December 12, 2024
Behold the Oldest Written Text in the World: The Kish Tablet, Circa 3500 BC

Symbol by means of José-Manuel Ben­i­to, by means of Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Some consult with the writ­ten Chi­nese lan­guage as ideo­graph­ic: this is, struc­tured accord­ing to a sys­tem by which every sym­bol rep­re­sents a par­tic­u­lar thought or con­cept, whether or not summary or con­crete. That’s true of cer­tain Chi­nese char­ac­ters, however just a small minor­i­ty. Maximum of them are actu­al­ly logographs, every of which rep­re­sents a phrase or a part of a phrase. However when you dig deep sufficient into their his­to­ry — and the his­to­ry of oth­er Asian lan­guages that use Chi­nese-derived vocab­u­lary — you’ll to find that some get started­ed out way back as %­tographs, designed visu­al­ly to rep­re­despatched the item to which they referred.

That does­n’t hang true for Chi­nese by myself: it sounds as if, in reality, that every one writ­ten lan­guages started as kinds of %­to­graph­ic “professional­to-writ­ing,” no less than judg­ing by means of the ear­li­est texts cur­hire­ly identified to guy. If we take a look at the previous­est of all of them, the lime­stone “Kish pill” unearthed from the website of the epony­mous historic Sumer­ian metropolis in mod­ern-day Iraq, we will in some sense “learn” sev­er­al of the sym­bols in its textual content, even 5 and a part mil­len­nia after it was once writ­ten. “The writ­ing on its sur­face is natural­ly %­to­graph­ic,” says the nar­ra­tor of the transient IFLScience video underneath, “and rep­re­sents a mid­level between professional­to-writ­ing and the extra sophis­ti­cat­ed writ­ing of the cuneiform.”

Cuneiform, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured right here on Open Cul­ture, was once utilized by the traditional Child­lo­ni­ans to label maps and file stew recipes, amongst oth­er impor­tant duties. “First devel­oped round 3200 B.C. by means of Sumer­ian scribes within the historic city-state of Uruk, in present-day Iraq, as a method of file­ing trans­ac­tions, cuneiform writ­ing was once cre­at­ed by means of the usage of a reed sty­lus to make wedge-shaped inden­ta­tions in clay capsules,” says Archae­ol­o­gy magazine­a­zine. Over 3,000 years, this ear­li­est prop­er script “was once utilized by scribes of mul­ti­ple cul­tures over that point to write down a num­ber of lan­guages oth­er than Sumer­ian, maximum significantly Akka­di­an, a Semit­ic lan­guage that was once the lin­gua fran­ca of the Assyr­i­an and Child­lon­ian Empires.”

Cuneiform was once extensively utilized to write down the Scheil dynas­tic pill, which dates from the ear­ly sec­ond mil­len­ni­um BC. That suggests we will learn it, and thus know that it com­pris­es a lit­er­ary-his­tor­i­cal textual content that lists off the reigns of var­i­ous rulers of Sumer­ian towns. We must word that the Scheil dynas­tic pill may be, some­occasions, known as the “Kish pill,” which positive­ly caus­es some con­fu­sion. However for the anony­mous creator of the ear­li­er Kish pill, who would have lived about two mil­len­nia ear­li­er, the emer­gence of cuneiform and all of the civ­i­liza­tion­al devel­op­ments it might make pos­si­ble lay a long way at some point. His %­to­graph­ic textual content might nev­er be deci­phered prop­er­ly or mapped to a his­tor­i­cal­ly document­u­ment­ed lan­guage, however no less than we will inform that he will have to positive­ly have had fingers and toes kind of like our personal.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Outdated­est Recognized Sen­tence Writ­ten in an Alpha­wager Has Been Discovered on a Head-Lice Comb (Cir­ca 1700 BC)

The best way to Write in Cuneiform, the Outdated­est Writ­ing Sys­tem within the International: A Brief, Allure­ing Intro­duc­tion

Dic­tio­nary of the Outdated­est Writ­ten Lan­guage – It Took 90 Years to Com­plete, and It’s Now Unfastened On-line

How Writ­ing Has Unfold Around the International, from 3000 BC to This 12 months: An Ani­mat­ed Map

40,000-12 months-Outdated Sym­bols Present in Caves International­large Would possibly Be the Ear­li­est Writ­ten Lan­guage

Based totally in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and wide­casts on towns, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His tasks come with the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Towns and the e-book The State­much less Town: a Stroll thru Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­e-book.


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