Writing System - History of Writing Systems

History of Writing Systems

Writing systems were preceded by proto-writing, systems of ideographic and/or early mnemonic symbols. The best known examples are:

• Jiahu symbols, carved on tortoise shells in Jiahu, ca. 6600 BC
• Vinča signs (Tărtăria tablets), ca. 5300 BC
• Early Indus script, ca. 3500 BC.
• Nsibidi script, ca. before 500 AD

The invention of the first writing systems is roughly contemporary with the beginning of the Bronze Age in the late Neolithic of the late 4th millennium BC. The Sumerian archaic cuneiform script, the Cretan hieroglyphs and the Egyptian hieroglyphs are generally considered the earliest writing systems, both emerging out of their ancestral proto-literate symbol systems from 3400–3200 BC with earliest coherent texts from about 2600 BC. It is generally agreed that Sumerian writing was an independent invention; however, it is debated whether Egyptian writing was developed completely independently of Sumerian, or was a case of cultural diffusion.

A similar debate exists for the Chinese script, which developed around 1200 BC.

The pre-Columbian Mesoamerican writing systems (including among others Olmec and Maya scripts) are generally believed to have had independent origins.

It is thought that the first consonantal alphabetic writing appeared before 2000 BC, as a representation of language developed by Semitic tribes in the Sinai-peninsula (see History of the alphabet). Most other alphabets in the world today either descended from this one innovation, many via the Phoenician alphabet, or were directly inspired by its design.

The first true alphabet is the Greek script which consistently represents vowels since 800 BC. The Latin alphabet, a direct descendant, is by far the most common writing system in use.