History of Writing

19-02-23 00 / episode: 34

Script

The history of writing.

Writing has been with us for a long time and like the stone tools and the iron tools and the bronze tools.

Writing is a tool and it changed the history of man.

But you could argue that writing changed it even more than our metals and stones.

Writing sort of started around 3200 B.C.

That's when they started writing in Mesopotamia and they got the beginnings of cuneiform.

Then around 3000 BC.

The Egyptians also started writing and they made a hieroglyphs

which stuck around for several 1000 years Around 1400 BC in China.

They started writing and just around the same time the phoenicians began an alphabet.

So you can see writing popping up all over the world.

And the Japanese started writing their own writing system around the seventh or eighth century A.

D.

And that was around the same time that the Arabs started writing their own writing system.

So there's lots of writing systems in the world today.

The phoenicians made the alphabet which was picked up by the Greeks

and then by the romans and the romans.

Well with their empire, they spread the the latin alphabet and now latin alphabet is used sort of all over the world.

Not in every country but most people can recognize it somehow or some variation of it.

So these alphabets and these writing systems

had a tremendous impact on human history and our way of thinking.

Now we can read the thoughts of men who lived thousands of years ago

and we can record their brilliant ideas

and then we don't have to reinvent the wheel every time a new person is born, writing is amazing.

Where did you learn to write? And what writing system do you use?