The History of Writing

Abstract

Paradigmatically, writing is the representation of speech. But what then about the visual signs and symbols that humans created and continue to create sometimes for communication purposes, other times for sheer self expression, and at still other times for linking themselves to the gods? To tell the history of writing, even in its paradigmatic sense, it seems essential to begin with a more comprehensive view of writing as the use of created visual marks or other artefacts for communication and expression. From this base, we may then see more clearly how representations in general relate to representations of language more specifically. With this more inclusive notion of writing as visual communication we can include the celebrated 40,000-year-old cave drawings at Lascaux and Altamira, as well as the first mark ings incised on bone, in China, dating back some 10,000 years, the clay gods modelled by the Hittites some 8,000 years ago, as well as the petroglyphs carved by North American aboriginal peoples some 4,000 years ago. For it is out of these earliest attempts that the modern forms of communication we think of as ‘true writing’ evolved and it is from such attempts that even modern children work their way into writing and literacy. My concern in this chapter is to set out some of the transitions in visual communication and the social and cognitive conditions that contributed to the evolution of modern forms of writing. Even the more inclusive notion of writing as visual communication rules out a huge realm of visual information, such as that of a face reddened by embarrassment, the gestures and gesticulations that accompany speech, the tracks we leave on sand or snow that may be ‘read’ and interpreted by others. We set them aside, not because they are unimportant, but because in such cases there is no attempt or intention on the part of the actor to express or communicate. On the other hand, smoke signals, a hand raised in greeting or anger, a headdress, or mansion indicating power or wealth, would fall within a scheme of visual communication and