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Late 4th Millennium BCE: The Advent of Writing

Unfortunately, we cannot pinpoint the exact moment when someone chose to use markings to represent language. In fact, this was probably the result of a long process which took centuries to evolve into what we now call "writing." Moreover, writing was not invented in one place & spread from there; rather, it seems to have been invented separately, in several different places, each the logical conclusion of a particular process of evolution, giving us a rather diverse array of writing methods & styles.

While writing developed in various cultures, separately, this essay will mainly address writing as it arose in the Near East. In this case it's easiest to note the progress made toward a system of writing, as we have a good archaeological record of all the many steps that were taken on the way.

Pre-Writing

Before there was any actual "writing," or use of markings to represent language, several cultures had devised means to keep track of things of concern to them. In the Near East, for example, going back to about 8,000 BCE, in modern Turkey, Iraq, western Iran, and Syria, a very simple system of clay tokens was used to count objects. These were used to count items — sacks of grain, jars of oil, etc. Since the peoples using these tokens were neolithic, it's likely that the tokens tracked only agricultural products. The tokens came in different shapes, & each shape appears to have denoted a particular sort of thing. Spheres represented sacks (or other units) of grain, cones denoted jars (or other containers) of oil, etc.

A notable facet of this token system, which was used over the course of many millennia — longer than writing has been used, in fact! — was that the tokens represented the same thing regardless of one's culture or native language. Thus, they were useful for trade, especially between people of different cultures.

The clay tokens came to be packaged inside small clay envelopes, which were marked on the outside with the contents. This way, transactions could be verified; for example, if a shipment of 50 sacks of grain was being sent, the sender would put 50 clay spheres in a clay envelope, and then mark it with 50 small circles outside. The person receiving the shipment would know, by looking at the envelope, that 50 sacks were to be shipped, & if there was any question about it, the envelope could be broken open to check. For this reason, it's assumed that the tokens tracked commercial transactions — however, this system was probably also used to keep track of items stored in a location (so that one didn't actually have to go to a warehouse, say, & count sacks of grain).

Proto-Writing

Eventually, the markings on the clay envelopes proved much more useful than the tokens inside, so the tokens were eventually abandoned. Also, a numbering system was devised, which didn't require stamping, say, 50 circles on a clay tablet to denote 50 sacks of grain. Instead, a symbol for "50" would accompany a single circle, to denote sacks of grain. The numeric markings were made using a reed stylus, pressed into the clay.

As time went by, & the Sumerians in southern Mesopotamia developed an urban culture, the transactions became more complicated. In addition, they needed to track more than common agricultural items — they needed to track manufactured goods such as tools, wagons, etc.

So, the Sumerians developed ways to represent these items using reed styli. At first the reeds tried to picture the item; for example, certain tools were shown with a triangular symbol with one extra line, representing a simple spade. But as the items themselves became more complicated, so too did the symbols, and the Sumerians devised more stylized symbols to represent these things.

Writing Appears in Sumer, c. 3300 BCE

True writing began as the Sumerians used these symbols to represent more than just items in a transaction or stored in a warehouse. They started using the symbols they'd devised to represent the language, to represent other words. The Sumerian language contained many elements in which similar-sounding words had other meanings. Like a modern rebus (say, a picture of a cat next to a picture of a toll-booth, to spell out CAT–TOLL, or "cattle"), the Sumerians thus began putting their spoken language down on clay tablets.

This represented a remarkable departure from past methods. Writing was now tied to the Sumerian language & was undecipherable without knowing spoken Sumerian; whereas the past methods, pre-writing tokens & proto-writing tracking methods, could be understood without knowing one's language.

While this made writing less-than-useful in cross-cultural transactions, it opened up a whole new means of communication. Sumerians could now send knowledge, in their language, across distance & across time. They could communicate & collaborate with each other, in whole new ways.

From this time forward, every culture that had contact with the Sumerians, took their invention of writing, & altered it to suit their own language. Writing was an extremely useful tool & many cultures swiftly adapted to it.

Sumerian writing is known as cuneiform, a name which comes from the Latin word for "wedge" since it was made up of wedge-shaped reed-stylus impressions. Cuneiform tablets have been found throughout the Near East, from modern Turkey, down to modern Isreal, and east into Iran & even Afghanistan.

Pre-Alphabetic Writing

Note that the writing system of Sumer was both syllabic & ideographic. That is, some symbols denoted particular syllables of the spoken language, while others denoted ideas, or whole words. Ideographic symbols could be used to denote the same thing, in other languages, & in fact this is exactly what was done. The syllabic symbols, however, usually needed to be changed, for the phonetics of Sumerian didn't always match up with the phonetics of other languages — that is, Sumerian had some sounds (& combinations of sounds) that other languages didn't have, & by the same token, most of the others had sounds that Sumerian didn't.

Because of this, the archaelogical record contains a great variety of cuneiform scripts, each devised for a particular language. Most of these have been deciphered, but some are still mysterious, for they represented isolated languages which adapted Sumerian symbols in an unexpected way.

The fact that cuneiform was a syllabic & ideographic script, meant that there were hundreds of different symbols. It was not easy to learn to read & write such a complicated system. Thus, reading & writing were relegated to the profession of scribe, & the vast majority of the people were illiterate.

Alphabetic Scripts

The complexity of Sumerian cuneiform — & the cuneiform used by most of the other cultures that adapted it — often made it unwieldy. Mastering the many symbols became ever harder, over time, as more & more symbols were devised over the years, to denote more things.

At some point, during the late 2nd millennium BCE, some of the people in Syria appear to have come up with an innovation. Rather than having a symbol set numbering in the hundreds, denoting all the many possible syllables of their language, they came up with a system in which each distinct phoneme, or specific sound, had its own symbol; and these were combined to create syllables, & thence words. We see this in the "Ugaritic" script (named for the ancient city of Ugarit, in whose ruins this script was found). It was used for a Semitic language spoken in northern Syria, not unrelated to Phoenician, which was spoken just to the south. Northern Syria had extensive contacts with cuneiform-using cultures over the years, so it was natural that cuneiform was the basis of this new system.

The Ugaritic script only denoted consonants, however. Vowels were left out. While this may seem less than useful to us, the ancient scribes seem to have used this script effectively & with little or no ambiguity.

Further to the south, in southern Arabia, a similar consonantal-alphabetic script was being developed at about the same time. This one, however, was based upon Egyptian hieroglyphs. The Egyptians had developed a writing system beginning in the early 3rd millennium BCE, based originally on pictograms (in which symbols visually represented something — for example, the sun was a circle). In a fashion similar to Sumerian, this type of proto-writing evolved (also using the rebus principle) to represent the Egyptian language. Similarly, Egyptian hieroglyphics (a term meaning "holy markings" since most Egyptian texts were religious in nature) was syllabic & ideographic. The southern Arabians appear to have made the same adaptation, based on hieroglyphics, that the Ugaritic people made based on cuneiform.

The Phoenicians

The Phoenicians — a Semitic people occupying what is now Lebanon & northern Israel — were a well-traveled commercial people, who traded with anyone they could reach — & since they had good ships & a strong navigational tradition, they could go far, indeed! We know that they traded extensively with the Minoan culture, not far from them in the Aegean Sea, with Egypt, with people along the northern shores of the Black Sea (probably a very early Indo-European-speaking people), the Etruscans in northern Italy, the Iberians in modern Spain, & with the Libyans in northern Africa. In fact, in northern Africa, they established colonies, one of which turned itself into a powerful state — Carthage.

At any rate, the Phoenicians not only had the need for writing — due to their extensive commerical ventures — but having contact with so many different peoples, they had their "pick," if you will, of writing systems to use. While they dabbled briefly with their own version of Ugaritic, they changed over swiftly to the southern Arabians' system. This is likely due to the reduced complexity of the symbols — allowing their scribes to work faster. It also eliminated their reliance on clay tablets, since the southern Arabian markings could readily be used on many kinds of media (papyrus, clay, wax, stone, etc.).

At any rate, the Phoenicians tailored the consonantal alphabet to their own language in short order, & brought it wherever they went. Among those who were inspired by them to write, in their own way, were the early Greeks.

Having an alphabetic script, it appears that a larger segment of Phoenician society became literate. Ship captains & merchants were typically literate & had no need to hire, or depend on, scribes. Even so, the profession of scribe thrived among the Phoenicians, but their work was reserved for longer texts, such as religious tomes or narratives.

The Greeks & the Later Alphabets

The Phoenician language contained several sounds that Greek did not. So the Greeks used some of these "extra" letters to represent vowels. They did this because, apparently, their use of vowels differed from the way that the Semitic languages used them. In ancient Semitic languages, it seems that most unstressed vowels were simply pronounced as what linguists call "schwa," or the sound of English "a" as in "avenger." In Greek, however, unstressed vowels still had particular values, & ambiguities could develop, if these weren't somehow accurately represented.

The Greeks also devised a few new symbols for their alphabet, to represent either sounds not present in Phoenician, or combinations of sounds which were common in their language. Good examples are psi (ψ/Ψ) and xi (ξ/Ξ), representing combinations of p & s, and k & s, respectively.

While the Etruscans had had contact with the Phoenicians for a long time, they appear to have started using writing about the time they contacted the Greeks, in the middle of the 1st millennium BCE, & adapted their alphabet. In turn, the Etruscans exposed the other peoples of Italy, who spoke Indo-European languages (unlike Etruscan) to this alphabet, & they used it for themselves. In this way, the current Latin alphabet was devised.

Writing As It Developed Elsewhere

As already noted, writing developed on its own in Egypt, almost certainly to record sacred texts rather than commercial transactions (as in Sumer).

In China, writing began as symbols carved into "oracle bones," used for divination purposes, in the middle of the 2nd millennium BCE. The original symbol set was pictographic; the writing system evolved through several distinct phases into a representation of the language itself. While writing elsewhere generally evolved into alphabetic scripts, in the Far East, especially China, it has remained an ideographic/syllabic script. Recent innovations have made it more phonetically-oriented & the number & complexity of the symbols has been reduced, to help promote literacy & understanding.

In Mesoamerica, writing developed in the late 2nd millennium BCE as a means of identification. Repeated patterns of pictographs denoted certain persons or places. In short order they were used also for religious purposes, & as in China, for divination. Successive Mesoamerican cultures overran each other, each one picking up on the tool of writing & adapting it for its own use — the Olmecs used a pictographic script from the people they occupied; the Mayans adapted the Olmec script; the Aztecs adapted the Mayans' script; and so on. In almost all cases, Mesoamerican scripts were primarily ideographic, however, most of them had adaptations to denote certain phonemes, & they used derivatives to indicate the function of a symbol or glyph. (The Egyptians also had a system of derivatives, but it was less complicated.)

In India, the Haruppan culture in the Indus valley had a writing system of its own, which was pictographic in nature, and seems largely to have been used for labeling purposes. However, we do not have enough such texts to be able to decipher their language or understand precisely how it was used. The Haruppan culture thrived in the late 3rd millennium BCE.

Later on in India, after the Aryan invasion, a new script called "Brahmi" appeard, in the late 2nd millennium. It appears unrelated to the Harrupan script. Rather, it was a syllabic script, which bears much more of a resemblance to some of the Semitic scripts to the west. Over time it evolved into a faster, more cursive script, called Devanagari (from Sanskrit for "divine markings"). Unlike most of the Semitic scripts & alphabets, these scripts from India were strictly phonetic, syllabic scripts, with no ideographic component. The nagari are still used in India today.

Writing: The Greatest Human Invention

While some might argue that the wheel or the making of fire might be the greatest human inventions, I contend this is not the case. Writing is the easily the greatest of inventions. There are cultures which did not use fire & didn't have the wheel — but they had writing, & were thus able to communicate & collaborate.

Writing is a community-building invention. Whether by coincidence or design, the development of writing always accompanies the development of urban culture. In fact, it's hard to imagine any large urban culture which doesn't have writing. Having so many people in one place requires organization, & this is made all the easier, when the tool of writing is available.

Besides, having writing, allows people to come up with inventions such as the wheel or the use of fire — whereas the other two don't necessarily lead to writing.

The tool of writing is a critical one. Without it, this document itself would not exist — nor would the Internet, nor many of the things we know in daily life which we might not otherwise connect with writing.

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