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DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGE AND WRITING
Engravings presumably made by homo erectus on a shell about 500,000 years ago
The desire to communicate is believed to one of the driving forces behind what made mankind develop the way it did. The Sumerians developed their system of writing sometime before 3000 B.C.
The jump from stone-age man (primitive man, early modern man or Cro-Magnon Man, whatever you want to call him) to modern man (or civilized man) is defined by some as taking place with the invention of agriculture around 10,000 to 8000 B.C., and by others with the development of writing around 3200 B.C. In Mesopotamia. Yet others say it took place with the invention of metals tools (beginning with copper ones) around 4500 B.C.
History is said to have began with writing and writing is said to have come from Mesopotamia. Writing allowed information to be gathered in a permanent form and passed from one generation to the next without the kind of changes that occur when information is passed on orally. James H. Breasted, founder of the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute, said writing "has had a greater influence in uplifting the human race than any other intellectual achievement in the career of man."
Book: “The Story of Writing: Alphabets, Hieroglyphs & Pictograms” by Andrew Robinson
Categories with related articles in this website: Mesopotamian History and Religion (35 articles) factsanddetails.com; Mesopotamian Culture and Life (38 articles) factsanddetails.com; First Villages, Early Agriculture and Bronze, Copper and Late Stone Age Humans (50 articles) factsanddetails.com Ancient Persian, Arabian, Phoenician and Near East Cultures (26 articles) factsanddetails.com
Websites and Resources on Mesopotamia: Ancient History Encyclopedia ancient.eu.com/Mesopotamia ; Mesopotamia University of Chicago site mesopotamia.lib.uchicago.edu; British Museum mesopotamia.co.uk ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Mesopotamia sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Louvre louvre.fr/llv/oeuvres/detail_periode.jsp ; Metropolitan Museum of Art metmuseum.org/toah ; University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology penn.museum/sites/iraq ; Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago uchicago.edu/museum/highlights/meso ; Iraq Museum Database oi.uchicago.edu/OI/IRAQ/dbfiles/Iraqdatabasehome ; Wikipedia article Wikipedia ; ABZU etana.org/abzubib; Oriental Institute Virtual Museum oi.uchicago.edu/virtualtour ; Treasures from the Royal Tombs of Ur oi.uchicago.edu/museum-exhibits ; Ancient Near Eastern Art Metropolitan Museum of Art www.metmuseum.org
Archaeology News and Resources: Anthropology.net anthropology.net : serves the online community interested in anthropology and archaeology; archaeologica.org archaeologica.org is good source for archaeological news and information. Archaeology in Europe archeurope.com features educational resources, original material on many archaeological subjects and has information on archaeological events, study tours, field trips and archaeological courses, links to web sites and articles; Archaeology magazine archaeology.org has archaeology news and articles and is a publication of the Archaeological Institute of America; Archaeology News Network archaeologynewsnetwork is a non-profit, online open access, pro- community news website on archaeology; British Archaeology magazine british-archaeology-magazine is an excellent source published by the Council for British Archaeology; Current Archaeology magazine archaeology.co.uk is produced by the UK’s leading archaeology magazine; HeritageDaily heritagedaily.com is an online heritage and archaeology magazine, highlighting the latest news and new discoveries; Livescience livescience.com/ : general science website with plenty of archaeological content and news. Past Horizons: online magazine site covering archaeology and heritage news as well as news on other science fields; The Archaeology Channel archaeologychannel.org explores archaeology and cultural heritage through streaming media; Ancient History Encyclopedia ancient.eu : is put out by a non-profit organization and includes articles on pre-history; Best of History Websites besthistorysites.net is a good source for links to other sites; Essential Humanities essential-humanities.net: provides information on History and Art History, including sections Prehistory
Proto Writing
Engravings made by Neanderthals in a cave about 50,000 years ago
The earliest forms of human written and visual expression are paintings and drawing made by prehistoric man in caves and other places. Over time representations became less realistic and more stylized. A number of cultures produced these. Sometimes the representations were called “petrograms,” “petroglyphs” or “pictograms.” See Sahara Art, Hominids and Early Man
Stones with geometric designs, dated to around 10,000 B.C., found near the Mediterranean coast in Syria bore geometric engravings. Grooved stones with engraved plaquetts with a stylized representation of a scorpion and opened-winged bird and wavy lines perhaps representing water or serpents were found at Jerf el-Ahmar, an early village in northern Syria. The objects were dated to between 9600 and 8500 B.C. and are regarded as prototypes of writing.
Stone carvings, dated at around 8000 B.C., found in Syria contained small tablets recorded inventories of grain and animals. These were regarded as "more advanced than stone-age cave drawings but not as advanced as real writing."
The precursors to writing were crescent-shaped clay tokens with a few marks used in 4th millennium B.C. to count goods. Crescent-shaped clay taken unearthed in Iran are believed to have represented an ingot of metal while round tokens represented one sheep.
Before cuneiform writing was developed records were kept using clay figures sealed within round clay “envelopes.” In places were early writing developed there was a lot of mud and clay and reeds which could be used make lines and markings in the clay.
First Writing
from a pictogram to a Chinese character
The first widely recognized writing appeared around 3200 B.C. There is some debate as to whether it began in Mesopotamia or ancient Egypt. Most scholars say it began in Mesopotamia, where a system using abstract symbols evolved from pictographs in the 4th millennium.
In 1999, Gunter Dreyer of the German Archaeological Institute announced that they had discovered the world's oldest writing in Egypt not Mesopotamia. Recording linen and old deliveries in 3300 B.C. during the reign of a king from southern Egypt named Scorpion, the writing consists of hieroglyphic-like pictographs of animals, plants and mountains found on ivory tags in a royal tomb at Aydos. Some archaeologists regard the images as pictographs not true writing, but at least they could be accurately dated to between 3400 and 3200 B.C. using carbon dating.
Stories about a Scorpion king are found in ancient Egyptian literature. It was long thought that they were just myths but in recent years some evidence has appeared that has raised the possibility that the Scorpion King may have been a real person who played a critical role in establishing the ancient Egyptian civilization.
Evolution of Writing Around the World
early Mesopotamian writing The 2010 exhibition “Visible Language: Inventions of Writing in the Ancient Middle East and Beyond,” hosted by the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute, showed that, contrary to the long-held belief that writing spread from east to west, Sumerian cuneiform and its derivatives and Egyptian hieroglyphics evolved separately from each another. And those writing systems were but two of the ancient forms of writing that evolved independently. Over a span of two millenniums, two other powerful civilizations — -the Chinese and Mayans — -also identified and met a need for written communication. Writing came to China as early as around 1200 B.C. and to the Maya in Mesoamerica long before A.D. 500. “It was the first true information revolution,” the Oriental Institute’s director, Gil J. Stein told the New York Times. “By putting spoken language into material form, people could for the first time store and transmit it across time and space.”[Source: Geraldine Fabrikant. New York Times, October 19, 2010]
Geraldine Fabrikant wrote in the New York Times, “Until the 1950s experts had believed that the Sumerians influenced the Egyptians, spreading the use of writing westward. But in the 1950s Günther Dryer, a German archaeologist, found writing on bone and ivory tags in an elaborate, probably royal burial site at Abydos in southern Egypt. The depth at which they were buried and subsequent carbon tests proved the pieces to be as old as Sumerian works. Because the marks were different in style, scholars believe that the Egyptians developed their own writing system independently.
"Experts are still struggling to understand just how writing evolved, but one theory, laid out at the Oriental Institute’s exhibition, places the final prewriting stage at 3400 B.C., when the Sumerians first began using small clay envelopes like the ones in the show. Some of the envelopes had tiny clay balls sealed within. Archaeologists theorize that they were sent along with goods being delivered; recipients would open them and ensure that the number of receivables matched the number of clay tokens. The tokens, examples of which are also are in the show , transmitted information, a key function of writing.
"Writing as a carrier of narrative did not evolve for another 700 years, as shown in the inscribed versions of the Sumerian epic tale of Gilgamesh, also on display in the institute’s general collection. Although Egyptian hieroglyphics are more broadly familiar than cuneiform, Sumerian writing was done on clay, which is more durable than papyrus. As a result, Sumer is among the best documented of ancient societies.
Narmer Palette 3100 BC An important part of the Oriental Institute exhibition’s allure is that it describes some of the unknowns that still intrigue archaeologists, including the birth of the alphabet. The show includes a plaque dated from 1800 B.C. that contains signs that seem to be inspired by Egyptian hieroglyphics but that are actually the earliest letters of an alphabetic script representing Semitic languages. It was found near an ancient turquoise mining site in the Sinai Peninsula, in what was part of ancient Egypt, but the men who worked there spoke the Semitic language of the Canaanites.
"Because this is one of the first examples of the use of the alphabetic letters, it suggests that the alphabet was inspired by hieroglyphics. Still, no one really knows who the miners were, if they were literate or how they adapted hieroglyphics to write a western Semitic language. But in later discoveries those same forms make up parts of words.
"An alphabetic language has a limited number of signs and is easier to both use and to teach than a representational system like hieroglyphics. An alphabet allows a more rapid spread of literacy and communications. Today almost all languages except Chinese and Japanese are alphabetic. The lack of an alphabet makes Chinese particularly difficult for foreigners. But if Chinese bears little similarity to languages elsewhere in the world, its origins — -like the origins of hieroglyphics — -have to do with the gods. Bones from ancient Chinese tombs, also on display at the Oriental, were used to help divine the future. The inscriptions on them are the earliest form of Chinese writing, and they make statements about events, such as a battle or the birth of a royal child, and also, in effect, ask how they will come out. Hot brands were put into hollows carved into turtle shells, and the configurations of the resulting cracks were interpreted as answers to important questions.
"Less is known about the earliest phases and origin of Mayan writing. Much of the work under way concentrates on artifacts from the Mayans’ later period, around A.D. 600. The exhibition includes a Mayan stone monument showing the face of a dead Mayan lord. It carries his name and the date of the dedication of the stone.To Christopher E. Woods, associate professor of Sumerology at the University of Chicago and the curator of the show, it was important to include examples from all four cultures because the goal of the exhibition was “to present and describe the four times in history when writing was invented from scratch.”
Evolution of Writing in the Near East, China and Mesoamerica
Denise Schmandt-Besserat of the University of Texas wrote: “Writing – a system of graphic marks representing the units of a specific language – has been invented independently in the Near East, China and Mesoamerica. The cuneiform script, created in Mesopotamia, present-day Iraq, ca. 3200 BC, was first. It is also the only writing system which can be traced to its earliest prehistoric origin. This antecedent of the cuneiform script was a system of counting and recording goods with clay tokens. The evolution of writing from tokens to pictography, syllabary and alphabet illustrates the development of information processing to deal with larger amounts of data in ever greater abstraction. [Source: Denise Schmandt-Besserat, Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin, January 23, 2014 ]
“The three writing systems that developed independently in the Near East, China and Mesoamerica, shared a remarkable stability. Each preserved over millennia features characteristic of their original prototypes. The Mesopotamian cuneiform script can be traced furthest back into prehistory to an eighth millennium BC counting system using clay tokens of multiple shapes. The development from tokens to script reveals that writing emerged from counting and accounting. Writing was used exclusively for accounting until the third millennium BC, when the Sumerian concern for the afterlife paved the way to literature by using writing for funerary inscriptions. The evolution from tokens to script also documents a steady progression in abstracting data, from one-to-one correspondence with three-dimensional tangible tokens, to two-dimensional pictures, the invention of abstract numbers and phonetic syllabic signs and finally, in the second millennium BC, the ultimate abstraction of sound and meaning with the representation of phonemes by the letters of the alphabet.
“Writing is humankind’s principal technology for collecting, manipulating, storing, retrieving, communicating and disseminating information. Writing may have been invented independently three times in different parts of the world: in the Near East, China and Mesoamerica. In what concerns this last script, it is still obscure how symbols and glyphs used by the Olmecs, whose culture flourished along the Gulf of Mexico ca 600 to 500 BC, reappeared in the classical Maya art and writing of 250-900 AD as well as in other Mesoamerican cultures (Marcus 1992). The earliest Chinese inscriptions, dated to the Shang Dynasty, c. 1400–1200 BC, consist of oracle texts engraved on animal bones and turtle shells (Bagley 2004). The highly abstract and standardized signs suggest prior developments, which are presently undocumented.
Evolution of Chinese characters
“Of these three writing systems, therefore, only the earliest, the Mesopotamian cuneiform script, invented in Sumer, present-day Iraq, c. 3200 BC, can be traced without any discontinuity over a period of 10,000 years, from a prehistoric antecedent to the present-day alphabet. Its evolution is divided into four phases: (a) clay tokens representing units of goods were used for accounting (8000–3500 BC); (b) the three dimensional tokens were transformed into two-dimensional pictographic signs, and like the former tokens, the pictographic script served exclusively for accounting (3500–3000 BC); (c) phonetic signs, introduced to transcribe the name of individuals, marked the turning point when writing started emulating spoken language and, as a result, became applicable to all fields of human experience (3000–1500 BC); (d) with two dozen letters, each standing for a single sound of voice, the alphabet perfected the rendition of speech. After ideography, logography and syllabaries, the alphabet represents a further segmentation of meaning.
“The origin of the Chinese script and the development of Mesoamerican writing are still obscure. The Mesopotamian script, however, offers a well-documented evolution over a continuous period of 10,000 years. The system underwent drastic changes in form, gradually transcribed spoken language more accurately, and handled data in more abstract terms. The most striking universal feature of all writing systems, however, is their uncanny endurance, unmatched among human creations. The Chinese script never needed to be deciphered because the signs have changed little during the 3400 years of its recorded existence (Xigui 2000). It also always remained ideographic, merely inserting rebus-like phonetic complements in some characters. The Mesoamerican Maya phonetic glyphs preserved the symbolism initiated by the Olmecs in the previous millennium (Coe and Van Stone 2005). Finally, when the last clay tablet was written in the Near East, c. 300 AD, the cuneiform script had been in use for three millennia. It replaced an age-old token system that had preceded it for over 5000 years; it was replaced by the alphabet, which we have now used for 3500 years.”
Evolution of Writing in Mesopotamia
Arden Eby wrote in “Origin and Development of Writing in Mesopotamia: An Economic Interpretation”, “By the third millennium B.C., the Sumerians already had a highly developed civilization. These men spoke a language that is unique--it had no known relationship to any other language in either grammar or vocabulary. However, the script they developed was later taken over by the Akkadians--a Semitic people living north of Sumer. This was possible because the Sumerian script was pictographic--it did not represent sounds of any kind. Therefore the Sumerian words and terms could be read in their Akkadian equivalents. For example, the Sumerian word for man, "LU," was read by the Akkadians "Awilum": "Gal," the Sumerian for "great," was read by the Akkadians "rabum;" andf the Sumerian word for "King." "LU-GAL" (great man) was read by the Akkadians "Sarrum."3 The script adopted by the Akkadians was a highly developed form of picture writing called "cuneiform" (from the Latin cunneus or "wedge"). [Source: Arden Eby, “Origin and Development of Writing in Mesopotamia: An Economic Interpretation”, Internet Archive]
“Although there are areas of disagreement regarding the origin of this Sumerian Script, one area on which there is no disagreement is that the script was not "invented"--it did not appear "full blown" in the fourth millennium B.C.. The earliest Sumerian Scripts were discovered at Uruk in 1924 by a group of German archeologists led by Julius Jordan.4 These texts were found at the Uruk IV stratum and were therefore dated between 4100 and 3800 B.C.. Approximately 1000 texts containing many concrete pictographs and what is considered to be the simplest form of writing the cylinder seals, were found.5 These seals contain the identifying personal marks of may ancient Sumerians, such a this one reprinted in Gelb's book:
proto cuneiform from Sumer, daily salary
“From these pictographs and other evidence. Gelb formulated a hypothesis concerning their origin. The core of Gelb' s thesis in A Study of Writing is that written communication always evolves from the simple and concrete to the complex and abstract. Pictures, at first drawn for aesthetic or religious purposes were then adapted into identifying mnemonic devices, such as the following Hittite masons' marks used by ancient stone-cutters to identify different types of cuts.
“These marks can be "read" by modern scholars, but do not have a grammar or a vocabulary. If the cylinder seals represent identifying mnemonic devices, then one would expect to find Gelb's next stage. The word symbol, changed from mnemonic devices to word, also became more abstract in appearance. For example, the proto-sumerian symbol stands for woman' or female' in general. The Akkadian logogram (wordsign) for woman', female' is the sign, "munus," developed from a straight line approximation and rotation over 90 degree from the pubic triangle [Image]. The Akkadian logogram for mountain', "kur" was an actual drawing of a mountain peak. Mountains, however, are not present in Akkad, which was located in the alluvial plains around the rivers Tigris and . The word mountains' (north of Akkad) therefore also symbolizes "abroad," or "foreign country." The Sumerian word (and later the Akkadian logogram) for female slave' is represented by the composite logogram, in Akkadian: "munus.kur," a combination of woman' and "foreign / mountain." thus the word for "female slave" is "woman from the mountains/from abroad."
“We would then expect to find Gelb's next stage, the syllabic stage, at Uruk II. However, logography (picture writing), ideography (symbols for concrete objects such as a cuneiform cross, for "star" also signifying, in its abstract form, the sky god "AN"). and early phonetic devices (the word "men" symbolized by a crown is used as part of the name "Su-en" or "Sin") are all found in levels IV and III.11 Gelb noted this and suggested that the evolution of writing from pictograph to syllable must have occurred very rapidly.
“Gelb's thesis has been contradicted by Denise Schmandt-Besserat in her article "The Earliest Precursor of Writing," which was published in The Scientific American in 1978. Schmandt pointed out that 90 percent of the Uruk IV signs are indeographic, with absolutely pictographic symbols of wild animals and "High Tech" devices such as sledges appearing right alongside the more numerous ideographic signs. So we have, it appears, ideographic symbols appearing at what was thought to be the period of the genesis of pictographic writing! Schmandt disagrees with Gelb (and incidentally agrees with Hugh Nibley 14) by suggesting that pictographic writing was not, after all, the beginning of a long evolution that consummated in the alphabet. She feels, rather, that a sort of "token" system was the earliest precursor of writing.”
Economic Take of the Evolution of Writing in Mesopotamia
Arden Eby wrote in “Origin and Development of Writing in Mesopotamia: An Economic Interpretation”, “In 1927, A. Leo Oppenhime excavated the site of Nuzi in Iraq. He then reported finding a large number of tokens at various levels of the tell. In addition to these "tokens," he found an egg-shaped tablet that recorded the ownership of 48 animals; inside the egg were 48 tokens, suggesting a dual accounting system. Noticing these strange tokens, Schmandt began visiting Museums in the U.S., Europe and the near East to examine their small clay artifacts, noting their original locations and strata. Every museum and site she visited yielded these tokens — most were labeled "playthings," "games" or "amulets." Tokens of the same scheme were found from Beldibe in western Turkey to Chanu-Daro in eastern Iran. But the most important find was at a Neolithic site near Khartoum in Egypt. Evidently a single system of communication stretched from the 5th to the 4th Millennium B.C.! [Source: Arden Eby, “Origin and Development of Writing in Mesopotamia: An Economic Interpretation”, Internet Archive]
a Sumerian employment contract
“These tokens, Schmandt found, were remarkably consistent until around 3100 B.C.. At that point, the development of a specialized farming economy and cities prompted the need for much more advanced forms of record keeping. Around the end of the fourth millennium B.C., egg-shaped envelopes, such as the one found at Nuzi, started to appear. The earliest of these contained only the name seal. But if a transaction was made, the seals had to be broken to display the contents. This problem was solved by impressing the tokens on the soft clay before sealing them inside the "egg," thus preserving both the envelope and the contents. Later the tokens themselves, being unnecessary, were dropped, but the signs remained to be incorporated into the script of the Uruk. Schmandt prepared another chart of the tokens closest to early Sumerian inscriptions: Notice that the token for the number "one" is exactly the same as the one used by Gelb to support his thesis.
“The common thread in both of these theories appears to be economic motivation. Arnold Toynbee's challenge-response theory suggests that it is the challenges of life in the desert that produced writing. Mesopotamia is a semi-arid plane. The only way for life to have existed there was to divert the rivers for irrigation — the digging of channels and dikes took organization. This organization, said Toynbee, led to an increase in specialization — it was more practical for one man to farm and another to build dikes. These conditions lent themselves, naturally, to the organization of trade, which, in turn necessitated a means of accounting18, or, as put by the French archaeologist Jean Claude Marguenon: ‘Born of economic necessity, the development of writing was due to the development of stock-farming within a social structure necessitating the presentation of accounts to owner who lived elsewhere. When accounts became too large to memorize, human ingenuity was challenged to find a substitute.’
“We have summarized the evidence employed by all the major archaeological theories concerning the origin of writing. Though they might disagree on the details, they all clearly suggest that this supremely important invention was motivated by economic necessity. One might suggest that the theories presented are merely unproven hypotheses however, one must admit that they are highly plausible (if not probable) hypotheses. It is left for new Gelbs, Schmandts and Margureons to unravel the additional details of the story of the invention of writing.”
Hieroglyphics and Writing
The Egyptians were one of the earliest people to develop a writing system. Their writing system was totally different from the one we use today. Instead of letters in an alphabet they used pictures and symbols that we call “hieroglyphics.” The word “ Hieroglyph” is Greek for "sacred writing." This a reference to the fact that the ancient Egyptians believed that the knowledge of writing was something that was bestowed from Thoth, the God of Knowledge.
Hierogliphics Stela of Nemtiui Hieroglyphics function as both logograms (signs representing things or ideas) and phonograms (pictured objects represented sounds, similar to letters in an alphabet). They also served as word-signs (signs which stood for entire words) and syllabic signs (signs which stood for syllables). In Egyptian times syllables were not grouped into a single word as they are in English today. They were written separately as were words and thus sometimes distinguishing between a word and a syllable of a word was difficult. There were no hieroglyphic vowels.
Hieroglyphics primarily represented the formal and ceremonial language for the pharaohs. They appeared on everything: paintings, obelisks, temple walls, coffins, tombs, documents, perfume containers. An estimated one third of the 110,000 Egyptian pieces in the British Museum have writing on them.
The Egyptians also used “ heriatic” writing (a cursive form) and “ demotic” writing (a cursive form that could be written very quickly). They were written mostly on papyrus and were used mainly for private and business correspondence. The symbols were abbreviated hieroglyphics.
Book: “ The Story of Writing: Alphabets, Hieroglyphs & Pictograms” by Andrew Robinson
Tokens, Precursor of Writing in Mesopotamia
Denise Schmandt-Besserat of the University of Texas wrote: “The direct antecedent of the Mesopotamian script was a recording device consisting of clay tokens of multiple shapes (Schmandt-Besserat 1996). The artifacts, mostly of geometric forms such as cones, spheres, disks, cylinders and ovoids, are recovered in archaeological sites dating 8000–3000 BC.. The tokens, used as counters to keep track of goods, were the earliest code—a system of signs for transmitting information. Each token shape was semantic, referring to a particular unit of merchandise. For example, a cone and a sphere stood respectively for a small and a large measure of grain, and ovoids represented jars of oil. The repertory of some three hundred types of counters made it feasible to manipulate and store information on multiple categories of goods (Schmandt-Besserat 1992). [Source: Denise Schmandt-Besserat, Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin, January 23, 2014 ]
clay accounting tokens from Susa in Elam in Iran
“The token system had little in common with spoken language except that, like a word, a token stood for one concept. Unlike speech, tokens were restricted to one type of information only, namely, real goods. Unlike spoken language, the token system made no use of syntax. That is to say, their meaning was independent of their placement order. Three cones and three ovoids, scattered in any way, were to be translated ‘three baskets of grain, three jars of oil.’ Furthermore, the fact that the same token shapes were used in a large area of the Near East, where many dialects would have been spoken, shows that the counters were not based on phonetics. Therefore, the goods they represented were expressed in multiple languages. The token system showed the number of units of merchandize in one-to-one correspondence, in other words, the number of tokens matched the number of units counted: x jars of oil were represented by x ovoids. Repeating ‘jar of oil’ x times in order to express plurality is unlike spoken language.”
On clay counters used in the Near East from about 9,000 B.C. to 1500 B.C., John Alan Halloran wrote in sumerian.org: “There were about 500 distinct types, although not in all times and places. Tokens start to be found at widely separated sites as of 8,000 B.C. (C-14), such as Level III of Tell Mureybet in Syria and Level E of Ganj Dareh in western Iran. Tokens were used at sites throughout the Near East, from Israel to Syria, Turkey, Iraq, and Iran, with the exception of Central Anatolia. The farthest extent of their use was from Khartoum in the Sudan to the pre-Harappan site of Mehrgahr in Pakistan. [Source: John Alan Halloran, sumerian.org, December 8, 1996 ==]
“The sounds of spoken language are also a system of standardized symbolic signs. However, one does find that the tokens were already in existence when the proto-Sumerians invented their simple consonant-vowel words, which include na4: 'pebble, stone; token'; na5: 'chest, box'; nu: 'image, likeness, picture, figurine, statue'. Note also ni; na: 'he, she; that one'; ní: 'self; body'; ia2,7,9, í: 'five'; ia4, i4: 'pebble, counter'; imi, im, em: 'clay'; eme: 'tongue; speech'. On the basis of this evidence, the implication that the tokens as a system for transmitting information preceded the system of spoken language appears to be correct.” ==
Tokens: their Significance for the Origin of Counting and Writing
Denise Schmandt-Besserat of the University of Texas wrote: ““Tokens were clay symbols of multiple shapes used to count, store and communicate economic data in oral preliterate cultures. (Schmandt-Besserat 1992, 1996, http://sites.utexas.edu/dsb) About 7500-3500 the code consisted of some 6 types such as cones, spheres, disks, cylinders, tetrahedrons and ovoids, each standing for one unit of a particular commodity. Most forms occurred in two distinct sizes, respectively about 1or 3 cm across, denoting quantity. These early types of geometric counters modeled in clay with an even surface, except for an occasional dot, are referred to as plain tokens. [Source: Denise Schmandt-Besserat, Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin, March 2, 2014 /~/]
“During the Urban Period, 3500-3100, new types of tokens appeared besides the plain ones. Among them were further geometric shapes such as quadrangles, triangles, paraboloids, ovals and biconoids, but also naturalistic forms including vessels, tools and animals. These so-called complex tokens were characteristically covered with lines or dots conferring qualitative information. Triangles, paraboloids, and mostly disks occurred in series bearing various sets of lines. Plain and complex tokens were found by the dozen or the hundreds in Near Eastern archaeological sites from Palestine to Anatolia and from Syria to Persia. After 3500, tokens were often perforated in order to be strung to a clay bulla. Others were kept in envelopes. These artifacts were hollow clay balls of spherical shape. Some of the envelopes displayed on the surface the impression of the tokens held inside. /~/
“1. Counting – Tokens shed light on the beginning of counting. First, the tokens were used in one-to-one correspondence: three jars of oil were shown by three ovoid tokens, which is the simplest way of reckoning. Second, the fact that each commodity was counted with a specific type of tokens, i.e. jars of oil could only be counted with ovoid tokens, denotes concrete counting. Concrete counting is characterized by different numerations or different sequences of number words to count different categories of items. /~/
“2. Economy – Tokens were linked to the economy. Their invention corresponds to the beginning of agriculture. For example, at Mureybet, Syria, tokens occur in level III, where pollen indicated the presence of cultivated fields. (Cauvin, 74) Second, the counters served exclusively to keep track of commodities. The plain tokens stood for farm products: small and large cones, spheres and flat disks stood for different measures of barley; ovoids for jars of oil; cylinders and lenticular disks represented numbers of domesticated animals and tetrahedrons for units of labor. /~/
Clay accounting tokens from Susa
“Ca. 3500, the proliferation of token shapes and markings reflected the multiplication of commodities manufactured in urban workshops. Triangular shapes stood for ingots of metal; series of disks bearing on their face various numbers of parallel lines stood for various qualities of textiles and paraboloids for garments. Quantities of beer, oil, honey were shown by tokens in the shape of their usual containers. There is no evidence that tokens were used for trade. Instead they were central to administration. /~/
“3. Administration – The mastery of counting and accounting with tokens fostered an elite based on administrative skills, who controlled the redistribution economy. The main function of tokens was to keep track of household and workshop contributions of surplus goods to the communal wealth and their redistribution for the support of the underprivileged or the organization of religious festivals. The bullae and envelopes with their multiple office seals illustrate the toughening of the city state administrations, when unpaid contributions were recorded until their settlement. /~/
“4. Cognition – Counting with tokens reflected the level of cognition of preliterate oral cultures. (Malafouris) Data processing with tokens was tactile. The counters were meant to be grasped and manipulated with the fingers. Addition, subtraction, multiplication and division of quantities of commodities were done by moving or removing counters by hand. /~/
“Tokens processed data concretely. First, the items counted consisted exclusively of goods, such as barley, animals and oil. Second, plurality was treated concretely, in one-to-one correspondence and with concrete numerations. /~/
“5. Writing – Tokens represent the first stage in the 9000-year continuous Near Eastern tradition of data processing. They led to writing. The change in communication that occurred on envelopes when the three-dimensional tokens were replaced by their two-dimensional impressions is considered the beginning of writing. Clay tablets bearing impressed signs replaced the tokens enclosed in envelopes. In turn, the impressed markings were followed by pictographs, or sketches of tokens and other items traced with a stylus. /~/
“Writing inherited from tokens a system for accounting goods, clay, and a repertory of signs. Writing brought abstraction to data processing: the signs abstracting tokens were no longer tangible; abstract numerals such as “1” “10” “60” replaced one-to-one correspondence; (fig.5) finally, pictographs took phonetic values. /~/
“6. Tokens Beyond the Near East – Plain tokens are not unique to the ancient Near East. Identical artifacts have been excavated in Central Asia at Jeitun, (Masson/Sarianidi, 35) in Western China at Shuangdun (Hang/ Qun/Li 130: 1-12; 133: 1-4 and 132: 1-12) and the Indus Valley at Mehrgarh (Jarrige/ Jarrige/Meadow/Quivron 361: 7.32 c). Similar clay counters in the same shapes and sizes are also reported in preliterate excavations outside of the Near Eastern sphere of influence in Europe (Budja), Africa (Addison 1, 214, 227, 241, 242; id. 2, 105: 11-13; 114: 6-11.) and Mesoamerica (Manzanilla 30, 2.8) suggesting that the tactile, concrete system of data processing corresponds to some fundamental aptitude of the human preliterate mind. However the phenomenon of complex tokens and the evolution into writing occurred only in the Near East /~/
“7. Significance – Tokens played a major role in the development of counting, data processing and communication in the ancient Near East. They made possible the establishment of a Neolithic redistribution economy and thereby set the foundation of the Mesopotamian Bronze Age civilization.” /~/
Pictography: Writing as Accounting Device
Chinese Shang Era writing on an oracle bone
Denise Schmandt-Besserat of the University of Texas wrote: “After four millennia, the token system led to writing. The transition from counters to script took place simultaneously in Sumer and Elam, present-day western Iran when, around 3500 BC, Elam was under Sumerian domination. It occurred when tokens, probably representing a debt, were stored in envelopes until payment. These envelopes made of clay in the shape of a hollow ball had the disadvantage of hiding the tokens held inside. Some accountants, therefore, impressed the tokens on the surface of the envelope before enclosing them inside, so that the shape and number of counters held inside could be verified at all times. These markings were the first signs of writing. The metamorphosis from three-dimensional artifacts to two-dimensional markings did not affect the semantic principle of the system. The significance of the markings on the outside of the envelopes was identical to that of the tokens held inside. [Source: Denise Schmandt-Besserat, Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin, January 23, 2014 ]
“About 3200 BC, once the system of impressed signs was understood, clay tablets—solid cushion-shaped clay artifacts bearing the impressions of tokens—replaced the envelopes filled with tokens. The impression of a cone and a sphere token, representing measures of grain, resulted respectively in a wedge and a circular marking which bore the same meaning as the tokens they signified. They were ideograms—signs representing one concept. The impressed tablets continued to be used exclusively to record quantities of goods received or disbursed. They still expressed plurality in one-to-one correspondence.
“Pictographs—signs representing tokens traced with a stylus rather than impressed—appeared about 3100 BC. These pictographs referring to goods mark an important step in the evolution of writing because they were never repeated in one-to-one correspondence to express numerosity. Besides them, numerals—signs representing plurality—indicated the quantity of units recorded. 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 numerals standing respectively for ‘10’ and ‘1’. The symbols for numerals were not new. They were the impressions of cones and spheres formerly representing measures of grain, which then had acquired a second, abstract, numerical meaning. The invention of numerals meant a considerable economy of signs since 33 jars of oil could be written with 7 rather then 33 markings.
“In sum, in its first phase, writing remained mostly a mere extension of the former token system. Although the tokens underwent formal transformations from three- to two-dimensional and from impressed markings to signs traced with a stylus, the symbolism remained fundamentally the same. Like the archaic counters, the tablets were used exclusively for accounting (Nissen and Heine 2009). This was also the case when a stylus, made of a reed with a triangular end, gave to the signs the wedge-shaped ‘cuneiform’ appearance. In all these instances, the medium changed in form but not in content. The only major departure from the token system consisted in the creation of two distinct types of signs: incised pictographs and impressed numerals. This combination of signs initiated the semantic division between the item counted and number.”
Logography: Shift from Visual to Aural
Denise Schmandt-Besserat of the University of Texas wrote: “About 3000 BC, the creation of phonetic signs—signs representing the sounds of speech—marks the second phase in the evolution of Mesopotamian writing, when, finally, the medium parted from its token antecedent in order to emulate spoken language. As a result, writing shifted from a conceptual framework of real goods to the world of speech sounds. It shifted from the visual to the aural world. [Source: Denise Schmandt-Besserat, Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin, January 23, 2014 ]
Sumerian writing from around 2600 BC
“With state formation, new regulations required that the names of the individuals who generated or received registered merchandise were entered on the tablets. The personal names were transcribed by the mean of logograms—signs representing a word in a particular tongue. Logograms were easily drawn pictures of words with a sound close to that desired (for example in English the name Neil could be written with a sign showing bent knees ‘kneel’). Because Sumerian was mostly a monosyllabic language, the logograms had a syllabic value. A syllable is a unit of spoken language consisting of one or more vowel sounds, alone, or with one or more consonants. When a name required several phonetic units, they were assembled in a rebus fashion. A typical Sumerian name ‘An Gives Life’ combined a star, the logogram for An, god of heaven, and an arrow, because the words for ‘arrow’ and ‘life’ were homonyms. The verb was not transcribed, but inferred, which was easy because the name was common.
“Phonetic signs allowed writing to break away from accounting. Inscriptions on stone seals or metal vessels deposited in tombs of the ‘Royal Cemetery’ of Ur, c. 2700–2600 BC, are among the first texts that did not deal with merchandise, did not include numerals and were entirely phonetic (Schmandt-Besserat 2007) The inscriptions consisted merely of a personal name: ‘Meskalamdug,’ or a name and a title: ‘Puabi, Queen’. Presumably, these funerary texts were meant to immortalize the name of the deceased, thereby, according to Sumerian creed, ensuring them of eternal life. Other funerary inscriptions further advanced the emancipation of writing. For example, statues depicting the features of an individual bore increasingly longer inscriptions. After the name and title of the deceased followed patronymics, the name of a temple or a god to whom the statue was dedicated, and in some cases, a plea for life after death, including a verb. These inscriptions introduced syntax, thus bringing writing yet one step closer to speech.
“After 2600–2500 BC, the Sumerian script became a complex system of ideograms mixed more and more frequently with phonetic signs. The resulting syllabary—system of phonetic signs expressing syllables—further modeled writing on to spoken language (Rogers 2005). With a repertory of about 400 signs, the script could express any topic of human endeavor. Some of the earliest syllabic texts were royal inscriptions, and religious, magic and literary texts.
“The second phase in the evolution of the Mesopotamian script, characterized by the creation of phonetic signs, not only resulted in the parting of writing from accounting, but also its spreading out of Sumer to neighboring regions. The first Egyptian inscriptions, dated to the late fourth millennium BC, belonged to royal tombs (Baines 2007). They consisted of ivory labels and ceremonial artifacts such as maces and palettes bearing personal names, written phonetically as a rebus, visibly imitating Sumer. For example, the Palette of Narmer bears hieroglyphs identifying the name and title of the Pharaoh, his attendants and the smitten enemies. Phonetic signs to transcribe personal names, therefore, created an avenue for writing to spread outside of Mesopotamia. This explains why the Egyptian script was instantaneously phonetic. It also explains why the Egyptians never borrowed Sumerian signs. Their repertory consisted of hieroglyphs representing items familiar in the Egyptian culture that evoked sounds in their own tongue.
“The phonetic transcription of personal names also played an important role in the dissemination of writing to the Indus Valley where, during a period of increased contact with Mesopotamia, c. 2500 BC, writing appears on seals featuring individuals’ names and titles (Parpola 1994). In turn, the Sumerian cuneiform syllabic script was adopted by many Near Eastern cultures who adapted it to their different linguistic families and in particular, Semitic (Akkadians and Eblaites); Indo-European (Mitanni, Hittites, and Persians); Caucasian (Hurrians and Urartians); and finally, Elamite and Kassite. It is likely that Linear A and B, the phonetic scripts of Crete and mainland Greece, c. 1400–1200 BC, were also influenced by the Near East. 4. The Alphabet: The Segmentation of Sounds
“The invention of the alphabet about 1500 BC ushered in the third phase in the evolution of writing in the ancient Near East (Sass 2005). The first, so-called Proto-Sinaitic or Proto-Canaanite alphabet, which originated in the region of present-day Lebanon, took advantage of the fact that the sounds of any language are few. It consisted of a set of 22 letters, each standing for a single sound of voice, which, combined in countless ways, allowed for an unprecedented flexibility for transcribing speech (Powell 2009). This earliest alphabet was a complete departure from the previous syllabaries. First, the system was based on acrophony—signs to represent the first letter of the word they stood for—for example an ox head (alpu) was ‘a,’ a house (betu) was b. Second, it was consonantal—it dealt only with speech sounds characterized by constriction or closure at one or more points in the breath channel, like b, d, l, m, n, p, etc. Third, it streamlined the system to 22 signs, instead of several hundred.
“The transition from cuneiform writing to the alphabet in the ancient Near East took place over several centuries. In the seventh century BC the Assyrian kings still dictated their edicts to two scribes. The first wrote Akkadian in cuneiform on a clay tablet; the second Aramaic in a cursive alphabetic script traced on a papyrus scroll. The Phoenician merchants established on the coast of present day Syria and Lebanon, played an important role in the diffusion of the alphabet. In particular, they brought their consonantal alphabetic system to Greece, perhaps as early as, or even before 800 BC. The Greeks perfected the Semitic alphabet by adding letters for vowels—speech sounds in the articulation of which the breath channel is not blocked, like a, e, i, o, u. As a result the 27-letter Greek alphabet improved the transcription of the spoken word, since all sounds were indicated. For example, words sharing the same consonants like ‘bad,’ ‘bed,’ ‘bid,’ ‘bud,’ could be clearly distinguished. The alphabet did not subsequently undergo any fundamental change.”
Ugarit letters
Ugarites and the First Alphabet
According to the Guinness Book of Records, the earliest example of an alphabetic writing is a clay tablet with 32 cuneiform letters found in Ugarit, Syria and dated to 1450 B.C. The Ugarites condensed the Eblaite writing, with its hundreds of symbols, into a concise 30-letter alphabet that was the precursor of the Phoenician alphabet.
The introduction of the alphabet helped to democratize writing, making it something that everyone could understand rather a small elite. In ancient times people generally had one name, which was given at birth. People with the same name were often differentiated from one another by identifying them as the son of someone (i.e. James, the son of Zeledee in the Bible) or linking them to their birthplace (i.e. Paul of Tarsus, also from the Bible).
The Ugarites reduced all symbols with multiple consonant sounds to signs with a single consent sound. In the Ugarite system each sign consisted of one consonant plus any vowel. That the sign for “p” could be “pa,” “pi” or “pu.” Ugarit was passed on to the Semitic tribes of the Middle east, which included the Phoenician, Hebrews and later the Arabs.
Ugarit, an important 14th century B.C. Mediterranean port on the Syrian coast, was the next great Canaanite city to arise after Ebla. Tablets found at Ugarit indicated it was involved in the trade of box and juniper wood, olive oil, wine.
Ugarit texts refer to deities such as El, Asherah, Baak and Dagan, previously known only from the Bible and a handful of other texts. Ugarit literature is full of epic stories about gods and goddesses. This form of religion was revived by the early Hebrew prophets. An 11-inch-high silver-and-gold statuette of a god, circa 1900 B.C., unearthed at Ugarit in present-day Syria.
Modern Alphabets
Denise Schmandt-Besserat of the University of Texas wrote: “Because the alphabet was invented only once, all the many alphabets of the world, including Latin, Arabic, Hebrew, Amharic, Brahmani and Cyrillic, derive from Proto-Sinaitic. The Latin alphabet used in the western world is the direct descendant of the Etruscan alphabet (Bonfante 2002). The Etruscans, who occupied the present province of Tuscany in Italy, adopted the Greek alphabet, slightly modifying the shape of letters. In turn, the Etruscan alphabet became that of the Romans, when Rome conquered Etruria in the first century BC. The alphabet followed the Roman armies. All the nations that fell under the rule of the Roman Empire became literate in the first centuries of our era. This was the case for the Gauls, Angles, Saxons, Franks and Germans who inhabited present-day France, England and Germany. [Source: Denise Schmandt-Besserat, Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin, January 23, 2014 ]
“Charlemagne (800 AD) had a profound influence on the development of the Latin script by establishing standards. In particular a clear and legible minuscule cursive script was devised, from which our modern day lower case derives. The printing press invented in 1450 dramatically multiplied the dissemination of texts, introducing a new regularity in lettering and layout. The Internet catapults the alphabet into cyberspace, while preserving its integrity 6. Writing: Handling Data in Abstraction
“Beyond the formal and structural changes undergone by writing in the course of millennia, its evolution also involved strides in the ability to handle data in abstraction. At the first stage, the token system antecedent of writing, already abstracted information in several ways. First, it translated daily-life commodities into arbitrary, often geometric forms. Second, the counters abstracted the items counted from their context. For example, sheep could be accounted independently of their actual location. Third, the token system separated the data from the knower. That is to say, a group of tokens communicated directly specific information to anyone initiated in the system. This was a significant change for an oral society, where knowledge was transmitted by word of mouth from one individual to another, face to face. Otherwise, the token system represented plurality concretely, in one-to-one correspondence. Three jars of oil were shown by three tokens, as it is in reality. At the same time, the fact that the token system used specific counters to count different items was concrete—it did not abstract the notion of item counted from that of number. (Certain English numerical expressions referring to particular sets, such as twin, triplet, quadruplet and duo, trio or quartet, are comparable to concrete numbers.)
“When tokens were impressed on the envelopes to indicate the counters enclosed inside, the resulting markings could no longer be manipulated by hand. In other words, the transmutation of three-dimensional counters into two-dimensional signs constituted a second step in abstraction. By doing away with tokens, the clay tablets marked a third level of abstraction since the impressed markings no longer replicated a set of actual counters. The invention of numerals, which separated the notion of numerosity from that of the item counted, was a crucial fourth step in abstraction. The signs expressing the concept of oneness, twoness, etc., allowed plurality to be dealt with in fully abstract terms. In turn, the phonetic units marked a fifth step of abstraction, since the signs no longer referred to the objects pictured, but rather the sound of the word they evoked.
“Phonetics allowed writing to shift from a representational to a conceptual linguistic system. That is to say it enabled writing to leave the realm of real goods in order to enter the world of words and the ideas they stand for. Finally, the process that started with ideograms expressing concepts and phonetic signs referring to the sound of monosyllabic words reached the ultimate segmentation of meaning with letters. As Marshall McLuhan (1997) defined it, the alphabet consists of semantically meaningless letters corresponding to semantically meaningless sounds. The alphabet brought data handling to a final double-stepped abstraction.”
Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons
Text Sources: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Mesopotamia sourcebooks.fordham.edu , National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, especially Merle Severy, National Geographic, May 1991 and Marion Steinmann, Smithsonian, December 1988, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Discover magazine, Times of London, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, BBC, Encyclopædia Britannica, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Time, Newsweek, Wikipedia, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, “World Religions” edited by Geoffrey Parrinder (Facts on File Publications, New York); “History of Warfare” by John Keegan (Vintage Books); “History of Art” by H.W. Janson Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.), Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.
Last updated September 2018