History of writing

 

Writing is an essential component of all languages and one of the most useful abilities that people have ever acquired. Writing will be essential to your job as a linguist, whether you're translating a book or making notes to bring to an interpreting session.

If it weren't for writing, we wouldn't be able to appreciate Shakespeare's works in their original form or study Ancient Greek philosophy. Additionally, as the only records we would have of the times before would be oral histories passed down like Chinese whispers from one generation to the next rather than contemporaneous written records, our knowledge of those times would be considerably more constrained.

 

Early roots

Writing to humans is so essential that it's thought to have been among our earliest abilities. The first indications of man's desire to preserve a record of his life date back tens of thousands of years, as seen by cave drawings.

It is thought that spoken language predated written language by tens of thousands of years. The first writing is known to have originated in Egypt and Mesopotamia in 3000 BC, and in China around the same time. The fact that written numbers existed before alphabets might not come as a surprise to you. For many centuries, humans were hunter-gatherers until they discovered that they could no longer live constantly on the go if they could grow their own food.

Pictures for words

The earliest writing systems were called pictograms, which were very simple images that represented something and were built up to create a phrase. For example, a drawing of a man, followed by a drawing of a spear or blade, and then a picture of a mammoth would represent the sentence, "The man uses a spear to hunt the mammoth." However, pictograms have issues as writing systems because they are not very flexible and are difficult to use in detail. As societies developed their own cultures and customs, they also had to create their own systems for recording them.

The first writing systems

The Sumerian and Babylonian peoples of the Middle East invented the writing system known as cuneiform, which represented sounds with symbols rather than actual objects. Examples of this script exist to this day; one was discovered to tell a story very comparable to the biblical account of Noah and the Ark. When George Smith discovered what the Flood Tablet meant, he was so ecstatic that he ran screaming out of the building and peeled off his clothing as he went. Smith translated the Flood Tablet and its account of Utnapishtim, who survived a massive flood by  building a gigantic boat. Other early writing systems included Egyptian hieroglyphics, which were only translated following the discovery of the Rosetta Stone. Elsewhere, a stone tablet covered in script discovered in Mexico is estimated to date back 3,000 years.

 

A, B, C

The Phoenician script is the earliest example of an alphabet similar to the one in use today. Travelling merchants used the system, which used symbols to represent consonants, to keep records and spread it throughout the Mediterranean. This alphabet gave rise to the Greek and Aramaic scripts, which in turn gave rise to the Latin alphabet that we use today and which include symbols for both vowels and consonants. Technology could be the next major advancement in writing history. Writing became far more efficient when pencils and pens were invented, first utilising reeds soaked in ink, as opposed to imprinting it on clay tablets or carving it in stone.

 

Spread the word

Next followed Johannes Gutenberg's development of the printing press in 1450, which made it possible for writing to be published widely. This meant that people could remain informed about events happening in their country or town by receiving regular newsletters.

Naturally, with the internet, we can do business or communicate with friends located anywhere in the world by typing messages on our keyboards using an alphabet that has endured for generations, making it easier than ever to stay in contact with people today. Consider this the next time you text someone!

- farah mokhtar

johannes gutenberg , the first inventer of printing press