In 1886 an archeologists named Arthur Evans discovered an ancient stone that was engraved with mysterious writings. Through continuous investigation and research Evans made a connection between the mysterious writing system and the Aegean empire of the ancient Minoans. Later Evans discovered another unique form of writing that was very similar to the first one he discovered. Evans called these forms of writing Linear A and Linear B. Linear A and B is a form of writing systems that were used by ancient Crete. Evans named them “Linear” because the writings were formed in a linear structure instead of being a pictograph which was a very popular writing form during that time. Evans also discovered that Linear A was a predecessor of Linear B. The writing forms Linear A and Linear B opened up a new world of discovery for the archeologist of that time period. In return these writings made communications between people easier and became a stepping stone for our world a language today.
The very first breakthrough of deciphering the writings Linear A and Linear B came during the 1950’s when archaeologists named Alice Kober created a method of deciding the grammatical relationship between the symbols in Linear B. In her conclusion Kober determined that the symbols in Linear B depicted syllables instead of letters. Some of the scripts that the archaeologists found during the 20th century came from Ancient Greece, notably Mycenae, Pylos, and also Knossos which is on the island of Crete. The scripts had been encoded with Linear B writings on clay tablets. These scripts had about 90 different characters on them. Later after discovering these scripts an archeologist named Michael Ventris would be the first to decipher these writings. Ventris compared the writings from the mainland Greece to those form Crete. Certain symbols and words appeared on the Cretan texts but did not on the Greek ones. Michael Ventris then made a hypothesis that the words on the scripts were names of cities and place names in Crete. With these names Ventris was able to uncover much of the language. In conclusion, Ventris determined that the language of Linear B was Greek.
Despite Michael Ventris being able to decipher Linear B, Linear A presents a bigger mystery. Both these forms of writing look very similar in comparison to one another. When Linear A was to be deciphered by using tools from the decipherment of Linear B the scripts did not make any sense.
The authors talked about the two natural contexts that is used by prehistoric mud glyph artists: alluvial mud bank and thin clay veneers. The authors claim that they understand the used and the preservations of the alluvia...
Cuneiform was the first ever form of writing. The Sumerians were the main inventors of this writing. The symbol as we know them now consist of lines and wedges. One of the
(Within ancient manuscripts, the writing may be broken due to its fragileness; historians have to piece together some of the texts, because of missing words; therefore, translators place brackets […] in the areas, to indicate this lack.)
The ginormous volcano at Akrotiri on the island of Thera during the Bronze Age was devastating, and is speculated to be related to the fall of the Minoan civilization. Starting in 1867, archeologists discovered pottery, a buried city and frescoes. These discoveries are the most significant as the pottery and the buried city helped historians learn about the art, trade and societal aspects of Akrotiri, and the frescoes found revealed more information about Akrotiri’s art and religion. Clay artifacts found at the Akrotiri excavation site give evidence that Akrotiri traded with nearby locations like Crete and mainland Greece, and also with places like Egypt and Cyprus. Clay seals, that would have been used to seal papyrus documents, that were found on Akrotiri have also been found on Crete.
In the article "the persistence of the word" written by James Gleick, he argues that writing is the hardest technology to erase from our mind. Writing made knowledge more durable stuff, which represented the roots of human history. The author used one-to-one correspondence methods, link examples with explanations to introduced writing into three categories. First, the way of writing. Writing as a technology requires premeditation and special art, it is a competence forever bodying itself in a series of concrete performance. In ancient times writing usually exists on paper or stone, show our respect to the culture, paper and stone is a kind of tools which can inspired immediate detractors, writing on stone is
Writing is one of the many factors which can lead to an unequal world. Writing was “One of the most important inventions in human history” (Prososki, “Writing”). It was believed to come from the Fertile Crescent called Sumer around 5,000 years ago. Over the years, writing has advanced as people created writing and printing systems, which were able to reach
This essay shows us how determined, beyond all measures, Fredrick Douglas was to learn to read and write. Douglas’s primary reading source came from his mistress. Prior to her adopting her husband’s malevolent ways, she taught Douglas the alphabet, and since then opened a door filled with eagerness for him to learn more, even if it was without her help. “Mistress, in teaching me the alphabet, had given me the inch, and no precaution could prevent me from taking the ell.” (Douglas, 2004, p101). Fredrick continued his voracious reading of many books, and sneaking of newspapers in the Masters house. He also used friendship to facilitate in his learning to read journey. “The plan which I adopted and the one by which I was most successful, was
It was during this period, the Northern European scholars began to cast doubt on the colonization of ancient Greece by the Egyptian and Phoenicians and their cultural development of that time (Bernal, p. 7). “Historiographical developments cannot be linked to the availability of any evidence” (Bernal, p. 7). Sadly, there were some great discoveries found after the models changed, but they were ignored, like Jean-Francois Champollion findings, he had begun to decipher the hieroglyphics during 1820’s, the decipherment of cuneiform, and the first arc...
Writing is perhaps the most important building block of communication - after verbal speech, of course. Writing, like most of human civilization, has its roots in ancient Mesopotamia. The first writing systems began in a style known as cuneiform (Cuneiform, 2013). These wedge-shaped markings have their roots in Sumerian culture and were used predominantly for record keeping and accounting. At the archaeological site of Uruk in what is modern day Iraq, a great wealth of knowledge has been gained from the artifacts located there. Uruk was a ceremonial site and is home to the world’s oldest known documented written documents (Price and Feinman, 2013). The documents discovered list quantities of goods that may have been stored at Uruk, leading archaeologists to believe that writing in this part of the world was developed primarily to keep lists of transactions and stockpiled quantities of goods located at the site.
Egyptian hieroglyphs were carved in stone, and later hieratic script was written on papyrus. However, Olmec glyphs was discovered on cylinders. Hence, Egyptians and Olmec had different types of writing, and different places to write.
Mayan’s writing allowed them to record their history, and because of this we are able to know more about the Mayans and their culture. They wrote using hieroglyphics, picture writing, based off of the Olmec’s script writing system (Maloy 9). These glyphs are thought to be the most advanced writing system in the ancient world (“Maya Culture”). As a result they weren’t deciphered until the 16th century by Diego de Landa (“Maya
The Rosetta Stone was found in the town of Rosetta and sent to French scholars in Alexandria during the summer of 1799 (Giblin 23). This black, measuring 112 by 76 stone found while the soldiers in the town were destroying a citadel was unprecedented because it had three different languages on it, the only understood one being Greek (Silet 1). The three languages on the stone were, as stated, Greek, the common Egyptian demotic, and 14 lines of hieroglyphics (Giblin 27). Scholars familiar with the Greek language and writing system were able to translate that section, and the final sentence revealed a fact that set the groundwork for future translations of the other parts. The final line reads: “This decree shall be inscribed on a stela of hard stone in sacred and native and Greek characters” (Giblin 27). It came to be understood that the three sections all contained the same message, and scholars promptly set to work on the translations.
When writing, hieroglyphs are separated into three main groups: ideograms, phonograms, and determinatives. The ideograms were hieroglyphs used either to directly represent the object pictured, such as a picture of a building representing a building, or they were used to represent something closely related to the symbol, such as a picture of walking legs representing movement. The second type, phonograms, were used to phonetically sound out words. This is similar to a language such as English where each symbol represents a sound instead of an object, and multiple hieroglyphs would be used to together to form words which could be completely unrelated to the pictures drawn. This could lead to a lot of confusion as most hieroglyphs could be used as ideograms or as phonograms. This is why there was a third type, determinatives. Determinatives were generally hieroglyphs that were added after a set of phonograms to show that they should be read phonetically instead of as ideograms. The determinative itself was not sounded out when read, but they were used to show where a word ended and also help with the meaning of the word. For example a symbol of walking legs used as the determinative would show the word had something to do with movement or travel (Allen,
The Web. The Web. Lendering, Jona. “Etemenanki (The tower of Babel).” n.d. Livius: Articles on Ancient History.