شبكة الأخبار اللبنانية والدولية
مقالات مشابهة
Writing – a method of visual markings representing the devices of the particular language – is designed individually within the Near East, Asia and Mesoamerica. The cuneiform script, developed in Mesopotamia, present-day Iraq, ca. 3200 BC, was. It’s also the sole writing system and that can be traced to its earliest prehistoric origin. This antecedent of this cuneiform script had been a method of counting and recording products with clay tokens. The evolution of writing from tokens to pictography, alphabet and syllabary illustrates the development of data processing to manage bigger levels of information in ever greater abstraction.
Introduction
The 3 writing systems that developed separately into the Near East, Asia and Mesoamerica, shared a stability that is remarkable. Each preserved over millennia features characteristic of these prototypes that are original. The Mesopotamian cuneiform script could be traced furthest back in prehistory to an eighth millennium bc counting system making use of clay tokens of numerous forms. The growth from tokens to script reveals that writing emerged from counting and accounting. Composing was utilized solely for accounting before the millennium that is third, once the Sumerian concern for the afterlife paved the best way to literature simply by using writing for funerary inscriptions. The development from tokens to script also documents a constant development in abstracting data, from one-to-one communication with three-dimensional concrete tokens, to two-dimensional photos, the innovation of abstract figures and phonetic syllabic indications and lastly, into the 2nd millennium BC, the greatest abstraction of noise and meaning aided by the representation of phonemes because of the letters for the alphabet.
Composing is individual kind’s principal technology for gathering, manipulating, storing, retrieving, interacting and disseminating information. Composing might have been developed separately 3 x in various elements of the global globe: within the Near East, Asia and Mesoamerica. With what issues this final script, it’s still obscure exactly how symbols and glyphs employed by the Olmecs, whose tradition flourished over the gulf coast of florida ca 600 to 500 BC, reappeared when you look at the traditional Maya art and writing of 250-900 advertisement along with in other Mesoamerican cultures (Marcus 1992). The initial Chinese inscriptions, dated to your Shang Dynasty, c. 1400–1200 BC, comprise of oracle texts etched on animal bones and turtle shells (Bagley 2004). The very abstract and standard indications suggest prior developments, that are currently undocumented.
Of those three composing systems, consequently, just the earliest, the Mesopotamian cuneiform script, created in Sumer, present-day Iraq, c. 3200 BC, could be traced with no discontinuity during a period of 10,000 years, from the prehistoric antecedent into the alphabet that is present-day. Its development is divided in to four stages: (a) clay tokens representing devices of products had been utilized for accounting (8000–3500 BC); (b) the 3 dimensional tokens had been changed into two-dimensional pictographic indications, and such as the previous tokens, the pictographic script offered solely for accounting (3500–3000 BC); (c) phonetic indications, introduced to transcribe the title of an individual, marked the turning point whenever composing started emulating talked language and, because of this, became relevant to all the areas of individual experience (3000–1500 BC); (d) with two dozen letters, each standing for an individual noise of sound, the alphabet perfected the rendition of speech. The alphabet represents a further segmentation of meaning after ideography, logography and syllabaries.
1. Tokens as Precursor of Composing
The direct antecedent for the Mesopotamian script had been a recording unit composed of clay tokens of numerous shapes (Schmandt-Besserat 1996). The items, mostly of geometric kinds such as for example cones, spheres, disks, cylinders and ovoids, are restored in archaeological web sites dating 8000–3000 BC (Fig. 1). The tokens, utilized as counters to help keep monitoring of items, had been the earliest code—a system of indications for transmitting information. Each token form ended up being semantic, talking about a certain product of product. As an example, a cone and a sphere stood correspondingly for a little and a measure that is large of, and ovoids represented jars of oil. The repertory of some 3 hundred kinds of counters managed to make it feasible to control and keep all about numerous kinds of products (Schmandt-Besserat 1992).
(Fig. 1) Envelope, tokens and matching markings, from Susa, Iran (Courtesy Musee du Louvre,
Departement des Antiquites Orientales)
The system that is token little in accordance with spoken language except that, like a term, a token stood for example concept. Unlike message, tokens had been limited to one form of information just, specifically, real products. The token system made no use of syntax unlike spoken language. In other words, their meaning ended up being separate of these positioning purchase. Three cones and three ovoids, scattered in almost any means, were to be translated ‘three baskets of grain, three jars of oil.’ Also, the fact the exact same token forms were utilized in a big section of the Near East, where numerous dialects will have been talked, reveals that the counters are not considering phonetics. Consequently, the products they represented had been expressed in multiple languages. The system that is token the amount of devices of merchandize in one-to-one communication, put another way, the sheer number of tokens matched the sheer number of devices counted: x jars of oil had been represented by x ovoids. Saying ‘jar of oil’ x times so that you can show plurality is unlike talked language.
2. Pictography: Composing as Accounting Unit
After four millennia, the token system led to writing. The change from counters to script happened simultaneously in Sumer and Elam, present-day Iran that is western when around 3500 BC, Elam was under Sumerian domination. It took place whenever tokens, most likely representing a financial obligation, had been kept in envelopes until re payment. These envelopes made from clay by means of a hollow ball had the drawback of hiding the tokens held inside. Some accountants, consequently, impressed the tokens at first glance associated with envelope before enclosing them inside, so the form and wide range of counters held in might be verified at all times (Fig. 1). These markings had been the initial signs of composing. The metamorphosis from three-dimensional items to two-dimensional markings failed to influence the principle that is semantic of system. The importance associated with the markings on the exterior associated with envelopes ended up being just like compared to the tokens held inside.
About 3200 BC, when the system of impressed indications had been recognized, clay tablets—solid cushion-shaped clay items bearing the impressions of tokens—replaced the envelopes full of tokens. The impression of a cone and a sphere token, representing measures of grain, lead correspondingly in a wedge and a circular marking which bore the exact same meaning once the tokens they signified (Fig. 2). These were ideograms—signs representing one concept. The impressed pills proceeded to be used solely to record degrees of products gotten or disbursed. They nevertheless indicated plurality in one-to-one communication.
(Fig. 2) Impressed tablet featuring a free account of grain, from Godin Tepe, Iran (Courtesy Dr. T. Cuyler younger, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto)
Pictographs—signs representing tokens traced by having how to write an abstract for research proposal a stylus in the place of impressed—appeared about 3100 BC. These pictographs discussing items mark a crucial part of the evolution of composing since they had been never ever duplicated in one-to-one communication to state numerosity. Besides them, numerals—signs representing plurality—indicated the total amount of devices recorded. The numerals standing respectively for ‘10’ and ‘1’ (Fig. 3) for example, ‘33 jars of oil’ were shown by the incised pictographic sign ‘jar of oil’, preceded by three impressed circles and three wedges. The symbols for numerals are not brand brand new. They certainly were the impressions of cones and spheres formerly representing measures of grain, which in turn had obtained a moment, abstract, numerical meaning. The innovation of numerals meant a considerable economy of signs since 33 jars of oil might be written with 7 instead of 33 markings.
(Fig. 3) Pictographic tablet featuring a merchant account of 33 measures of oil, from Godin Tepe, Iran (Courtesy Dr. T. Cuyler younger, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto)
In amount, in its very very very first period, composing remained mostly merely a expansion regarding the former token system. The symbolism remained fundamentally the same although the tokens underwent formal transformations from three- to two-dimensional and from impressed markings to signs traced with a stylus. Such as the archaic counters, the pills were utilized solely for accounting (Nissen and Heine 2009). This is additionally the way it is each time a stylus, manufactured from a reed by having an end that is triangular provided towards the indications the wedge-shaped ‘cuneiform’ appearance (Fig. 4). The medium changed in form but not in content in all these instances. Truly the only major departure from the token system consisted within the development of two distinct kinds of indications: incised pictographs and impressed numerals. This mixture of indications initiated the semantic unit between the product counted and number.
(Fig. 4) Economic cuneiform tablet (Courtesy Texas Memorial Museum, The University of Texas at Austin)
