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HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY, TECHNOLOGY, OBJECTS AROUND US
Writing. History of invention and production
Directory / The history of technology, technology, objects around us There is no need to talk about the great significance of the invention of writing in the history of mankind. It is impossible to even imagine what path the development of civilization could have taken if, at a certain stage of their development, people had not learned to fix the information they needed with the help of certain symbols and thus transmit and store it. It is obvious that human society in the form in which it exists today simply could not have appeared. The first forms of writing in the form of signs inscribed in a special way appeared about 4 thousand years BC. But long before that, there were various ways of transmitting and storing information: with the help of folded branches, arrows, smoke from fires, and similar signals. From these primitive warning systems, more sophisticated ways of capturing information later emerged. For example, the ancient Incas invented the original system of "recording" with the help of knots. For this, wool laces of different colors were used. They were tied with various knots and attached to a stick. In this form, a "letter" was sent to the addressee. There is an opinion that the Incas, with the help of such a "knot letter", fixed their laws, wrote down chronicles and poems. "Knot writing" is also noted among other nations - it was used in ancient China and Mongolia.
However, writing in the proper sense of the word appeared only after people invented special graphic signs to fix and transmit information. The most ancient type of writing is pictographic. A pictogram is a schematic drawing that directly depicts the things, events and phenomena in question. It is assumed that pictography was widespread among various peoples at the last stage of the Stone Age. This letter is very visual, and therefore it does not need to be specially studied. It is quite suitable for transmitting small messages and for recording simple stories. But when there was a need to convey some complex abstract thought or concept, the limited possibilities of the pictogram were immediately felt, which is completely unsuitable for recording what is not amenable to a picturesque image (for example, such concepts as cheerfulness, courage, vigilance, good sleep, heavenly azure, etc.). Therefore, already at an early stage in the history of writing, pictograms began to include special conventional icons denoting certain concepts (for example, the sign of crossed arms symbolized exchange). Such icons are called ideograms.
Ideographic writing arose from pictographic writing, and one can quite clearly imagine how this happened: each pictorial sign of a pictogram began to be more and more isolated from others and associated with a certain word or concept, denoting it. Gradually, this process developed so much that primitive pictograms lost their former visibility, but gained clarity and certainty. This process took a long time, perhaps several millennia. Hieroglyphic writing became the highest form of the ideogram. It first appeared in ancient Egypt. Later, hieroglyphic writing became widespread in the Far East - in China, Japan and Korea. With the help of ideograms, it was possible to reflect any, even the most complex and abstract thought. However, for the hieroglyphs not dedicated to the secret, the meaning of what was written was completely incomprehensible. Anyone who wanted to learn how to write had to memorize several thousand icons. In reality, it took several years of constant practice. Therefore, few people knew how to write and read in antiquity.
However, it should be noted right away that ideography has never existed in its pure form. For example, in ancient Egypt, along with icons denoting whole concepts and words, there were other signs denoting syllables and even individual sounds. The need for such signs is obvious, since not everything can be expressed in the form of images (first of all, this applies to personal names). In these cases, the Egyptians turned hieroglyphic words into hieroglyphic letters, from which words were composed to be transmitted in writing according to their sound. For example, the hieroglyph "хт" - the image of a house - became a two-letter hieroglyph denoting sound [хт], the hieroglyph "pl" - the image of a chessboard - became a hieroglyph denoting two sounds [pl], etc. At first, the value of phonetic hieroglyphs was auxiliary, but over time, their role increased more and more, and in the last centuries of the existence of Egyptian writing, the value of phonetic hieroglyphs became dominant. But the Egyptians never switched to a purely phonographic writing (that is, one where each sign denotes a separate sound or letter). This important improvement was made in the writing of other peoples. People did not immediately learn to divide their speech into simple elements - sounds (phonemes). It is much easier to divide speech into separate syllables. Therefore, in the 2nd millennium BC. several types of writing developed, in which each sign denoted a separate syllable (this letter is called syllabic, its classic examples are the Cretan (Minoan) letter and the Mayan letter). Only at the end of the 2nd millennium BC. the ancient Phoenicians invented an alphabetic-sound alphabet, which served as a model for the alphabets of many other peoples. The Phoenician alphabet consisted of 22 consonants, each representing a different sound.
The invention of this alphabet was a great step forward for mankind. With the help of the new letter, it was easy to convey graphically any word without resorting to ideograms. It was very easy to learn from him. The art of writing has ceased to be the privilege of the enlightened. It has become the property of the whole society, or at least most of it. This was one of the reasons for the rapid spread of the Phoenician alphabet around the world. It is believed that four-fifths of all alphabets known today originated from the Phoenician. Thus, from a variety of Phoenician writing (Punic), Libyan developed. The Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek writing came directly from the Phoenician. In turn, on the basis of the Aramaic script, Arabic, Nabataean, Syriac, Persian and other scripts developed. The Greeks made the last important improvement to the Phoenician alphabet - they began to designate with letters not only consonants, but also vowels. The Greek alphabet formed the basis of most European alphabets: Latin (from which, in turn, French, German, English, Italian, Spanish and other alphabets originated), Coptic, Armenian, Georgian and Slavic (Serbian, Russian, Bulgarian, etc.). Author: Ryzhov K.V.
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