The Earliest Form Of Writing

It is believe that language antedates writing by many thousands of years. Did you know that the forerunner of true writing can be seen in the cave paintings of the Upper Palaeolithic era? Events were recorded through pictorial representation.

Pictographic
The earliest narrative writing was expressed in pictography or pictures. This was an element in most of the early writing of the Mediterranean people.

Cuneiform or Ideograms
Originally pictographic, writing gradually transformed into ideograms. Writing was made up of symbols representing ideas rather than pictorial images. This form is called cuneiform after the appearance of marks produced by impressing a stylus in damp clay.

Hieroglyphic
Egypt developed this form of writing in parallel with the cuneiform writing. Originally this was also pictographic, then ideographic, and finally phonetic elements. Signs indicating the sound of the word intended were introduced when an ideogram had come to stand for more than one word. Therefore papyrus manuscripts exhibit 3 distinct elements in writing – the pictogram, the ideogram, and the phonetic symbol.

Alphabetic
This is the last major kind of writing. Alphabetic is thought to have been invented at some point during the 18th or 17th century BC in northern Palestine. The people of this area seem to have been responsible for the idea and practical system of alphabetic symbols.

The study of styles of writing has enabled people to learn much more about the history and development of writing. With the aid of technology these days, new discoveries are still being made.

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