History of Writing (Part 1)

More than 3000 years ago in Mesopotamia, a proud father told his son’s teacher, ‘My little fellow has opened his hand and you made wisdom enter there. You showed him the fine points of the scribal art.’  Recognizing that writing is the pathway to wisdom, it soon spread throughout the ancient Middle East.

Most of us are familiar with only one consonant and vowel alphabetic writing system. But the history of writing has come a long way with many beginnings and alterations.

Before fully matured perfect writing was developed, ancient people used a number of approaches as marks, graphic symbols and memory tools (mnemonics) in order to store information.  Graphic art contained human figures, sun, stars, comets, flora, fauna, and geometric designs. 

The fate of writing systems and scripts has been determined by economics, politics, religion and cultural prestige throughout history. 

In the beginning, writing was an instrument of power in the hands of small groups of priests, fortune-tellers and scribes serving monarchs.  It was the perfect tool for social ascendency and the expression of a small elite’s ideology.  With the diffusion of consonantal writing, it could no longer remain the monopoly of the rich and powerful.  Eventually reading and writing spread enormously.

‘Writing is the painting of the voice’ wrote the French philosopher Voltaire.

There are many ways that writing could be borrowed by different people.  For example, only the idea of writing; the idea of writing and its orientation (e.g. linear, right to left, vertical columns); the writing system (logographic, syllabic, alphabet); the writing system and its scripts; parts of writing system; parts of script, etc.

All the writing systems of ancient Afro-Asia seem to relate to one another, either by immediate borrowing and modification or by indirect influence. 

Knot Records

One of the early Neolithic, the last period of the Stone Age, people used general mnemonics of knot record. Such records could be simple knots in a single thread or intricate series of colour-coded knots on strings joined to higher-levels of strings.   They comprised a complex means of counting: different knots in various positions represented numerical quantities and the knot colours represented separate commodities.

Each knot represented a specific decimal value.  If there is no knot in a certain place, it means zero. For example, one knot above two knots above a group of seven knots recorded as the number 127 as shown below.  Also, there were specific string places to represent 100, 10 and 1s.  

*                      1

**                    2

*******          7  = 127

Tallies/Marks

Evidently, early humans who were marking memory with knots, realized that a similar process could be done by using marks to record counts.  They started to mark on bone to represent different people, a passage of time, and a hunting success.  Tally sticks were the oldest form of record keeping.   Throughout the European Middle Ages, customs official’s marking tools were the tally stick and notching knife.  The British Exchequer used tally sticks around 1100 AD to 1826 AD.  This system signified the larger the sum of payment, the more wood would be notched from the tally stick.

In ancient India the first documented coinage was Punch Marked coins issued between 750 BC and 100 AD. 

Next came symbols.  They were used initially by merchant unions and later by States.  The coins represented a trade currency belonging to a period of serious trade activity and urban development in India. They are generally classified into two periods: the first period credited to the Janapadas or small local states and the second period credited to the Imperial Mauryan period. The images on the coins were sun, animals, trees, hills etc. and some were geometrical symbols.

Graphic Symbols

Around six thousand years ago in the ancient Middle East, southern Mesopotamia Sumer’s growing society had to administer and manage its raw materials, manufactured goods, workers, duties, agricultural fields, tributes, royal and temple inventories, incomes and expenditures.  Memory tools like notches and tallies were of no use.  There was a need to develop something radically. 

During 5300-4300 BC, the Vinča culture of the Neolithic age in South-eastern Europe   produced pottery and other clay objects carving some sort of symbols.  A symbol is a graphic mark that stands for something.

Tokens

Clay tokens were also used in the Middle East for thousands of years. Clay is an abundant material in the Middle East.  It was easy to work, easy to erase and easy to preserve by drying in the sun or baking it in the oven.   Also clay can easily be carved with graphic marks representing stored information.  Large numbers of these clay artefacts dating from 8000-1500 BC have been found at archaeological sites from eastern Iran to southern Turkey and Israel.  Most come from ancient Sumer, which is modern day Iraq.  

Around 3700 BC Sumerians in Mesopotamia wrote prefixes and suffixes to basic words.  In order to read these standalone words, pronouncing the sound was needed to make sense of a spoken statement. When sound adopted priority in the system, imperfect writing became perfect writing.  The change expanded writing’s capacities, inspired instant adaptations, and diffused to the Nile, the Iranian Plateau and the Indus Valley.

The idea of perfect writing may have emerged only once in the history of humankind though there are other possible interpretations.  Sketching from standardized pictograms and symbols, the refinement from notches to tablets, the Sumerians of Mesopotamia introduced the perfect writing system as a useful tool for humans.  

New archaeological discoveries show that urban activity occurred as early as 4000 BC in northeastern Syria.  There the development of kingdoms might have happened before the appearance of perfect writing.  Likewise, Mesopotamian city-states grew into powerful empires once perfect writing appeared in that area.