Alphabet Key To History Of Mankind

Author(s): David Diringer
Publisher: Hutchinsons Scientific and Technical Publications

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INTRODUCTION some sense a refinement. From the point of view of invention, the importance of writing is paramount even in comparison with language, this being not a creation of man, as writing is, but a natural distinction of mankind. Mankind lived for an enormous period without writing, and there is no doubt that it was preceded by articulate speech.
For many thousands of years, languages have been developing, changing and disappearing throughout all the continents without leaving any trace, because the people who spoke them disappeared and there was no method of recording them for future generations.
Writing is the graphic counterpart of speech. Each element, symbol, letter, "hieroglyph," written word, in the system of writing corresponds to a specific element, sound or group of sounds, such as syllable or spoken word, in the primary system. Writing is thus the natural method, or rather the most important of natural methods of transferring speech, that is of communicating ideas between those who are debarred by distance of time or space or by other causes, from intercourse by means of speech. Other, less important methods are, for instance, the different gesturelanguages such as those of the deaf-mutes, and those used at sea or in the mountains. In other words, writing reproduces sounds, which come from the mouth, or unspoken thoughts, which come from the brain, by permanent visual symbols on paper, stone, metal, wood, leather, linen, or some other material.
Not only has the intellectual progress of man been very recent in comparison with man's material power; written records have been very recent in man's cultural history. However, prehistoric cave wall-paintings and carving on small objects can be traced in part to the Upper Paläolithic period; circles and other symbols, full of variety and distinction, are also found in use in prehistoric ages as property marks or for similar purposes, but we can hardly see any connection in either of these instances with the known ancient systems of writing, although they may eventually be regarded as preliminary devices produced by the urge to record events or ideas. As a matter of fact, when one is faced with phenomena of vast significance, such as the creation of a system of writing, the inquiry into the first causes is extraordinarily difficult, just as it is in the case of a war or revolution. Even in recent cases it is very difficult, sometimes, to give an exact date to the origins of these events; in tracing them back through the past, one runs the risk of reaching back to ver distant times, since cause and effect condition each other and follow each other in turn. To avoid this, a starting point must be chosen, a birth certificate, so to speak; anyone wishing to study the history of writing must take as the starting point the earliest known ancient systems of writing, and particularly the cuneiform and hieroglyphic systems. Indeed, there is no evidence to prove that any complete system of writing was ernployed before the middle of the fourth millennium B.C.