Evolution of Writing

Dad: Yes son.

Son: How did people learn to write?

Dad: Writing did not come naturally to man. In the march of civilization when people began to trade with each other, they felt the necessity of recording such transactions. So after groping for centuries they succeeded in inventing a very elementary form of writing.

Son: But who invented writing first?

Dad: Writing which was very different from the modem system was invented by the ancient Sumerians in Mesopotamia, modem Iraq, some 5,500 years ago.

Son: How did they begin writing?

Dad: The early writing was a series of marks scratched on to stone tablets. Later scribes began to write on clay tablets using a reed pen called stylus. We, as children, also learnt to write using reed pens, sometimes fitted with a steel nib.

Son: Who were the Sumerians?

Dad: They belonged to the group of Caucasoid peoples who speak a semetic language including the Jews, Arabs, as well as the ancient Babylonians and Phoenicians, Sumer was a region of Babylon, which, was the chief city of Mesopotamia.

Son: Can you tell me what kind of writing it was?

Dad: The earliest writing was in picture form, this was so because there was a different picture for every word and the scribes had to learn more than 2000 symbols. Nevertheless picture writing was a great step towards civilization.

Son: It must have been very difficult to read what had been written in this form?

Dad: Yes. So the Mesopotamians gradually developed writing using symbols. This was called ‘cuneiform’ method of writing. Cuneiform comes from the Greek word for wedge-shaped. The wedge-shaped stylus was made to use different symbols on soft clay.

Son: Was all writing done in such symbols?

Dad: Of course yes, as no other system was evolved till then. Even this system used hundreds of symbols. This cuneiform way of writing was adopted by the Assyrians, the Babylonians and the Persians.

Son: Who were the Assyrians?

Dad: Assyria was an ancient Kingdom of North Mesopotamia.

Son: What about the Hanging Gardens, one of the seven ancient wonders of the world?

Dad: Excavations have not revealed any trace of these gardens. It is said that one of the queens of Babylon was very fond of gardens and she was probably responsible for these wonderful gardens. It is also likely that in ancient Babylon gardens were planted on the terraces of a ziggurat. A ziggurat was a kind of rectangular temple tower erected on a tiered mound. The Biblical tower of Babel was perhaps one such temple tower.

Son: Was the Babylonian civilization highly developed?

Dad: Yes. The Babylonians had a highly developed civilization. They studied the stars and planets and tried to work out their position in relation to the earth. Their mathematicians were the first to divide the day into 24 hours, each hour into 60 minutes and each minute into sixty seconds. These ancient units of time are still in vogue.

Son: There were other ancient civilizations like Egypt. Did they not have any system of recording their taxes and trade dealings etc.?

Dad: Actually the earliest civilizations known to us in history are those of the Egyptians and Babylonians. The Egyptians had a form of writing 4,500-year ago, a system of government and an understanding of mathematics used in building the pyramids. They also had a calendar, employed architects and knew how to use some machines. Egyptian scribes had to learn to read and write in both ‘hieroglyphics’ and ‘hieratic’ scripts. Hieroglyphics, the oldest form of Egyptian writing, like that of the Babylonians, were picture symbols which could be used to make simple records or to write more complicated pieces such as poetry. But using hieroglyphics was a slow process because each picture symbol had to be painted separately. Hieratic was a simplified form of hieroglyphic writing. It was more straightforward and quicker to use because in this form words were formed and joined in a flowing style.

Son: Can you elaborate this ‘hieratic’ form of writing?

Dad: It was a cursive form of hieroglyphics or a style of art that adheres to certain fixed types or methods used by Egyptian priests and scribes in ancient Egypt.

Son: Writing and reading of such texts must have been quite difficult.

Dad: Yes. Scribes had to read hieroglyphic scripts and then translate it into hieratic writing. Great emphasis was placed on fluent reading and students had to read aloud as a class. They had to learn whole passages by heart and show that they understood the text.

Son: What was the position of the scribes in ancient Egypt?

Dad: They were highly thought of. In the cities classes were held for the scribes where the officials, such as priests and administrators, taught them.

Son: How did the modem way of writing evolve?

Dad: You know that necessity is the mother of invention. So in the course of time people realized that words and symbols were made by a few sounds and that each sound could be shown by a simple letter. The first people to understand this were the Canaanites who lived about 3000 years ago in the region between the river Jordan and the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea roughly corresponding to Israel.

Son: What did the Canaanites do?

Dad: They adopted an alphabet, which had only 18 letters, known as the Semetic script.

Son: But there are numerous scripts in existence.

Dad: Yes. After the Semetilc script different scripts began to follow, generally improving upon the original. The Phoenicians, a maritime people belonging to the semetic family of N.W. Syria extending to the Mediterranean Sea, used an alphabet, which contained only consonants The Greeks adopted it, introducing vowels as well. This was the beginning of the modem alphabet.

Son: How did the word alphabet come into use?

Dad: The word Alphabet comes from ‘Alpha’ and ‘Beta’ the first two letters of the Greek alphabet. The Romans developed their alphabet, the one we use today, from a later Greek version and some of the letters are similar to the Greek alphabet. All Western European languages still use the Roman alphabet today. The Cyrillic alphabet also developed from the Greek alphabet. It is used in Russia and some Eastern European countries today. It is significant that the first two letters of the Arabic script are ‘Aleph’ and ‘Bay’; in Greek Alpha and Beta and in Roman A and B indicating a common origin.

Son: What about the Chinese script?

Dad: The Chinese and Japanese still write with symbols called characters. The characters are painted with deft fingers, using a brush and ink. Chinese characters are descended from an ancient form of picture writing. They symbolize whole words or parts of words. Modem Chinese writing has developed from the earliest pictograms. Characters have changed over the centuries. The Chinese had never had an alphabet. Their writing consists of thousands of symbols or characters. They have not found any solution to the problem by adopting an alphabet.

Son: And what about the Japanese?

Dad: Dealing with the Japanese language is much more complicated than the Chinese. Japanese language mostly developed in isolation. As a result it is difficult to establish any links between the components of the Japanese language, its vocabulary, sound system and grammar with any other. Although in its recent history it has been influenced by the Chinese language and by some Western languages. In the Japanese language the position of the verb is inflexible. It must appear at the end of the sentence.

Son: How is the Japanese written? Have they developed any alphabet of their own?

Dad: Japanese writing uses two principal systems of orthography: Chinese characters, a system in which each written character represents a syllable. Japanese was strictly a spoken language before the introduction of the Chinese characters or Kanji in the 5th century.

Japanese is traditionally written vertically with lines starting at the right side of the page. Another method like English uses horizontal lines and starts from the top left-hand side of the page.

Son: The Japanese must be facing the same difficulties, as do the Chinese?

Dad: Yes. The system of the Chinese characters is generally considered more difficult to learn and use because of the large number of characters and the complexity involved both in writing and in reading as opposed to letters in alphabets. There are thousands of characters attested in the Japanese language but in 1846 the Japanese Government identified 1850 characters for daily use. In 1981 an increased list of 1945 characters and gave it the name Joyo Kanji List (Kanji for daily use) The Joyo Kanji List must be learnt in the primary and secondary schools. Even newspapers generally limit the use of characters to this list.

Japanese are often very flexible. The Latin alphabet is sometimes employed for such names of organizations or firms as Honda, Toyota and Sony and names in advertisements.

Son: Is there no ancient literature in Japanese?

Dad: The Japanese did not produce written documents until the introduction of a writing system from China starting in the late 5^th century. With this writing system the Japanese began to record their language in poetry and prose called the Old Japanese. The transition to Modem Japanese took place from the 12^th to the 16^th century. There are many dialects in use in Japan. So they use a standard common dialect to facilitate communication throughout the country.

Son: Do you think that so many different scripts, Semetic, Hebrew, Arabic, (28 letters), Greek, Roman (26) and Dev Nagri (46 letters), Tamil etc have had a common origin?

Dad: Yes. Many nations one after the other caught hold of the idea and developed their own scripts which have had a common origin in the beginning but acquired a totally different style over a period of time. Take India, e.g. where there are many scripts, some with minor differences and like Hindi, Bengali, Gujrati, Marathi etc. They seem to have emerged from Dev Nagri, the script in which Sanskrjt is written.

Son: But what about the different scripts prevalent in South India?

Dad: The South Indian languages like Tamil, Telugu, kannada and Malayalam are Dravidian languages and had a different origin from the North Indian languages.

Son: Who were the Dravidians?

Dad: The Dravidians are supposed to be the original inhabitants of India who were driven to the South when the hordes of Aryans migrated to India from the North.

Son: Could they be the people who built up extinct civilization of Mohan-Jo-Daro and Harrappa?

Dad: No one knows about it for certain. The Harrapan civilization was a highly developed one but what destroyed it is anybody’s guess. Hundreds of seals and tablets have been found but till date no one has been able to decipher their script. Hence how they developed their civilization, which gods they worshipped, what countries they traded with, how they built their houses, complete with bat rooms, drainage system etc. remains a mystery.

Son: I have read that many of the civilizations were destroyed by the barbarians. Was it really so?

Dad: Yes. Just as the Indian civilization developed in the Gangetic plains so did the ancient civilization of Mesopotamia develop in the valley of the rivers Tigris and Euphrates and the Egyptian in the Nile valley. All these civilizations were subject to attacks from less civilized people in the neighborhood. The Chinese wanted to protect their civilization from the Mongol barbarians and so they built the Great Wall, which still stands.

Son: What is precisely meant by a civilized society?

Dad: A society in which people live in towns where many work as craftsmen, scribes, builders, merchants and other occupations, is described as a civilized one. The first civilizations grew up in the Middle East, India, China and Egypt.