concrete objects could be expanded to include abstractions by adding
symbols together, or using associated symbols. One Sumerian pictogram, for example, indicates ‘death’
by combining the symbols for ‘man’ and ‘winter’; another shows ‘power’ with the symbol of a man
with the hands enlarged.
6. By about 5,000 years ago, Sumerian pictograms had spread to other areas, and the Sumerians had
made a major advance towards modern writing with the development of the rebus principle, which
meant that symbols could be used to indicate sounds. This was done by using a particular symbol not
only for the thing it originally represented, but also for anything which was pronounced in a similar
way. So the pictogram for na (meaning ‘animal’) could also be used to mean ‘old’ (which was also
pronounced na). The specific meaning of the pictogram (whether na meant ‘old’ or ‘animal’) could
only be decided through its context.
2

7. It is a short step from this to the development of syllabic writing using pictograms, and this next
development took about another half of a century. Now, the Sumerians would add pictograms to each
other so that each, representing an individual sound or syllable, formed part of a larger word. This
pictograms representing the syllable he, na and mi (‘mother’, ‘old’, ‘my’) could be put together to form
henami or ‘granmother’.
I. Paraphrasing
An early form of writing is the use of pictograms, which are pictures used to communicate. Pictograms
have been found from almost every part of the world and every era of development, and are still in use
in primitive communities nowadays. They represent objects, ideas or concepts more or less directly.
They tend to be simple in the sense that they are not a complex or full picture, although they are
impressively difficult to interpret to an outsider unfamiliar with their iconography, which tend to be
localized and to differ widely from society to society.
II. Summarizing: Write a summary of the reading text “THE HISTORY OF WRITING” (about
100 – 120 words)

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