Since the early days of civilization, humans have not been attracted to writing. In the early stages, there was a struggle for survival. They struggled against the destruction of nature to protect themselves, save their lives, collect food, build shelters, and finally, entertainment or other needs. Between 6000 and 3000 BC, humans were more interested in building urban civilization. Many groundbreaking discoveries were made at the juncture of the transition from the Neolithic era to the urban civilization era, and as knowledge and science expanded, humans had never witnessed any other discovery so quickly before the development and development of modern science and technology. It is worth noting that a significant portion of these discoveries were made in West Asia. There is sufficient evidence for the rapid development of all these discoveries and technical developments in the Asian region at that time. There are many social reasons.
By 4000 BC, the Neapolitan culture had spread from the eastern shores of the Mediterranean to the Indian subcontinent. In addition to the Neapolitan agricultural people, hunters, fishermen, and herders lived in these regions. The Neapolitan culture, of course, spread too many parts of the world outside Asia. But under the influence of the special natural environment and favorable social environment, it became vibrant in West Asia and took shape as a new society. In the region from Egypt-Palestine-Lebanon to the Indus Valley, with the help of various favorable environments, technical knowledge was acquired and used for social development. Based on new technical discoveries, urban-centered civilizations were built in Egypt on the banks of the Nile and in Sumer-Babylonia between the Tigris and Euphrates, which later greatly accelerated the process of inventing various types of scripts and writing systems.
Writing and script:
After the emergence of urban civilization, huge wealth began to accumulate in temples and palaces in Mesopotamia and Egypt. Previously, accounts were kept in memory. With the increase in wealth, it became difficult to keep such large accounts orally or in memory. Finally, the practice of keeping accounts by scratching began. This can be called the introduction or beginning of writing in the history of civilization. In the early era of scratching accounts, the help of pictures was also used as an easy way to keep accounts.
For example, I will lend five sheep to someone. It would work if I kept a portrait of each person to whom I would lend it and five portraits of the sheep next to it. This can be called a writing process that helps memory rather than writing. However, there is no doubt about the expression it expresses. Therefore, it can also be called figurative writing.
The process by which we write in modern times is called phonetic script. In phonetic script, there is a separate letter for each sound. As a result, we pronounce the exact words when we speak. Even when the phonetic scripts are read, the exact same sound is produced. Letter-based phonetic script was introduced in the Sumer region of ancient Mesopotamia and in Egypt at about the same time. That was about 5/6 thousand years ago. In ancient Egypt, the script was called hieroglyphic script. The word hieroglyphs means ‘sacred’, so hieroglyphic script was identified as sacred script. The Sumerian and later Babylonian scripts are called cuneiform scripts. Both of these scripts were developed from hieroglyphics, which can be understood by looking at the evolution of the scripts. In the Egyptian hieroglyphic script, images of birds, whips, fingers, etc. remain unchanged. But these images are actually sound symbols. They are not symbols of birds or people, etc.
For example, if the word bee in English were in ancient Egyptian, it would have been represented by a picture of a bee in hieroglyphic style, not by the bee but by the sound b. In Sumerian, the modern English “T” shape means two things – arrow and life. When cuneiform script was converted from hieroglyphics to letter-based phonetic script, the image of an arrow was used to mean life. Because the image of an arrow is no longer a symbol of an arrow, it is a symbol of the sound T, and the word ‘T’ can also mean life.
The invention of writing and script was very helpful for urban civilizations in ancient times. In addition to Egypt and Babylon, the use of hieroglyphs or phonetic scripts was also observed in Mohenjo-Daro and China. However, not all civilizations of ancient times invented writing and script. Not all languages of that time were suitable for writing systems. In his book ‘History of Mankind’, archaeologist Sir Leonard Daly says:
1. The first writing system originated in the Sumer region of southern Mesopotamia. Because the Sumerian language was conducive to the invention of writing and script;
2. Most of the original words of the Sumerian language consisted of one or two syllables. As a result, if the images of those words were placed side by side, they could be read consecutively to form new words, just as words are pronounced by pronouncing sounds consecutively.
Many believe that writing spread from ancient Mesopotamia to Egypt, China, and Mohenjo-Daro, because their scripts are similar to each other. The first phonetic script that evolved from pictographs was syllabic or letter-based. The next step in the development of writing systems was alphabetic phonetic script. In letter-based phonetic script, each syllable is represented by a single writing sign or symbol. In the alphabetic writing system, a pure sound is represented by a letter. The alphabetic writing system is different and improved from the previous letter-based writing system. Even small children can easily read any book by learning about 25/30 letters. On the other hand, in the letter-based writing system, each symbol represents a percentage, resulting in many more symbols to be learned. In many cases, in alphabetic writing, hundreds or thousands of symbols had to be learned to learn to read. Because each symbol was used for a separate word or syllable. In ancient Egypt, students took about 10 to 15 years to learn to read. In Egypt and Babylon, therefore, only the priests were able to keep the whole matter of education in their lap; it did not spread much among the masses.
Although it was very easy for the common people to learn the alphabetic writing system, its discovery was not easy. The civilization of that time had to wait for a long time for it. Nevertheless, it is safe to say that the discovery of alphabetic writing in those unscientific ancient times was a groundbreaking and revolutionary event.
