Page 46 - Encyclopedia Of World History

396 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

Women do not always have to write about women, or gay
men about gay men. Indeed, something good and new
might happen if they did not. • Kathryn Hughes

erected large stone monuments, such as Stonehenge in ted from person to person. Full writing systems, capable
England or temples in Malta. The Olmecs of southern of conveying any word in a language, appeared in several
Mexico and the people of Easter Island in the Pacific regions of the world at the beginning of their urban civi-
Ocean carved gigantic stone sculptures. Such creations lizations. The first was Sumer, in lower Mesopotamia,
were works of art that served as ways of communicating between 3300 and 3000 BCE.The script that the Sumeri-
ideas, as reminders of events, or as part of religious rituals. ans created is called cuneiform, or wedge-shaped, because
Even more common than the artistic creations of pre- it was inscribed on clay tablets with the wedge-shaped
historic people are their mnemonic devices. Our world end of a reed. Cuneiform writing and clay tablets were
today is full of symbols that communicate and remind adaptable to many other languages in the Middle East
without the need for words: the silhouette of a person in and remained in use for 3,000 years.Tens of thousands
pants and another one in a skirt indicate men’s and of tablets have been found, almost all of them dealing
women’s toilets; a cigarette with a bar through it means with mundane matters of business, taxes, and adminis-
“no smoking”; traffic signs can be grasped at a glance tration. By the second millennium BCE, cuneiform was
even by those who cannot read words. Mnemonic used to write literary texts such as the Epic of Gilgamesh.
devices were among the earliest means of communication The Egyptians, probably inspired by their Mesopotam-
devised by Homo sapiens.Tally sticks with notches, found ian neighbors, created three writing systems. The best
in the caves of Cro-Magnon peoples in France dating known is hieroglyphics, a combination of pictures and
back 30,000 years, may have corresponded to the phases symbols that were carved on stone monuments and
of the moon. Polynesian navigators made maps out of painted inside burial chambers and on important docu-
sticks and strings to help them remember the location of ments. Religious texts were written on papyrus, made
islands and to instruct their disciples.The Incas of South from a reed that grew in the Nile delta, in a simpler script
America kept records of taxes and other transactions with called hieratic. Everyday matters, such as business records
quipus, or knotted strings. And in Mesopotamia (now or lists of words, were written in demotic, a kind of hand-
Iraq) and nearby regions, long before writing, people kept writing. Unfortunately, unlike the permanent clay tablets
records of goods produced and exchanged with the help of Mesopotamia, almost all the papyrus documents have
of tokens, bits of clay fashioned into different shapes that long since perished.
corresponded to the items they represented (sheep, The Chinese began writing around 1500 BCE. Their
bushels of grain, jars of oil, and so on). first known writings were on bones used by soothsayers
These are the physical objects that have survived or left to predict the future. From the start, Chinese writing was
traces for scientists to analyze. But like all people today, logographic, meaning that each character represented a
prehistoric people also must also have engaged in more word.Though modern Chinese characters look different,
ephemeral means of visual communication, such as ges- scholars can trace their development from the earliest
tures, facial expressions, songs, body movements, and engravings to the present. It is by far the longest lasting
dance. It is likely that they combined words, gestures, and writing system in the world, and suits the Chinese lan-
music in religious rituals, storytelling, and dramas. The guage admirably. Chinese characters were also adopted
variety of ways in which humans could communicate by Koreans and Japanese.
with one another, even in prehistoric times, was almost In the Americas, only the Mayas created a full writing
limitless. system, about 300 BCE. Like Egyptian hieroglyphics, it
was pictographic and extremely complex. It was used in
Writing conjunction with the ancient world’s most elaborate cal-
Writing is a means of inscribing words on a physical endar to inscribe religious texts and the chronologies of
medium that can be preserved through time or transmit- kings and battles on temple walls. Mayan writing may