The evolution of writing and reading - Essay Example

The earliest form it was developed out of pictographic symbols of objects, which we call pictographic writing. These Egyptians and Mesopotamians pictograms were just mere representations of the objects drawn, reading these symbols was only recognizing the representations of the objects. However, pictographic writing was independently developed in China during 1500 B.C. Later on, this form of writing slowly developed into ideograms (Gaur 16). Ideographic writing system is more of an abstract representation rather than a clear picture of objects.

Unlike the earlier system, pictogram, ideograms represented images that had conventional meanings (Daniels and Bright 12). For instance, with the pictographic system, a picture of a star meant a star in the sky while in the ideographic system, a picture of a starry sky meant darkness because stars were normally seen at night. This development in the history of writing could be taken as an improvement in the development of the human intellect. When our ancestors invented writing, it was only a mere representation of objects but since the emergence of the ideographic writing system, they began thinking beyond what they saw.

The earliest development of ideograms was in the East during the Bronze Age between 2500 B.C. and the first century B.C. During this development, experts found out that unlike the earlier form pictogram when our ancestors used their hands to draw symbols, they began using a wedged-shaped object in imprinting their writings in soft clay tablets (Daniels and Bright 15). In regards to the development of the human intellect that was shown through the emergence of ideographic writing that housed objects' abstract meaning, the use of a stylus was another notch higher than the earlier “handprint” style.

This innovation showed progress in terms of how our ancestors before wanted to leave a more concrete proof of development in writing. “Sacred writing” or better known as the Egyptian hieroglyphic was the combination of the two earlier writing systems plus their sounds. Looking at in from today, the chronological order of our progress in writing seemed to be a systematic process of the development in the human brain. We may ask the reason behind it being not in a different order. Is this a natural way of development, considering that we, of course, learned sounds first before images?

According to archeologists, anthropologists and other scientists, images were easier to express in writing than sounds even if oral communication was a natural instinct (Stuart 33). Another development in writing is logogram, which is the further progress towards figures. This form's graphemes represented words and was best known from the Japanese and Chinese systems. If we notice, this system is more complex than the other earlier forms of writing, which means that the human intellect again, indeed progressed.

The emergence of the logogram can be seen as the basis of the modern alphabet that we use today. How it has Changed? The emergence of technology surely made a big difference in our ways. Machines, automobiles, washing machines, computers, and the likes, seriously made a big impact in changing the lives of the people enslaved to them. The electronic mail or better known as email for instance, sends mails to other people across the globe in a snap. Unlike before, after the alphabet was invented, we used to write in scrolls and