Ensayos

Early civilizations and the
development of writing systems in the world.

The origin of primitive writing systems.
As a natural process of renovation of world civilizations, ice ages come. Blanketing most of the Southern and Northern Hemispheres of the earth planet with trillions of tons of ice for millions of years they bury and destroy all the civilizations in its area. It stretches up tothe major parts of Europe including England. Its spine chilling below freezing winds shoot cold waves all over the continent which shatters the rest of the civilizations. India is not much affected by the ice ages because it is in the tropical zone and the range of the Himalayan hills protects it from the cold winds of the deep North. So its ancient civilization continues without interruption.
Thelast ice age receded around 10,000 years ago. It took some time to develop the normal conditions of living. The survivors of the ice age were small groups of people who were living a nomadic life. They spread all over the southern parts of Europe and the middle parts of Asia, the Gulf countries, some parts of North America, South America and Africa.
Sumerians and the first writing system in theworld.
The earliest known records show the presence of some village people in the north of Mesopotamia around 7000 BC. People were also living in the Sumer region of south Mesopotamia since 5000 BC. Later on some more people came and settled in Sumer. The Sumerians developed a form of pictographic writing that used word pictures like bird, fish, ox or grain etc., around 4000 - 3500 BC. In 3000BC, it developed into a cursive form of cuneiform style of writing which was a wedge shaped linear impression on clay tablets.

Cuneiform writing was first in pictographic type. After the 3rd millennium BC it took a conventional form of linear cuneiform drawings and was written from left to right. Akkadian, Aramaic, Persian and also other languages of the Middle East were written in cuneiform.Since the time of Christ the knowledge about the Sumerians and their language was totally forgotten and vanished from the history. It was known only after 1800 AD when the cuneiform script was deciphered. The first one was Semitic-Babylonian Akkadian language and the other was the Persian language. It was then that the correct name ‘Sumerian’ was given to the Sumerian language. The cuneiform writingdates between the 3rd millennium and 2nd century BC. It could be categorized as: (1) Sumerian cuneiform, (2) Babylonian cuneiform and (3) Assyrian cuneiform.

The hieroglyphics, and the language and religion of ancient Egypt.
Egyptians borrowed the idea of pictorial writing from Sumerians. Their writing, which was introduced in 3000 BC, was called hieroglyphics and was styled as pictography orideograms. It had about 700 signs and was written mainly from right to left but occasionally from left to right or top to downward. Original hieroglyphics were developed into phonetic hieroglyphs like the characters of an alphabet. But it had no vowels so, even after deciphering the words, it was not possible to know their actual pronunciations. Around 1100 BC it was changed to a newly developedcursive style called the ‘hieratic,’ and then in about 700 BC it was changed to ‘demotic.’
Demotic script was an improvement in the writing system of the Egyptian language. It became popular because it was easy to write and understand as compared to hieratic. The word hieratic received its name from the Greek word hieratikos, which means ‘priestly,’ because, at some time, it was the script thatwas used mainly for sacred texts, and the word demotic also came from the Greek word demotikos, which means ‘for the people or in common use.’ Hieroglyphic texts were mostly found on the walls of temples and tombs.
Egyptian ‘demotic’ language was replaced by Coptic around 200 AD which was written in Greek alphabet with seven letters borrowed from ‘demotic.’ It had six dialects, four of the north...