2 Picturing The First Writing
Published by:
Debbie Barry
2500 Mann Road, #248
Clarkston, Michigan 48346
USA
Copyright © 2013 by Deborah K. Barry.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
by any means without the written permission
of the author.
ISBN-13: 978-1490363707
ISBN-10: 149036370X
Picturing The First Writing 3
Originally submitted as a college
assignment:
Ashford University
ENG321: Introductory Linguistics
Michael O'Donnell
February 27, 2012
Picturing The First Writing 5
Picturing the First
Writing
Modern Western writing finds its
roots in the earliest societies of Africa.
When humans first think to record events of
their lives by carving or painting images on
rocks and on cave walls, writing is born.
This first pictorial writing gives rise, over
many generations, to systematic picture
writing, called hieroglyphs. Hieroglyphs, in
turn, evolve into alphabets that are used by
many languages today. “[I]t is through
Ancient Egypt that the Western world shares
an important legacy with Africa: the
emergence … in Egypt of a form of writing
from which all modern scripts are
genetically descended” (Abraham, 2011,
para. 3). Many experts believe that the
European Phoenician alphabet is the mother
of all modern scripts, but archaeological
6 Picturing The First Writing
evidence suggests that the Phoenician
alphabet also has its roots in Egyptian
hieroglyphics. Although written language
developed independently in human cultures
all over the world, modern writing is a
descendant of pictorial communications in
ancient Africa.
The first evidence of writing, or of
recording ideas and events in a lasting,
visual manner, is found about 15,000 BCE,
when cave drawings first appear. “Cave art,
called petroglyphs … are literal portrayals of
life at that time” (Fromkin, et. al., 2011, p.
541). Petroglyphs of realistically-rendered
animals, people, and the activities of ancient
people provide a vivid record for modern
scientists of ancient human cultures. “The
ability to record thoughts and sounds goes
far back in human antiquity” (Houston,
2004, p. 223). The recording of ideas in
pictures or in organized writing illustrates
the creativity of the human mind, and a
desire to keep a permanent record of ideas
Picturing The First Writing 7
that may be passed on to future generations.
These pictorial communications, or
petroglyphs, represent whole words and
ideas with individual pictures. The meaning
of a painting or etching of a running stag
with antlers is concrete, meaning a running
stag with antlers. As far as can be
ascertained, it is not yet a representation of
an abstract idea.
“Pictographic writing has been found
throughout the world, ancient and modern:
among Africans, Native Americans
including the Inuits of Alaska and Canada,
the Incas of Peru, the Yukagirians of
Siberia, and the people of Oceania”
(Fromkin, et. al., 2011, p. 542).
Pictographic records have been identified in
Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas,
where writing systems appear to have
developed independently in parallel with
one another. Regardless of geography,
humans have a desire to make lasting
records of the events of their lives. Stephen
8 Picturing The First Writing
D. Houston (2004) writes that “script origins
… occur in moments of societal change: the
Olmec decline, the institution of expansive
dynastic control in Egypt, city-state
administration in Mesopotamia, the
appearance of Shang” (p. 239). No doubt,
the first occurrences of petroglyphs in Africa
also take place is periods of societal change,
as proto-humans become fully-aware
humans and begin to build human
civilization.
Archaeological evidence shows that
early man may communicate through
drawings before he uses verbal language.
Arthur J. Evans (1903) makes the claim that
“Man drew before he talked” (p. 51). In
modern humans, verbal language comes
naturally for young children and written
language must be learned with some effort.
Even in modern humans, however, young
children and persons with developmental
disabilities that limit the acquisition of
spoken language will draw to express
Picturing The First Writing 9
thoughts and emotions. “Engraved patterns
on the side of ostrich eggs dating back to the
Stone Age could be the oldest form of
written communication known to man …
The etchings, thought to be 60,000 years
old, were used to mark the eggs, which had
been turned into water flasks by hunter-
gatherers in Africa” (Alleyne, 2010, paras.
1-2). These etchings date to the period in
which Homo neanderthalensis lived in
northern Africa. Anya Luke-Killam (2001)
writes that “any speech production
capabilities in Homo neanderthalensis would
have been severely limited by the
physiology specific to that species” (p. 1).
Also living in Africa at this time are Homo
erectus and Homo habilis. According to
Luke-Killam (2001), “it is not clear that
Homo habilis fossil brain evidence is
sufficient enough to claim that this hominid
had language-like skills. Likewise, fossil
brain evidence does not clearly indicate that
Homo erectus had definite language
10 Picturing The First Writing
abilities” (p. 2). The ostrich egg etchings,
then, are evidence that written language
exists in northern Africa before humans
acquire the physical ability to use verbal
language.
Sumerian cuneiform writing and
Egyptian hieroglyphic writing appear at
roughly the same time in human history.
About 4,000-3,000 BCE, both of these
systems flourish. “Over the centuries the
Sumerians simplified and conventionalized
their pictography. They began to produce
the symbols of their written language by
using a wedge-shaped stylus that was
pressed into soft clay tablets” (Fromkin, et.
al., 2011, p. 543). The wedge-shaped marks
are a more refined, reproducible form of
picture writing, with each symbol
representing an object or an idea. Similarly,
“Egyptian hieroglyphics made up a formal
writing system used by the Ancient
Egyptians that contained a combination of
pictographs … and ideographs … that later
Picturing The First Writing 11
evolved into a phonetic … script”
(Abraham, 2011, para. 4). The Egyptians
use highly stylized images to represent
objects and ideas, which become syllabic
writing. Where petroglyphs only record
objects and their interactions, cuneiform and
hieroglyphics carry human expression
further by representing ideas. Each symbol
in cuneiform or in hieroglyphics represents a
word or a part of a word. Two or more
symbols may be required to represent a
single thought, and the same individual
symbol may occur in two or more words
with very different meanings. Dr. Konrad
Tuchscherer asserts that every modern script
descends from ancient Egyptian
hieroglyphic traditions: “’Every modern
script is descended genetically, in some way
… from the ancient Egyptian script
tradition,’ says Dr Konrad Tuchscherer,
associate professor of history and director of
Africana Studies at St John's University in
New York” (Abraham, 2011, para. 24).
12 Picturing The First Writing
Tuchscherer’s claim excludes Chinese and
other East Asian scripts. He holds that,
although cuneiform and hieroglyphics occur
concurrently in history, cuneiform dies out
and hieroglyphics remain as the ancestor of
written language. Dr. Gunter Dreyer and his
team of German archaeologists support this
claim with their research that shows that
“the world's earliest examples of writing
were … from Africa, an estimated 500 miles
south of the Nile Delta and dating to the
33rd century BCE” (Abraham, 2011, para.
29). From this origin in Egyptian
hieroglyphics, written language then moves
north to the Phoenicians.
The Phoenician alphabet, which is
often identified as the source of modern
writing, grows out of Egyptian hieroglyphics
about 1,500 BCE. The Phoenicians refine
earlier pictographic writing into a
consonantal alphabet. With this new
language, symbols represent discrete sounds.
The symbols, which may now be called
Picturing The First Writing 13
letters, may be combined in limitless ways
to produce a limitless number of words.
This new alphabet allows a broader
expression of human thought through
writing, as any spoken words may now be
written. There are still limits to written
language, however, as vowel sounds are not
depicted in the West Semitic syllabary of the
Phoenicians. The same combination of
consonants may have several different
meanings, depending on the vowel sounds
that are inserted between the consonants.
The letters of the Phoenician alphabet reflect
the sounds of verbal speech in the Semitic
world.
The limitation on the consonantal
alphabet is eased about 1000 BCE when the
“Ancient Greeks borrow the Phoenician
consonantal alphabet” (Fromkin, et. al.,
2011, p.553). The Greek alphabet includes
letters that represent discrete vowel sounds,
as well as consonants. Greek words include
the required vowels in their spelling, so each
14 Picturing The First Writing
word is distinct. The reader no longer needs
to divine which vowels the writer intended
to include between the consonants in order
to understand the meaning of a word.
Including clear vowel sounds in the Greek
alphabet reflects the changing sounds of
verbal language as written language moves
around the eastern end of the Mediterranean
from north-eastern Africa to southern
Europe. Recent archaeological discoveries
in Greece confirm the use of writing in
Europe in this period. “Archaeologists have
found a clay tablet bearing the earliest
known writing in Europe, a 3,350-year-old
specimen that is at least 150 years older than
other tablets discovered in the region”
(Maugh, 2011, para. 1). “Found in an olive
grove in what’s now the village of Iklaina …
the tablet was created by a Greek-speaking
Mycenaean scribe between 1450 and 1350
B.C.” (Than, 2011, para. 3). Maugh and
Than both discuss the same discovery, made
in the summer of 2010, of a small, clay
Picturing The First Writing 15
tablet that is found is the remains of an
ancient fire in Iklaina, Greece. The tablet is
inadvertently preserved when it is burned in
a rubbish heap, thus firing the clay and
making it strong and hard. The tablet can be
read, and is written in a Greek language
called Linear B, which “is related to the
older hieroglyph system used by the ancient
Egyptians” (Than, 2011, para. 18). The
discovery of this tablet is physical evidence
that Greek writing descends from Egyptian
hieroglyphs, which, in turn, descend from
ancient petroglyphs.
Approximately 750 BCE, “Etruscans
borrow the Greek alphabet” (Fromkin, et.
al., 2011, p. 553). In the spring of 1881,
“the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston
received … [an] interesting little unguent
vase or perfume bottle” (Norton, 1881, p.
165). The jar is important because it is a
piece of Etruscan pottery from Corneto,
Italy. On the jar is a series of Etruscan
letters that Signor Gian Francesco
16 Picturing The First Writing
Gainurrini interprets as “M I M U L U K A
V I I E S I” (Norton, 1881, p. 165). The
letters, a facsimile of which appears in the
article about the jar, are plainly visible, and
where the interpretation shows a “U,” the
original inscription contains a character that
looks like an English “Y.” “Signor
Gamurrini reads the words composing the
inscription, Mi mulu kaviiesi, and translates
them, … ‘I am Mulus, or Mulvius, the son
of Cavius’" (Norton, 1881, pp. 165-166).
The Etruscan writing is rendered left to
right, just as modern English, French, and
related languages are written. The spelling
of “kaviiesi” appears to give the clue that
Mulus is the son of Cavius, using an
inflectional morpheme to indicate the
relationship. This Etruscan inscription
shows the use of both consonants and
vowels to produce written words. The
Greek and Etruscan alphabets are both
known as epichoric alphabets, which means
that they are “peculiar to a limited area”
Picturing The First Writing 17
(Epichoric, 2012, para. 1). It is interesting
that the inscription is written as a single
word, without spaces or symbols to indicate
where one word ends and the next word
begins. Also, the letters are all majuscules –
what are modernly called capitals or upper-
case letters – and that there are no
minuscules, or lower-case letters in use.
This lack of minuscules is because
“minuscule or lower case letters first
appeared sometime after 800 AD” (Ager,
2012, para. 3). At the time the Etruscan
unguent jar was crafted, there was not yet a
distinction drawn by the use of two different
forms of the same letter.
Features of modern writing develop
in Greek and Etruscan writing. “Around
500 BC the direction of writing changed to
horizontal lines running from left to right …
[and] [d]iacritics to represent stress and
breathings were added to the [Greek]
alphabet in around 200 BC” (Ager, 2012,
para. 4). Modern European languages are
18 Picturing The First Writing
written horizontally across the page, running
from left to right. Many modern languages,
including French, Spanish, and Greek
continue to use diacritic marks to indicate
stress or to give particular letters special
sounds.
About 500 BCE, “Romans adapt the
Etruscan/Greco alphabet to Latin” (Fromkin,
et. al., 2011, p. 553). The Roman, or Latin
alphabet is used to this day, and “[m]ost
European alphabets use Latin (Roman)
letters, adding diacritic marks to
accommodate individual characteristics of a
particular language” (Fromkin, et. al., 2011,
p. 553). Latin letters are familiar to every
person who reads and writes modern
English. While the letters may be rendered
in many decorative fonts that may include
added curlicues, whorls, serifs, and any
number of decorative features, the letters
remain intelligible to English readers. The
many artistic flourishes that may be added to
Latin letters do not change the meanings of
Picturing The First Writing 19
the letters. The cuneiform and hieroglyphic
systems of the past must be rendered with
great precision, avoiding any extraneous
marks, or the written message will be
changed. Although diacritic marks may
change the meaning of certain letters of the
Latin alphabet, artistic flourishes neither add
nor subtract meaning.
Culture, unlike artistic flourishes,
does change the meaning of words written
with Latin letters. While the letters of
Beowulf are the same letters as those used to
write the Declaration of Independence, the
sounds associated with the letters has
changed dramatically over time. As verbal
vocabularies and language sounds change
over time, the spelling of written words also
changes. Spelling is irrelevant in verbal
speech, which is based entirely on sound and
inflection, but written language requires
conventions of spelling to express the
sounds of verbal language in a way that will
be intelligible to readers. The progression of
20 Picturing The First Writing
the spelling of various words according to
the way they sound in spoken language at a
given period may be observed by examining
the words at the ends of rhymed couplets in
the poetry of Chaucer and of Shakespeare.
While the words may not appear to rhyme in
modern English, it is clear that they did
rhyme, or sound alike, in Middle English.
Alphabets descending from Egyptian
hieroglyphics through the Latin alphabet
continue to evolve into the modern era. The
minuscule letter, which is the most common
form of the letters of the modern English
alphabet, was introduced in the 8th
century
CE as the “Carolingian minuscule letter”
(The origins of abc, 2010, para. 35).
Majuscule and minuscule forms of the same
letter share the same sound. A word may be
written using any combination of majuscules
and minuscules without changing the
meaning of the word, and there have been
periods in the history of written English
when either form of a letter might be used
Picturing The First Writing 21
interchangeably in a manuscript. In modern
English, there are rules and conventions for
the use of majuscules, which are now called
capitals. Capital letters are used only in
specific ways in modern English, and
minuscules, or lower-case, letters, are used
for the majority of English writing.
With the advent of the Internet and
digital communications, there is a growing
trend to reintroduce certain pictographic
symbols in modern, written communication.
These symbols, which are usually called
emoticons, are reminiscent of the Egyptian
hieroglyphics from which modern writing
descends. They are made from series of
punctuation marks and a few letters, and
some are fairly complex. The most common
are the smile and the wink. The smile is
made with a colon and a closing parenthesis,
and some computer programs with translate
that combination into a pictogram of a circle
containing two eyes and a smiling mouth:
. The wink is similar, using a semicolon
22 Picturing The First Writing
in place of a colon: ;). As online social
networking sites and chat rooms flourish,
these modern pictograms or hieroglyphics
become more and more common. Many
younger Internet users use more complex
pictograms in their communications, such as
a heart to indicate a feeling of love from the
writer of a message to the reader of the
message: <3. A pictogram the purpose of
which appears to be a mystery to adult users,
but which is popular among young users, is
the shark: (^^^). As written language
continues to evolve, it is possible that these,
or similar, pictograms may enter the
alphabet or the written lexicon as formal
expressions of written ideas.
Although written language
developed independently in human cultures
all over the world, modern Western writing
is a direct descendant of the petroglyphs of
north-eastern Africa. The Phoenician
alphabet, which is often given as the mother
of all modern scripts, has its roots in
Picturing The First Writing 23
Egyptian hieroglyphics. Ancient
petroglyphs may be created by early humans
who have not yet acquired the physiological
capacity for articulate speech. The concrete
ideas contained in petroglyphs are distilled
by the Sumerians and the Egyptians into
systems of stylized images that represent
syllables; Sumerian cuneiform writing dies
out, leaving Egyptian hieroglyphic writing
as the ancestor of modern writing. The
Phoenicians borrow the Egyptian
hieroglyphics and create a consonantal
alphabet that uses letters instead of syllabic
symbols to create written words. Later, the
Greeks borrow the Phoenician alphabet and
add letters to represent vowel sounds. The
Etruscans carry the Greek alphabet into
Italy, where it becomes the Latin alphabet
that is still used in many modern languages,
including French, Spanish, and English.
Over time, letters are added to and
subtracted from alphabets to accommodate
the sounds of languages, and some modern
24 Picturing The First Writing
languages use diacritic marks to indicate
stress. As spoken and written languages
continue to evolve, alphabets may also
continue to evolve. Specialized symbols
used in Internet communications, called
emoticons, may one day be accepted letters
of an expanded alphabet.
Picturing The First Writing 25
References
Abraham, C. (2011). Africa had its own
writing systems! New African, 509,
82-87. Retrieved from ProQuest
database.
Ager, S. (2012). Greek alphabet. Retrieved
from http://www.omniglot.com/
writing/greek.htm
Alleyne, R. (2010, March 2). Ostrich egg
markings could be earliest form of
writing. The DailyTelegraph, 7.
Retrieved from ProQuest database.
Epichoric. (2012). Merriam-Webster Online
Dictionary. Retrieved from
http://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/epichoric
Evans, A. J. (1903). Pre-Phoenician writing
in Crete, and its bearings on the
history of the alphabet. Man, 3, 50-
55. Retrieved from
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2840854
26 Picturing The First Writing
Fromkin, V., Rodman, R., & Hyams, N.
(2011). An introduction to language
(9th ed.). Boston, MA: Wadsworth.
Houston, S. D. (2004). The archaeology of
communication technologies. Annual
Review of Anthropology, 33, 223-
250. Retrieved from
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2506485
2
Luke-Killam, A. (2001). Language
capabilities of Homo erectus &
Homo neanderthalensis.
Retrieved from
http://www.lllf.uam.es/~clase/acceso
_local/LgCapabili.pdf
Maugh, T. H. (2011, April 3). Preserved
tablet rewrites history of ancient
Greece. Tulsa World, A12.
Retrieved from ProQuest database.
Norton, C.E. (1881). An ancient Etruscan
unguent jar. The American Art
Review, 2 (10), 165-166. Retrieved
Picturing The First Writing 27
from http://www.jstor.org/stable/
20559876
Than, K. (2011, March 30). Ancient tablet
found: Oldest readable writing in
Europe. National Geographic News
[Electronic version]. Retrieved from
https://talesfromthelou.wordpress.co
m/tag/athens-archaeological-society/
The origins of abc. (2010). Retrieved from
http://ilovetypography.com/2010/08/
07/where-does-the-alphabet-come-
from/
Picturing The First Writing 29
Debbie Barry and
her husband live in
southeastern
Michigan with their
two sons and their
two cats. The
family enjoys
exploring history through French and Indian
War re-enactment and through medieval re-
enactment in the Society for Creative
Anachronism (SCA). Debbie grew up in
Vermont, where she heard and collected
many family stories that she enjoys retelling
as historical fiction for young audiences.
Debbie graduated summa cum laude with a
B.A. in dual majors of social sciences with
an education concentration and of English in
2013.
Picturing The First Writing 31
Also look for these titles by Debbie Barry:
Books for Young Learners: Around the Color Wheel
Colors and Numbers
Stories for Children: Bobcat in the Pantry
Born in the Blizzard and Freshet
Expressing the Trunk
Gramp’s Bear Story
When Mary Fell Down the Well
Writing Competition
History and Genealogy: Family History of Deborah K.
Fletcher
Grandma Fletcher’s Scrapbooks
Nana’s Stories
Property Deeds and other Legal
Documents of the Fletcher and
Townsend Families
Property Deeds and other Legal
Documents of the Fletcher and
Townsend Families, 2nd Edition
with Digital Scans
The Red Notebook
The Red Notebook, 2nd Edition with
Digital Scans
Zoa Fletcher’s Photos
Zoa Has Her Way
32 Picturing The First Writing
Other Topics: A Journey Through My College
Papers: Undergraduate Series
American Students Are Crippled By
Cultural Diversity Education
Debbie’s Vision in Art, Volumes 1-4
Debbie’s Writing
Indifferent Universe
Loss
More Than Just Monogamy
Nature in Early American Literature
Religion and Myth in English Poetry
The Evil of Grendel
The Heart’s Vision
The Heart’s Vision in Color
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