Writing and the alphabet were two of the major inventions of the human mind. They were conceived and developed in the Middle East between about 3500 and 1000 BCE. Other writing systems appeared in China about 1200 BCE and in Central America during the first millennium BCE, probably independently, although the Chinese may have been indirectly influenced from Babylonia.
Cuneiform Writing
Writing began over 5,000 years ago in the developing urban culture of southern Mesopotamia known as the Uruk IV period. At first simple pictures were scratched on stone or clay tablets held in the hand. Some showed a complete object, such as a fish, and others part of an object, such as the head of a cow, while others cannot be identified. More than 1,200 signs were used in the oldest known texts, which deal with the income and expenditure in kind of temples. The number of signs soon shrank to about 600, and as well as serving as word-sign (logograms), many also came to be used phonetically (phonograms)...
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References
Daniels, P. T., & Bright, W. (1996). The world’s writing systems. New York: Oxford University Press.
Oates, J. (1986). Early writing systems. World Archaeology, 17(3), 305–460.
Millard, A. (1995). The knowledge of writing in iron age Palestine. Tyndale Bulletin, 46(2), 207–217.
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Millard, A. (2014). Writing in the Middle East. In: Selin, H. (eds) Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-3934-5_9419-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-3934-5_9419-2
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