#linearascript

The Origins of Writing

Writing is humanity’s way of turning speech into marks. It began as cave paintings about 35,000 years ago, which may have told stories rather than just showing pictures. But actual writing systems appeared much later.

Key Facts

Humans started expressing ideas visually through cave paintings around 35,000 BCE, reflecting early language development.

The first true writing system, cuneiform, appeared in Sumer, Mesopotamia, around 3500–3000 BCE.

Egyptian hieroglyphics developed around 3150 BCE, possibly influenced by Mesopotamian writing.

The Phoenician alphabet, which influenced Greek and Roman scripts, evolved from earlier Near Eastern writing.

Independently, the Maya in Mesoamerica developed writing by about 250 CE, and the Chinese created their writing system separately.

Historical Context

Before writing, humans communicated through physical gestures and oral language, with early visual records like cave paintings potentially telling stories of everyday life. Writing revolutionized this by enabling precise and lasting records for administration, religion, and culture in ancient civilizations, beginning in Mesopotamia.

Historical Significance

Writing allowed complex societies to organize, govern, and preserve knowledge across generations. It enabled the survival of literature, law codes, and religious texts, shaping history and culture worldwide. The evolution of alphabets simplified writing, influencing modern languages and literacy globally.

Script: The Written Record of Humanity

A writing system is listed as one of the five factors necessary for the development of civilization. Although frequently taken for granted in the present day, script has been vital to the progress of humanity. Script has served to communicate the most profound, as well as the most practical, aspects of the human condition. From the simple need to communicate across distances, writing systems became the means by which people preserved past knowledge, great advances, disappointments and disasters, offering those in the present the possibility of learning from the past by reading about earlier events and hearing from older voices.

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Linear B Script

Linear B script was the writing system of the Mycenaean civilization of the Bronze Age Mediterranean. The syllabic script was used to write Mycenaean Greek from c. 1500 to c. 1200 BCE. It was deciphered by Michael Ventris in 1952, and so the script has provided invaluable insights into the Mycenaean culture and its interaction with contemporary Mediterranean civilizations.