The Invention of Writing

The independent invention of writing took place at least three times in three regions: Mesopotamia, China and Mesoamerica. (The hieroglyphs of Egypt might have had connections to Mesopotamia.) Writing is the first I.T. revolution – that’s the thrust of Amalia Gnanadesikan’s The Writing Revolution: Cuneiform to the Internet published by Wiley-Blackwell.

I’m four chapters into the book and finding it utterly fascinating! I’ve been learning about logograms, morphemes, phonemes, and what constitutes a syllabary and an alphabet. Back in college, for one of my few free electives, I took an Introduction to Linguistics class. What I found fascinating then, I find even more fascinating now since Gnanadesikan compares and contrasts speaking and writing and their evolution through history and culture. Although academic in nature, The Writing Revolution is straightforward to read as a narrative. Each chapter is crisply written in 15-20 pages, and includes an interesting slant – betrayed by its title. Chapters 2-4 are Cuneiform: Forgotten Legacy, Egyptian Hieroglyphs and the Quest for Eternity, and Chinese: A Love of Paperwork.

The introductory chapter, though, was mind-blowing (at least to me). The book isn’t just about writing; the author is an engaging writer! I will quote three short paragraphs to demonstrate the author’s prose. The first is the marvelous opener to the chapter. The second is something I’ve ruminated on when considering whether all my documents should be stored and accessed in the ubiquitous cloud. The third is simply mind-blowing to the scientist in me.

“This sentence is a time machine. I wrote it a long time before you opened this book and read it. Yet here are my words after all this time, pristinely preserved, as good as new. The marvelous technology that allows the past to speak directly to the future in this way is by now so pervasive that we take it for granted: it is writing.”

“Writing was invented to solve a particular problem: information only existed if someone could remember it. Once it was gone from memory, it was gone for good. As human societies became more complex, those attempting to control them found that their memories were overtaxed. What they needed was an external storage device. What they came up with is writing.”

“This is the essence of writing. Writing represents language, but it outlasts the spoken word. The oldest examples of writing have lasted over five thousand years. Others will last only until I press my computer’s delete key. But all have the potential to outlast the words I speak, or the words I put together in my head. A spoken (or mentally composed) message unfolds in time, one word replacing the previous one as it is uttered. Writing arranges the message in space, each word following the previous one in a line. Writing is therefore a process of translating time into space.”

Translating time into space. That’s a marvelous way of thinking about writing and reading. It highlights Spritz as an oddly strange way to read; the e-reader translates space back into time. By flashing one word at a time, it supposedly strips out the work of moving one’s eyes across and down a page of text thereby allowing faster and smoother reading. I’ve never tried Spritz, nor have I the desire to do so. The chemist-philosopher in me enjoys the aesthetic viewing of words surrounded by ‘white space’. Both are important: Atoms and the Void.

I learned all manner of interesting factoids from The Writing Revolution. Scribes and recorders, looking for speed and efficiency, played a significant role in the evolution of writing. Dead ‘classical’ languages (Latin being a modern-day example) in written form played an important role in education and the priesthood long after they ceased to be spoken. The facing of Egyptian hieroglyphs could indicate the direction of the text but also flourished as an aesthetic part of the text itself. Writing as art! We see this in Chinese calligraphy today. But much of writing was practical: record-keeping for an increasing administrative complex. Deciphering of ancient languages was aided by the egos of long-dead kings. But even as scholars are able to ‘read’ them and extract meaning, we don’t quite know what some of these languages might have ‘sounded’. Writing leads to both permanence and loss, as the ephemeral spoken words evolve and evaporate.

What is the best way to represent, store and transmit information? Different languages have different constraints to optimize, but neighboring cultures were quick to trade, borrow and steal where needed. Historical contingency is ever present as we view the evolution of languages, both spoken and written. If you are intrigued by the ever-changing organizing principles of the babble of Babel, then you will enjoy The Writing Revolution. I highly recommend it!

Now on to Chapter 5, Maya Glyphs: The Calendar of Kings.