History of Writing
Without writing there would be no history and no civilization as we know
it. But how, when and where did writing evolve? In his book "The Story of
Writing", language scholar Andrew Robinson writes: "One who undertakes the
task of understanding an ancient text must draw upon ideas and information
from a range of disciplines: anthropology, archeology, art history, economics,
linguistics, mathematics, political and social history, psychology and theology."
In order to study the origin of the alphabet by the Canaanites somewhere
in the middle of the 2nd Millennium B.C., we must first examine how writing
was invented by the Sumerians some 1,500 years earlier.
There is much archeological evidence to show that the Sumerians were the
first to develop writing, in 3200 or 3300 B.C. These are the dates for many
clay tablets with a proto-cuneiform script found at the site of the ancient
city of Uruk. The tablets bore pictorial symbols for the names of people,
places and things for governing and commerce. The Sumerian script gradually
evolved from the pictorial to the abstract, but it would be at least five
centuries before the writing came to represent recorded spoken language.
About 10,000 years ago, hunting and gathering began to be replaced by agriculture.
After a period of this settled life, around 8,000 years ago, farming peoples
invented ways of keeping count of things. This was the ancient system of counting
stones and drawings of animals. These pictograms were simplified over time
and became simple abstract forms. These are best compared to modern symbols
like: @,#,$,%,& and +.
By around 4500 B.C., the Sumerians of Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq) were
making large numbers of clay tokens marked with lines and dots, one token
for each category of things. Soon after this, the tokens seem to have represented
commercial transactions. The tokens were put inside clay balls, which had
impressions on them indicating the nature of the tokens sealed inside.
Then the crucial step seems to have been taken: it occurred to someone that
once the impressions were made, there was no longer any need for the balls
themselves. With these pictorial representations, called logographs, or logograms,
true writing had been launched. By around 3100 B.C., these logographic images
were still in wide use in Mesopotamia, and had been converted into the clay
cuneiform writing we all learned about.
The Assyrians and Babylonians adapted the Sumerian symbols for their own
use, and trade and commerce then spread this system to other parts of the
world. But, one critical question remains: Was writing invented only once
and spread elsewhere, or did it arise independently several times in several
places?
The first writing system of the Sumerians was followed closely by the appearance
of writing in Egypt and the Indus valley, and since then writing has appeared
independently two more times - in China and in Meso-America. But, the inventions
of these four civilizations followed a different set of circumstances than
those in Sumer. All other writing systems of the world, including the phonetic
alphabet, have been derived either directly or indirectly from contact with
one of these five writing systems through borrowing and modification.
Egyptian hieroglyphics are so different from Sumerian cuneiform, that they
were probably invented independently not long after Sumerian writing. If anything,
the Egyptians may have gotten the idea of writing from the Sumerians, with
whom they had contacts in Syria, but nothing more.
The Egyptian writing system underwent the most dramatic changes, evolving
first syllabic elements and then twenty-four uniconsonantal signs that functioned
as an alphabet for rendering proper names and a small number of words. The
system of uniconsonantal signs served as a model for the Proto-Canaanite alphabet,
which eventually led to the totally phonetic Greek alphabet from which all
European alphabets are derived.
Recent excavations in the ruins of the ancient city of Harappa suggest an
earlier and presumably independent origin of the ideographic Indus script,
which some linguists claim is a thousand years older than the Phoenician script,
currently believed to be the origin of all alphabetic writing.
The Harappa-Mohenjo-Daro system, from the same region, is still undeciphered.
It had apparently evolved into a mixed system of pictograms and syllabic signs
before its demise. Like the Mesoamerican, it represents a dead end. The writing
systems of modern India, however, do not derive from the Harappa culture,
but rather from the Aramaic alphabet, a direct descendant of the original
Proto-Canaanite Semitic alphabet that evolved under the influence of the
Egyptian writing system.
There are three types of alphabets:
The first type of alphabet that
was developed is the abjad. An abjad is an alphabetic writing system where
there is one symbol per consonant. Abjads differ from regular alphabets in
that they only have characters for consonantal sounds. Vowels are not usually
marked in abjad. The reason for this is that Semitic languages have a morphemic
structure which makes the denotation of vowels redundant in most cases. All
known abjads belong to the Semitic family of scripts.
Some abjads (Arabic, Hebrew) have markings for vowels as well, but only
use them in special contexts, such as for teaching. Many scripts derived
from abjads have been extended with vowel symbols to become full alphabets.
The most famous example being the derivation of the Greek alphabet from the
Phoenician abjad. The term 'abjad' takes its name from the old order of the
Arabic alphabet's consonants Alif, Bá, Jim, Dál.
An abugida is an alphabetic writing
system whose basic signs denote consonants with an inherent vowel and where
consistent modifications of the basic sign indicate other following vowels
than the inherent one. In many abugidas the modification is the addition of
a vowel sign, rotation of the basic sign, or addition of diacritical marks.
The obvious contrast is with syllabaries, which have one distinct symbol
per possible syllable, and the signs for each syllable have no systematic
graphic similarity. The name 'abugida' is derived from the first four characters
of an order of the Ethiopic script used in some religious contexts.
In a featural writing system,
each part of each symbol corresponds to a phonetic feature. That is, sounds
that are phonetically related have symbols that are related, and different
phonetic features, like place of articulation or voicing, will be represented
the same way for different sounds. The most important featural writing system
is Korean Hangeul, which also incorporates aspects of logographic writing
systems and alphabets in addition to features.
There are several writing systems which have yet to be deciphered or have
been only partially deciphered. In some cases, the writing systems have been
deciphered, but the languages they were used to write remain a mystery.
Vinca (Old European) is a collection of symbols found on many artifacts
dating from between 6000 to 4500 B.C. excavated from sites in southeast Europe,
in particular from Vinca near Belgrade. Some scholars believe the Vinca symbols
represent the earliest form of writing ever found, predating even ancient
Egyptian and Sumerian writing by thousands of years. The inscriptions are
all short and the language represented is not known, making it highly unlikely
that they will ever be deciphered.
Indus/Harappa script was first used about 3500 B.C. in the Indus valley
of India. Neither the script nor the language it was used to write are known,
however, Asko Parpola of the University of Helsinki claims to have partially
deciphered the script and believes it probably represents a Dravidian language.
Proto-Elamite is a script which first appeared about 2900 B.C. in the kingdom
of Suse in southwestern Persia (modern-day Iran). It has yet to be deciphered
and the language it represents in unknown. Old Elamite is a partially deciphered
syllabic script used in the same region about 2250 and 2220 B.C. It was named
after Elam, the capital of Suse.
Linear A is a script used between about 1800 and 1450 B.C. on Crete. Linear
A is possibly related to Linear B, but the language it was used to write is
not known. The Phaistos Disk, found on Crete in 1908, is thought to date from
the seventeenth century BC. On it is inscribed an unknown script and there
are many theories about the language it represents and what it means.
The Etruscan alphabet probably developed from the Greek alphabet and was
used by Greek colonists in Italy from the middle of the sixth century B.C.
until about the first century AD. The Etruscan alphabet has been deciphered,
but the Etruscan language remains largely a mystery.
The Meroïtic script was used to write Meroïtic, an extinct language
that was spoken in the Nile valley and northern Sudan until about the fourth
century AD. The script has been deciphered but the language is used to write
is not known.
The Voynich Manuscript is named after Wilfrid M. Voynich, an antiquarian
book dealer who acquired it in 1912. It is lavishly illustrated manuscript
codex of 234 pages, written in an unknown script. One theory is that is was
written sometime during the thirteenth century by a Franciscan friar, Roger
Bacon (1214-1294). Many attempts have been made to decipher the text but none
have succeeded. Another theory alleges the manuscript is a hoax.
Rongorongo is a script once used on Easter Island until the 1860s, after
which knowledge of the script was lost. The language it represents is Rapa
Nui, the Polynesian language spoken on Easter Island.