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The History of Writing
Writing is commonly used by billions of people each day. However, many of us don’t know the history of writing, and
some of us would rather not ponder it for fear of getting a headache. Written communication is much needed today,
and many societies could not survive without writing. Writing has a history like everything that is in existence
today. The exact history of this form of communication may be clouded and even over exaggerated at times, but there
are two known facts, writing has been used for a very long time and writing will be used for a very long time. The
true beginning of writing is unknown, but it does have a comprehensive history. The first artistic paintings and
writings were said to be done in the form of naturalistic paintings of animals and people in caves. The pictures
were known as attempts to appease the spirits of animals that were needed to kill in the hunt.
In ancient times pictures were also done of human beings. These pictures of humans were typically done in series,
with a figure appearing in different physical positions progressively, which represented positions a ceremonial
dance performed by ancient people. Progressively, the early societies began to stylize their messages, which were
similar to using symbols to represent restrooms, handicap-accessible places, and international road signs. These
stylized symbols are known a petroglyphs and hieroglyphs. The most famous system of hieroglyphs belonged to the
ancient Egyptians who had hieroglyphics that were partially representational pictures that were stylized.
Petrogylphs were often used by Native Americans as messages along trade routes, ritual information, and various
other things. However, they were not as sophisticated as hieroglyphs. During this ancient period, Europeans
preserved esoteric knowledge in runes and in an alphabetic writing system known as ogham.
The Chinese culture also has a place in the history of writing. The culture began by writing like many others by
using pictures then slowly moving to stylized pictures. However, over time the pictures became less
representational and more abstract. Today, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and other Asian languages are written with
the use of ideeographs. An ideeograph is used to represent an idea instead of a word. Around 1700 B.C. a new form
of writing appeared in the Middle Eastern cultures. During this time, the Phoenicians created an alphabet. This
development was different from all others because the symbols represented sounds, not pictures or ideas.
The combinations of sounds made up the words of the language, which was crucial in the history of writing. The
alphabet developed by the Phoenicians spread to Northern Africa and became the system of the Arabs, and spread
northwest to Greece. The Greek developed their own letters, which were modified even more to become the Cyrillic
alphabets of Russia, the Balkans and the Romans. The Romans modified the alphabet and made it the alphabet that is
recognized today.
The history of writing developed even further into the 20th century. Following World War II, the Japanese and
Chinese began to use the alphabet to represent the sounds of their languages. For these Asian cultures, the
alphabetic system was easier to write by hand and to print economically, so it made life far simpler for those
cultures. The artistic form of writing used by these Asian cultures will likely never die, but there are many
advantages to using an alphabetic system, and many modern people of these cultures benefit handsomely from learning
to read and write using the current alphabet.
The history of writing is long and sometimes vague, but it can be seen as a necessary teaching that will help
modern societies understand the importance of written communication, and understand how the world would be forever
changed without it.
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