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Technology of writing and literacy among China, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Indus civilizations

March 2006
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Writing in Mesopotamia originated in the form of complicated cuneiform By 1500 BCE, the Phoenician peoples began experimenting with a simple form of alphabet, in the form of 22 letters. This early form of writing spread quickly to a number of locations. Because educated officials were the only ones who could learn cuneiform, they were often the only ones who could write or read documents. However with a simple alphabet, the commoners now had in their power a way to write down important things like how much grain they sold and so forth.

In Egypt, the form of writing changed many times. It first began as pictographs, entering Egypt sometime around 3200 BCE, but later turned into symbols that represented sounds and ideas. The word hieroglyphs came about from Greek visitors who saw these symbols on magnificent monuments. Papyrus, a form of early paper, later became the standard issue for writing on due to its abundance. There was a simpler form of writing that developed due to the same problems the Mesopotamians had. The priests were the only ones to use the complex form, so the simpler hieratic style came into place for use by the common people. This form lasted until it was replaced by later Greek forms sometime in the later 600 C.E. Two forms later emerged, the Coptic, and the Demotic. The Demotic is heavily influenced by a Greek style, while the Coptic became popular with later Christianized Egyptians.

India was not as fortunate as the other civilizations in keeping their writing styles preserved. The Harappan people probably used a very early style of writing, with symbol representing sounds or objects. After disastrous events relocated many people and buried cities under water and mud, this form of writing became lost and hard to find. The later arrivals, the Aryans, did not use writing, instead they used oral poems and hymns, which were memorized and grouped into the Vedas.

When compared to other civilizations, it would appear that China had decided to take a different approach to writing. While it was a goal in other parts of the world to make writing simpler and easier to read and write, China’s writing system gradually became more complicated. The earliest form of writing can be seen on oracle bones. Instead of merchants, the royal courts were the main users of this early writing. These bones were used by priests to answer questions that were written on the bones. Before these bones, in the Xia age, writing was either uncommon or the records were written on perishable items, which is why they are so hard to find. During the Shang age, oracle bones came into light. By the time of Zhou age, the small inscriptions turned into stylized and complex pictographs. Examples of this were the Books of Song and Poems. From here on it seemed that the writing style continued to become more fine and complicated, probably as a way for the educated class to keep some minor control over the people, since they were the only ones who knew how to write and read these fantastically drawn symbols.