The Origin and Development of Writing in
Ancient Civilisations
Introduction
The earliest periods of human being living
in cultural-like society were recorded to have started since before the
Mesopotamian age. The pre-historic era was divided into several phase started
with Palaeolithic Age, Mesolithic Age, Neolithic Age and Bronze Age. The next following
ancient civilization era comprises Mesopotamian Civilization, Egyptian
Civilization, Indian Civilization and Chinese Civilization. During these
civilizations, human started to do innovations in various fields, and one of
them is the writing system or literature.
Mesopotamia civilization
The Mesopotamian age which was started from
6000 BC had brought together with its development in the writing system- the
cuneiform. The cuneiform script includes ideograms, syllograms, phonetic complements
and determinatives. The cuneiform script was widely spread even to northern
Syria. The earliest writing system found in Mesopotamia was not less than three
different languages and may be came in through immigrations. They were Sumerian
and Semitic language Akkadian and others. During the Akkadian empire, Akkadian
became the dominant language while Sumerian was still being used in
administrative matters. The famous literature work made during this empire, the
Epic of Gilgamesh was written in Akkadian. When the Sumerian renaissance
evolved, the Sumerian was back in used in administration, and Akkadian remained
in popularity. Later, the Aramaic became in used replacing Akkadian. The
Hittites adopted the Akkadian cuneiform to write their language.
Egyptian civilization
The starting point of Egyptian early
dynastic period is 3150 BC, divided into first and second dynasties of Egypt.
The Egyptians developed hieroglyphic script which combined pictograms,
ideograms and phonograms. It was
generally used in arts, carved on large stones and painted on walls. Later, it
developed into hieratic, a cursive form of hieroglyph. It was used in paintings,
manuscripts, administrative and archival notations, restricted to be used only
by members of priest-hood. Hieroglyph and hieratic are both virtually
identical. In seventh century BC, the later hieratic script evolved into
demotic script. Demotic script is highly cursive script. The hieratic only
remained for religious writing and demotic was adapted to be everyday use. In
12th century BC, the Luwian Hittites develop hieroglyph script.
Indus civilization
On 3300-1300 Indus civilization flourished
in the northwestern region of India. The language used by the Indus people was
not yet known. Some scholars tried to conclude the language was Aryan or
Dravidian. This little progress of result due to the very short and brief texts
and the lack of bilingual text were found. The average numbers of symbols found
on the seals are four to five and the longest are 26. The symbols also vary
from seal to seal which make the interpretations remained ambiguous until now.
Chinese civilization
The Chinese writing system in sinitic form appeared
during Shang and Zhou dynasties around 1000-1500 BC. The earliest form of
writing is called oracle bone script, recognized by interpreting the patterns
of the bones’ cracks. The first writing was not symbolically written down, but
rather the pictograms were carved on jades or pottery to represent the
ownership. The type of Chinese writing is logographic comprises signs and
characters that represent words and morphemes. The related writing systems are
the Japanese and Korean, which sharing many of the same characters and the
phonetic scripts. The Chinese writing is still being used until now in its
modern simplified form.
Greeks civilization
The modern European alphabets are actually
the development of earlier alphabets invented and modified by Greeks. Between
2000-1001 BC, the Mycenaean Greeks adopted Linear B script but this script did
not suit well to write Greek. During the late ninth century BC, the Greeks
adopted vowels for alphabet in Phoenician script to make it suit with the
Greek. There were many kinds of Greek alphabets to suit its local dialect. The
Euboean kind was first arrived Italic peninsula and been adopted by Etruscan
and Latin. Later, the Ionian kind was adapted to all Greek-speaking states. The
writing system is also known as C & V alphabetic and it came from
proto-sinaitic family.
Mesoamerican civilization
The Mesoamerican civilization started
around 900 BC until 1697 CE. The writing system of this civilization developed
from ‘picture-writing’ like to a more complex logophonetic type throughout the
civilizations. They used hieroglyphic writing system same as the Egyptian’s
hieroglyph as the symbols were seen so ‘picture-like’. The human body parts,
especially legs and hands were drawn to denote actions or verbs. The writing
system components of Mesoamerican civilization have started with the number
system and the calendar long before the complex writing developed. The writing
system of Mesoamerica ended during the invasion of Spanish. They forbade the
use of any indigenous writing system and destroyed most books and manuscripts
written in the Mesoamerican writing system. So, the natives used Latin to write
their languages. But in 1990’s the natives can use and write again their own
language and they fully contribute to analyze it.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the ancient societies held
writing system as an important role in their everyday lives. The writings were
used for administrations, transactions, manuscripts or even for religious logs.
And there were also modifications of writings were made due to adjust the
writings with their language. For the question of which civilization invented
writing, writing was first invented independently in at least Mesopotamia,
Ancient China and Mesoamerica. The cuneiform script could be considered as the
first invented scripts as it was widely used in the other same-aged and later
languages such as Sumerian, Hittites and Old Persian. But in recent
discoveries, the writing system was assumed to be invented in Egypt and Indus, taken
from Mesopotamia.
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