“Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent,

literature dumb, science crippled, thought and

speculation at a standstill.”

(Barbara W. Tuchman)

• According to paleontologists who study fossils and other evidences of life on earth. the first man was a latecomer on earth and appeared on the planet only about one hundred thousand years ago. but even during those primitive days man walked upright, had adaptable hands and brain he was a social being who communicated with his kind.

He employed grunts and body language using gestures and postures to convey his ideas and needs to others. Slowly he developed oral language which enable to express more clearly the messages he wanted to convey.

In time ,various circumstances such as need to communicate to others who are distant in place caused man to devise symbols corresponding to his oral messages.

• We have evidences of this in the Old Stone Age rock painting and cuneiform or picture writing .

• From these we have knowledge of the earliest human act of picture-writing and reading.

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• The Sumerians were one of the earliest urban societies to emerge in the world, in Southern Mesopotamia more than 5000

years ago. They developed a writing system whose wedge-shaped strokes would

influence the style of scripts in the same geographical area for the next 3000 years.

• Eventually, all of these diverse writing systems, which encompass both logophonetic, consonantal alphabetic, and syllabic systems, became known as cuneiform.

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CUNEIFORM TABLET

Picture Writing during the Sumerian Civilization between 3000-4000 B.CIncised in baked tablets . They served to communicate and preserve private letters ,business contracts ,accounts ,tax receipts, royal orders and state records .

• The Egyptian civilization along the river Nile carved their pictorial symbols known as hieroglyphics on the stone wall of temples and tombs, or carefully painted them on wooden coffins . The Egyptian also invented paper derived from papyrus plant.

• Which they wrote their signs with reed pen and ink made by mixing water, gum and soot.

Hieroglyphics symbols

Hieroglyphics on walls• Hieroglyphics on papyrus

• Other civilizations such as those in Syria, Phoenicia and Palestine used more permanent writing materials such as leather rolled into scrolls.

• But the greatest contribution to the progress of ancient civilizations came from Phoenicians who adopted and spread the use of letter symbols or the alphabet

Phoenician Alphabet

• Due to its simplicity it was developed by other peoples such as Greeks and Romans . The Roman system of writing in turn to became the basis for all the systems of being read by modern people today.

Greek Alphabet Roman system of writing

Let us see how the letters

became well-

developed.

The first writing - Sumerian logographs from 4000 BC - were simply pictures of objects and

activities:

Sumerian Logographs - circa 4000 BC

In 2000 BC, the Phoenicians developed the first methods to represent spoken language - an alphabet consisting entirely of consonants:

• SPKNWRDSRTHSYMBLSFMNTLXPRNCNDWRTTNWRDSRTHSYMBLSFSPKNWRDS.

SPOKENWORDSARETHESYMBOLSOFMENTALEXPERIENCEANDWRITTENWORDSARETHESYMBOLSOF

SPOKENWORDS.

In 1000 BC, the first major upgrade occurred in the technology of representing language - the Greeks added vowels to the alphabet. This is essentially the same alphabet we use today - and it is considered one of humanity's greatest inventions.

SPOKENWORDSARETHESYMBOLSOFMENTALEXPERIENCE,ANDWRITTENWORDSARETHESYMBOLSO

FSPOKENWORDS.

• About 1000 years later, in 200 BC, the next major upgrade in writing appeared: punctuation marks. Punctuation was first observed in Alexandrian manuscripts of plays written by Aristophanes.

Yet another 1000 years passed before the next improvement in text, namely the invention of

lower case characters by Medieval Scribes.

Spokenwordsarethesymbolsofmentalexperience,andwrittenwordsarethesymbolsofspokenwords.

Spoken words are the symbols of mental experience, and written words

are the symbols of spoken words.

• About 1000 years ago, in 900 AD, the last major upgrade in text took place: the insertion of spaces between words. Also developed by Medieval Scribes.

That Ends!

Thank You