History of writing: its development in antiquity.

A journey through the beginnings of the use of writing in Asia and Europe.

Writing is both a practice and a system. It is the graphic representation of ideas, concepts and objects by means of signs called letters. The latter can have different characteristics depending on the specific society that uses them, which also generates different writing systems. One of them is, for example, the alphabet, and its history is very long, dating back to about four centuries BC.

In this article we will a brief review of the history of writing, addressing the trajectory it has followed.The history of the alphabet and its history is very extensive, dating back to more or less four centuries BC.

History of writing in Antiquity

Mesopotamia, the ancient Near Eastern region, is recognized as the place where the beginnings of writing were developed, which later gave rise to our current alphabetic system.

This process was made possible by the multilingual and multicultural context that was characteristic of the area around the 4th millennium B.C. This is because this historical moment allowed the convergence of different ethnic groups. Particularly important for the history of writing was the combination of Semitic languages with the combination of Semitic languages with the language of the Sumerians, which was transmitted by means of pictograms that represented objects.

Cuneiform writing

The Sumerians are credited with having created cuneiform writing. And this is so because their pictograms were not simple graphic representations but conveyed messages in a systematic way with linguistic value.

In addition, it is called "cuneiform writing" because, in the beginning, pictograms were made on clay tablets and by the use of wedges, the pictograms were made on clay tablets and by the use of wedges (pieces of wood or metal with a point and an edge used to break or make incisions). (pieces of wood or metal with a sharp point and edge used to break or make incisions). In fact, the word "wedge" comes from the Latin cuneus, from which the term "cuneiform" is derived.

Although the language of the Sumerians did not survive, cuneiform writing was a technique adopted by various Indo-European and non-Indo-European groups. For example, it was recovered by the Babylonians, but it was also used to write languages such as Akkadian and Elamite. It was used by the Persians (a people of Indo-European origin originally based in Iran), Hurrites (Mitanni people of Northern Mesopotamia), Hittites (people of the Anatolian peninsula, one of the powers of the Middle East).

Thus, writing as a technique, and clay tablets along with wedges as the main tools, spread throughout Asia Minor, Syria and surrounding areas.. It is estimated that cuneiform writing was used for three and a half millennia and the last record of a cuneiform tablet dates back to 75 AD (Ferreiro, 1994).

Subsequently and through different historical events related to the way in which human settlements have been generated; cultural diversity and linguistic mixing made it possible for the writing system initiated by the Sumerians to reach the hands of the Hellenistic peoples. to reach the hands of the Hellenic peoples..

Origins of the alphabet

The Greeks inherited from the Phoenicians and/or the Canaanites an ordered set of signs and symbols also associated with a name and a sound (known as the "principle of acrophony").

This ordered set of signs and symbols was assimilated and adapted by the Greeks for their own purposes. Specifically, it is the so-called "proto-Canaanite" (Bronze Age) writing system that has been recognized as the paradigm from which the Phoenician alphabet developed. developed the Phoenician alphabetwhich in turn laid the foundations for the development of the Latin, Greek and Hebrew alphabets, among others.

Writing, reading and literacy

The writing system that we know as alphabet is the result of a multi-literacy of the peoples conquered by the inhabitants of Ancient Greece, and arises as a result of the rich cultural and linguistic exchange.

This means that the scribes of the time had strongly mixed alphabets, worked, used and mastered more than one language. Another consequence was that these alphabets were administered and distributed according to social systems. the process of secularization of writing (when it ceased to be (when it ceased to be a practice reserved for religious cults).

This is why, inevitably, the history of writing systems is linked to the history of literacy, insofar as the latter is the process through which the discourses to be written are controlled, used and distributed (Ferreiro, 1994). Moreover, since writing and texts do not exist without material support, the history of writing is also the history of reading, an issue that has recently been addressed by various linguists and historians.

Literacy followed a process of systematization and expansion that had different characteristics in the following historical moments of Western civilization, in a close relationship with printed cultureThe transmission of knowledge and education as fundamental practices and values for development.

Bibliographical references:

• Ferreiro, E. (1994). Diversity and literacy process: from celebration to awareness. Latin American Journal of Reading. 15(3): 2-11.
• Laporte, J.P. (2012). Review of "History of reading and writing in the western world" by Martins Lyons. Journal information, culture and society. 27: 123-135.