Origins Of Written Word.

This is a new field of study that has interested me the last couple of months.

In this thread I would like to know the origins of written word and all the major forms of alphabets that derive from it.

Would anyone here like to take a crack at it?

I am very new to this subject.

Cave paintings, the use of pebbles as counters, the basic concepts for communication were probably pre-cursors.

Light, light transmits information about the environment and we convert it to words, images, ideas in our mind… our organs convert it a format we can use for us before it gets to our brains.

Language was a combination of the nature of light + neural complexity and the right kinds of configurations. I’m sure as science goes forward we’ll be able to decode animals basic language, like “get food”, “go home”, etc, etc.

Drawing → Symbol → Semantics → Phonics.

Some archaeologists theorize that one of the “mystical powers” of an early Homosapien shaman was of accurate drawing. The more accurately they could draw, the more they could eventually -create- the things they drew. So with drawing regarded as an element of survival and power, it progressed with seriousness. By associating different drawings together, it was hoped that the drawings could cause things to happen. So repetitious runes created consistent symbols. I don’t think there really are records of when drawings became semantics. But we probably never would have had the ambition to make a written language if we didn’t at first believe it was magical and could manipulate the forces of nature.

edge.org/3rd_culture/ramacha … an_p1.html

Aesthetics remains a religious hallmark even for that of cave paintings.

Ancient paintings are primitive records of history and to create a record of history one must think themselves as “special” in identity which originates from eccentric religionism.

The first forms of magic were merely expressions of science hidden or unknown to others.

Modern science will always be known historically as the idolatrus faith of men that originates from a million shamans that came before them.

Or maybe most people think themselves ‘special’ because of cognitive dissonance? Ever hear of heuristics/biases? ever study them?

#-o

Or maybe one created a mythic conception of heaven feeling themselves to be special under it thus creating the ideal to transcend the natural into a mythological idealization. ( abided with writing of course to record information as a utility device in creating this dream land.)

The first form of writing was pictures of art called petrograms.

Most petrograms are religious and mythic.

Signs and symbology are religious in origin.

On ancient paintings of the paleolithic age we can dismiss the idea that they were intended to be decoration.

They were most likely served for magical purposes.

The idea behind them would be that you acquired magical power over the creature which you drew as if you had a real part of it before you on the wall.

If you did things to that image you might also have the magical power of doing similar things to its prototype.

In the mythological traditions of ancient China, Babylon,Sumeria and Egypt the invention of writing was long attributed to divine beings.

Writing is pre-eminently the art of civilization.

It made civilization possible.

The first forms of advanced writing are associated with ancient temples.

The first discoverance of cuneiform tablets were discovered in temple ruins. Ancient Sumerian ideographics relate to temple accounts.

The first civilizations were dominated by temporal power.

Writing came first before advance numerical math systems since mathmatics derives from writing.

The first sciences were dominated by temple priests.

What is distinctively “human” is not the capacity for language.

It is the crystallisation of language in writing.

Writing creates a artificial memory whereby humans can enlarge their expirience beyond the limits of one generation or one way of life.

At the same time it has allowed them to invent a world of abstract entities and mistake them for reality.

With writing where men are no longer pointed to a natural world with other animals signs point backwards to the human mouth which then becomes the source of all sense.

I take it that noone is willing to contend the opposite of what I am saying.

Without writing, culture, which has been defined as ’ a communicable intelligence,’ would not exist.

( except, perhaps, in a form so rudimentary as to be virtually unrecognisable.)

The first forms of writing that is petrograms were explicitly used for magic and ritualistic expression.

One might say that all of our cultural cues and power of infrastructure originated in our absurd beliefs of magic. By being overoptimistic (“god will reward us with rain”) we also became knowledgable. It took the renaissance to fend off the problems with this magic-belief which hurdled us toward the sciences.

Our beliefs in ritualistic forms of magic followed by habitualization is still present Gaiaguerrila.

One needs only to look at the infrastructure of modern economics guided by underlining forms of hysterical beliefs.

On the contrary it has not diminished but instead it has grown throughout the ages unto our present.

It is alive and well today as it was yesterday.