Basic Inventions - Writing - CLIL Polska

The concept of preserving ideas and history through writing began around 20,000 years ago. Early humans painted scenes on cave walls to record hunting incidents and battles. Actual writing developed around 3500 BC in the Sumerian city of Eresh. The first form of writing involved pictures combined with symbols and signs representing sounds and numbers. Writing was initially used for keeping lists at temples and by merchants. Over time, pictographs evolved into symbols, and the cuneiform writing system was developed. Eventually, an alphabet was created, starting with the Phoenician alphabet. The Greek and Roman alphabets followed, influencing the development of modern Western languages. After the fall of Rome, writing became limited to monks and scholars. The invention of movable type in 1440 revolutionized the ability to make copies easily and cheaply. This marked a significant turning point in human history. 🎵 The Invention of Writing The concept of preserving ideas, events and history is an invention of humanity as a whole, and the beginnings of this concept appeared quite early in the man's time on earth, some 20,000 years ago, a period labelled by scientists as the Late Paleolithic Era. Men inscribed scenes on the walls of caves. These paintings described hunting incidents, battles between tribes, and also showed the tools and weapons used by those early men. In these caves, which have been found in France, Spain and Africa, are the first permanent records of man's life during that most primitive era. The pictures help us to understand this part of human history and demonstrate man's desire to record his doings. But having no alphabet, they were not a form of writing, only coloured pictures on cave walls. Actual writing took a long time to develop. For thousands of years, men inscribed their happenings and sent them messages in the form of pictures which represented the events. They were known as pictographs, and not only until 3500 BC did this system begin to develop into a system of writing. Archaeologists have determined that the earliest form of writing was born in Eresh, a city of the Sumerians which flourished around 3500 BC. Within its ancient ruins, they discovered hundreds of clay tablets, all inscribed with the symbols, pictures and number markings. This, they believe, was the first time in man's long history that a method of writing appeared. The Sumerian inscriptions used some pictures, but they were surrounded with other markings and signs that denoted sounds and monetary amounts. It was a step above the pictograph. Some of the marks actually represented verbal expression, and some combinations actually formed words. The Egyptians and the Orientals kept the pure pictograph method for a much longer period, but in summer, man made another step from barbarism to civilisation with the invention of writing. THE ANCIENT KINGDOMS It is now generally believed that the first use of writing was for keeping lists at temples of worship. In many of the ancient kingdoms, the priestly hierarchy was very powerful, and they collected yearly tribute from all the subjects of the realm. In order to keep track of thousands of items taken from the people year after year, clay tablets were inscribed with lists of the tribute. The other early use of writing was by merchants. Many of the tablets found in the ruins of the Sumerian Empire contain lists of produce and items for sale. This was the beginning. It would be a long time before man would use his newly found skill for setting down ideas in addition to business lists. Once men found that they could make marks to signify symbols and sounds, there was no longer a need to draw pictures. Gradually, pictographs changed into pure symbols. By 3000 BC, the Sumerians, the Hittites, the Babylonians, and the Assyrians developed cuneiform writing, a system of wedge-shaped marks impressed in clay that was able to completely express various languages. Time went on. Thousands of years passed, and slowly the cuneiform system replaced pictographs completely. But it too was doomed. By 1700 BC, the Minionian Empire had developed an actual script. Gone were the wedge-shaped figures. People began to write in flowing curves. Freed from the restriction of straight lines, the scope of writing expanded to express much more, but it is still represented only in the items and ideas, at the best, a few syllables. An alphabet was needed. It arrived a thousand years after the onset of the Minionian script, and it began a whole new era. The First Workable Alphabet Archaeologists have determined that the first workable alphabet was Phoenician in origin, and written as a crude script. However, each letter stood for a sound, and had a symbol of its own. This alphabet, dating from 1600 BC, is the ancestor of all modern Western alphabets. Once introduced, it spread rapidly through the Middle East, and finally people at the time were able to write out complete words. Ideas could be expressed much more easily than before, and narrative stories and poetry began to appear. The first Greek alphabet was developed from the Phoenician, sometime during the 5th century BC. It was changed, improved, and extended until it had great flexibility. It became known as the Ionic alphabet, and had 24 characters. When the Romans smashed the Greek Empire, they adopted this alphabet, and adapted it to their own needs. In doing so, they gave us most of our modern languages. Their language was Latin, the basis for most of the Western tongues, and the actual shapes of the letters we use in print today are descended from the shapes of the early Roman letters. Throughout the succeeding centuries, many people learned to use this alphabet. As the European continent slowly divided into separate countries, these areas developed their own languages. Some varied the alphabet, or made their own changing the shapes of the letters, but the majority of languages were either offshots of Latin, or influenced by it to the extent of using the familiar Roman alphabet. Then writing came to another standstill. The alphabet had been formalized, standard shapes for all the letters had been adopted, and that was it. With the fall of Rome in the 5th century, and the onset of the Dark Ages, most of the world was illiterate. The art of writing was confined to monks, scholars, and some businessmen. Since all writing had to be done by hand, the making of copies was a long and difficult task, and a handwritten book was quite expensive. Learning to read was a luxury because it was so difficult to obtain reading material. Before the mid-1450s, printing was accomplished by carving all the letters for an entire page onto a large wooden block, inking the face, and squeezing the block onto a piece of paper, in a machine that resembled a wine press. It was a difficult and painstaking process. Skilled woodworkers had to carve each individual letter in its exact place, a job that consumed a great deal of time. Because of the difficulty in preparing the blocks, the only kind of printing done then was for titles and decoration. The rest of the book was usually handwritten. A new invention was needed, not a change in the system of writing, but a way to make many copies easily and cheaply. It came perhaps much later than it should have, but when it came, it unalternatively changed the course of human history. The date was 1440, and it marked man's first use of movable type. Transcription by ESO. Translation by —