The History of Writing - Where the Story Begins - Extra History
Summary
TLDREl guion explora la historia del concepto de la escritura, una tecnología duradera de la humanidad. Comenzó en la antigua Sumeria, donde las templos también funcionaban como almacénes gigantes. Los sastres necesitaban registrar el flujo de bienes, lo que llevó a la creación de símbolos que representaban palabras y sonidos. Con el tiempo, estos símbolos se simplificaron y se volvieron más abstractos, dando lugar a un sistema de escritura que permitió expresar ideas complejas. La escritura en barro se preservó y nos permite entender su evolución hasta llegar a los sistemas de escritura más abstractos que utilizamos hoy.
Takeaways
- 📜 La escritura es una de las tecnologías más duraderas de la humanidad, permitiendo transmitir pensamientos a lo largo de generaciones.
- 🔍 La historia de la escritura comienza en la antigua Sumeria, donde se utilizó por primera vez de manera extensa.
- 🏛 Los templos en Sumeria eran importantes no solo como lugares de adoración, sino también como enormes almacénes para la riqueza de la ciudad.
- 📦 Los registros de las transacciones económicas eran necesarios para gestionar el inventario de bienes en los templos, dando lugar a los primeros intentos de escritura.
- 📝 El uso inicial de marcas en tablillas de barro para contar y registrar bienes evolucionó en símbolos más abstractos con el tiempo.
- 🐄 Los símbolos para objetos, como un animal, eventualmente adquirieron significado como palabras, permitiendo la representación fonética.
- 🗣️ La estructura de la lengua sumeria, con palabras monosilábicas y conceptos construidos a partir de palabras simples, facilitó la transición de símbolos a sonidos.
- 🔠 La escritura evolucionó de representar solo un conjunto de sustantivos a poder expresar una amplia gama de palabras y conceptos.
- 📝 La escritura en barro se adaptó a una dirección de escritura diferente para evitar errores, lo que cambió la orientación de los caracteres.
- 🔄 La rotación de los caracteres por 90 grados permitió a los lectores acostumbrados a leer de arriba a abajo continuar haciéndolo, aunque los caracteres se volvieran más abstractos.
- 🌐 El sistema de escritura se adoptó y adaptó por otras culturas, como los acadados y elamitas, añadiendo determinantes para aclarar el uso gramatical de los símbolos.
- 🔍 La escritura en barro, al ser conservada por el calor de incendios, ha permitido la preservación de registros históricos valiosos.
- 🌐 Aunque la escritura se desarrolló independientemente en otras partes del mundo, la de Sumeria fue el primer uso masivo y tiene una influencia duradera hasta el día de hoy.
- 👀 Se invitó a los espectadores a comentar si les gustó este tipo de episodio y si están interesados en la historia de las ideas, lo que podría llevar a más programas similares en el futuro.
Q & A
¿Qué es lo que se discute en este programa sobre la historia?
-En este programa se discute la historia de una idea, específicamente la historia del concepto de la palabra escrita.
¿Por qué la escritura es considerada una tecnología duradera de la humanidad?
-La escritura es una tecnología duradera porque ha permitido transmitir pensamientos a través de generaciones, dar instrucciones, expresarse y comunicar ideas más allá del espacio y el tiempo, lo que ha llevado a avances significativos en nuestra comprensión del universo, de nosotros mismos y de los demás.
¿Dónde comenzó el uso extendido de la escritura?
-El primer uso extendido de la escritura comenzó en la antigua Sumeria.
¿Qué papel jugaron los templos en la creación de la escritura?
-Los templos jugaron un papel crucial en la creación de la escritura, ya que no solo servían como lugares de adoración sino también como enormes almacenes que debían registrar y administrar la gran cantidad de bienes y recursos de la ciudad.
¿Cómo se utilizaba inicialmente la escritura en las tablillas de barro?
-Inicialmente, la escritura en las tablillas de barro consistía en marcas o signos que representaban unidades de bienes, como una jarra de grano, para llevar un registro de los bienes que entraban y salían de los templos.
¿Cómo evolucionaron las representaciones iniciales en la escritura?
-Las representaciones iniciales, que eran dibujos detallados de objetos, evolucionaron con el tiempo hacia símbolos más abstractos y simplificados, lo que permitió a los escribas tomar notas de manera más rápida y eficiente.
¿Qué evento lingüístico fortaleció la escritura en Sumerio?
-El hecho de que el sumerio fuera un lenguaje en el que la mayoría de las palabras eran monosílabas y los conceptos se construían a partir de la unión de palabras, facilitó la transición de los símbolos a representaciones fonéticas, lo que amplió el uso de la escritura más allá de la mera representación de objetos.
¿Cómo cambió el medio de escritura y por qué?
-El medio de escritura cambió debido a las limitaciones del barro, que se sequía lentamente y podía borrar partes de la escritura si se tocaba. Esto llevó a los escribas a escribir de izquierda a derecha para reducir el riesgo de borrado accidental.
¿Qué innovación llevó a una mayor abstracción en los caracteres de la escritura?
-La rotación de los caracteres 90 grados permitió que las personas leyeran los caracteres de manera horizontal, lo que los hizo aún más abstractos y alejados de las imágenes originales que representaban.
¿Cómo contribuyó la escritura en barro a la preservación de la historia?
-La escritura en barro se preservó cuando los lugares eran incendiados, ya que el calor de los incendios endurecía el barro y conservaba las inscripciones, permitiendo que se estudiara la historia de la escritura y su evolución.
¿Qué otras regiones desarrollaron la escritura de manera independiente?
-Mesoamérica y China desarrollaron la escritura de manera independiente, y hay debate sobre si la escritura en el Valle del Indo y Egipto también se desarrolló de forma independiente o si heredaron la idea básica de Sumeria.
¿Cuál es el potencial tema futuro para el programa si se sigue interesado en la historia de ideas?
-Un tema potencial futuro para el programa podría ser la evolución de la escritura de sílabas sumerias hacia el alfabeto, una herramienta que muchas culturas occidentales siguen utilizando hoy en día.
Outlines
📜 La historia del concepto de la escritura
El primer párrafo introduce el tema de la historia de la idea, específicamente la del concepto de la escritura. Se menciona que la escritura es una tecnología duradera de la humanidad que ha permitido transmitir pensamientos a lo largo de generaciones y comunicar ideas a través del espacio y el tiempo. Se destaca que para entender los orígenes de la escritura, debemos viajar a la antigua Sumeria, donde comenzó su uso generalizado. Se describe el contexto de las primeras ciudades y el papel fundamental de los templos como centros de adoración y almacén de bienes. La narrativa se centra en la necesidad de los sumerios de registrar los movimientos de bienes en las grandes complejas de templos, lo que llevó a la creación de marcas en tabletas de barro, las cuales evolucionaron en símbolos que representaban no solo objetos sino también sonidos, dando paso a la escritura como la conocemos hoy en día.
🌐 El desarrollo y adopción del sistema de escritura
El segundo párrafo explora cómo el sistema de escritura evolucionó y fue adoptado por culturas vecinas, como los acadados y elamitas, quienes lo simplificaron y agregaron marcadores para aclarar el tipo de palabra en caso de ambigüedad. Esto dio lugar a un sistema de escritura capaz de expresar conceptos abstractos, como en la Épica de Gilgamesh o el Enûma Elish. Se destaca la preservación de la escritura en barro debido a su endurecimiento por el calor, lo que ha permitido la conservación de registros históricos. Además, se menciona la posibilidad de que otras culturas, como las del Valle del Indo y Egipto, pudieran haber heredado la idea básica de la escritura de Sumeria. Finalmente, se invita a los oyentes a compartir sus opiniones sobre este tipo de episodios y se sugiere la posibilidad de explorar en futuras entregas cómo se desarrolló el alfabeto desde los sílabarios sumerios.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Historia de la idea
💡Tecnología de la escritura
💡Sumeria
💡Templos
💡Registros contables
💡Pictogramas
💡Monosílabos
💡Sistema de escritura
💡Akkadianos y Elamitas
💡Determinativos
💡Epic of Gilgamesh
Highlights
The show discusses the history of the concept of the written word, a unique focus compared to the usual history of people or places.
Writing is described as one of mankind's most enduring technologies, enabling the transmission of thoughts across generations.
The origins of writing are traced back to ancient Sumer, where the first widespread use of writing began.
Temples in Sumer played a significant role in the development of writing due to their function as both religious centers and economic hubs.
The temple complexes served as enormous warehouses, necessitating a system to keep records of the vast wealth and resources.
The earliest form of writing involved making marks on clay tablets to record the quantities of goods, such as grain.
Over time, the drawings on clay tablets evolved into more abstract symbols representing common goods for efficiency.
The Sumerian language, with its mono-syllabic words and compound concepts, facilitated the transition from symbols to phonetic representations.
The symbol for 'cow' eventually came to represent not just the animal but also the sound and the word itself.
The innovation of using symbols to represent sounds allowed for the creation of a much larger vocabulary beyond just nouns.
The medium of clay and the writing tools affected the direction and orientation of writing, leading to a shift from top-to-bottom to left-to-right.
To accommodate readers accustomed to top-to-bottom reading, scribes rotated the characters by 90 degrees.
The evolution of writing led to the abstraction of characters, moving further away from their original pictorial representations.
The writing system developed in Sumer was later adopted and further abstracted by neighboring cultures like the Akkadians and Elamites.
The addition of determinatives in the writing system helped to clarify the part of speech and reduce ambiguity.
The durability of clay as a writing medium has allowed us to preserve and study the development of writing systems over thousands of years.
The show suggests that writing developed independently in other parts of the world, such as Mesoamerica and China, and possibly the Indus Valley and Egypt.
The episode invites feedback on the focus on the history of ideas and hints at potential future topics like the development of the alphabet.
Transcripts
On this show, we often talk about the history of people or places, societies.
Rarely do we get to talk about the history of an idea.
So today we're going to try an experiment:
we're going to talk about the history of the concept
of the written word.
♫ [intro music] ♫
Writing is one of mankind's most enduring technologies.
For fifty-six hundred years, this ability to transmit thoughts over generations,
to give instructions,
to express ourselves,
to communicate ideas over the gulf of space and time,
has allowed us to make vast strides in our understanding of the universe,
our understanding of each other
and our understanding of ourselves.
But to understand how writing began,
we have to travel back to ancient Sumer,
where the first widespread use of writing started.
Look around. What do you see?
Yes, you see the potters and the merchants.
You see streets and gardens.
But what do you see looming over all of it?
The temples.
These temples play a huge part in why writing began.
For, you see, Sumer was the land of the world's first real cities.
Not hundreds of people or thousands of people,
but tens of thousands grouped together.
And these cities formed city states
bound together by the veneration of a specific set of gods.
The people mastered irrigation and the cities grew
and as the cities grew, so too did the temples to the gods.
But these massive, sprawling temple complexes
didn't serve only as houses of worship.
No, no, look close.
Do you see the men bringing in the clay pitchers full of grain?
These temples also served as enormous warehouses.
Repositories for the vast wealth of the city.
In good times, donations and gifts would come flooding in.
And in lean times, they would be distributed back out.
This system created vast wealth for the priests, but it also ensured that cities of this size could function.
But we're not concerned with that. Not directly.
Look next to the men bringing in the grain.
Do you see that man watching them?
Notice how every time they bring in a jar of grain,
he makes a little mark on that clay tablet he's holding.
With an economy of this size, with tons of supplies moving in and out of the temple each day,
they needed to keep records somehow.
And that is exactly what he's doing.
That tablet will later be stored
so that priests can know what exactly the have on hand in their giant temple warehouse.
But as much as tally marks have their place in the origin of writing,
there's something far more interesting for us on that wet piece of clay he's got in his hands.
You see, he's drawn a little picture of a grain stalk
next to his tally marks
so it's clear that his tallies refer to grain.
Well, over the generations,
that nice little drawing of grain
would get simpler.
More abstracted.
Scribes looking for quicker and easier ways to note common goods
wouldn't laboriously draw every single item coming into the temple,
but instead came to an agreed-upon set of more symbolic representations
for the goods flowing into the holy places.
And you can see how somebody might quickly realise that those symbols could represent
not only the concept of something, but the word itself.
And that's exactly what happened.
The symbol for "cow"
came to be understood not only as a representative of the animal,
but also of the word "cow" itself.
But, still, there's not much you can do with just a set of a thousand or so nouns.
And here's where a happy accident of linguistics comes in.
You see the people talking around the temple?
Well, if you could hear them,
it would sound like everybody was just saying the same few words over and over again.
And that's because Sumerian is a language where most of the words are just single syllables
and where concepts are built out of putting words together.
Both of those points are important.
because when many of your words are mono-syllables,
it's easy to go from thinking of a symbol as a word
to thinking of it as a sound for that word.
To go from thinking of the symbol for "the ewe", meaning just the sheep,
to thinking of it as meaning the sound "ewe".
And thus giving you the word for the tree "yew" or the person "you".
Once you do this, you're no longer drawing pictures for every word in the language.
Now you're starting to think of those pictures as sounds.
And stringing sounds together lets you build up all sorts of words.
And once you couple that with the fact that, in Sumerian, many concepts were built up out of basic words,
so for example: "sickle" plus "grain" might mean "harvest",
there's a huge amount you can do with the concepts and sounds that a thousand or so images represent.
But we're not done yet.
Because the very medium the scribes were writing on changed how we write in the West today.
You remember how our buddy in the temple tallying the grain was making his marks on a clay tablet?
Well, watch him write.
See how he's writing from top to bottom, just as you would if you were making a list.
Well, that would soon change because the problem with clay is that it takes forever to dry.
and so if you accidentally set your hand down while you're writing from top to bottom,
you could easily obliterate whole sections of the column you just wrote.
But this risk is reduced if you start writing from left to right.
But a lot of the people in the temple didn't like that innovation.
It was easier on the scribes, but for the other literate folks who had to read it,
they had learned to read from top to bottom
and so they didn't like this "sideways" thing at all.
So what did the scribes do?
Well, they simply rotated all of the characters 90 degrees
so that a person could turn the tablet and read it from top to bottom just like they always had.
Soon, people were just reading the sideways characters left to right.
But because they'd been flipped, now they were even more abstracted.
Even further from the pictures and the things that they originally represented.
This writing system was then adopted by the neighbouring Akkadians and Elamites.
who abstracted it even further.
Determinatives, or little markers to designate what part of speech something was in case it was ambiguous,
also got added.
And now you've got a real writing system!
The original pictures, and even the pictograms they became,
vanished entirely into wedge-shaped impressions and line strokes made by the stylus favoured at the time.
Which means, instead of simply a handful of nouns to record storage lists,
we have a system for writing that can give us things as abstract and lyrical as The Epic of Gilgamesh,
or the Enûma Eliš.
So how do we know all this?
Well, funny thing about clay,
when a place is burned down and all of your writing is on clay,
rather than it being destroyed, the writing hardens and becomes preserved.
But that won't happen here for some time,
so let's just celebrate what scribes like this one and the marvellous city of Sumer gave us:
a gift that has lasted us more than five and a half thousand years.
Writing.
Now since we don't get to do the Lies episodes for these one-offs,
I also want to point out that this is just the first place in history where writing achieved widespread use.
Later it would be developed independently in Mesoamerica
and was almost certainly developed independently in China.
There's a great deal of contention about whether it developed independently in the Indus Valley and Egypt.
Although, from what we've read,
which admittedly isn't nearly enough to form anything more than a layman's opinion,
I'm more in the camp that both of these groups inherited the basic concept from Sumer.
Anyway, let us know in the comments if you liked this little experiment
and are as interested in the history of ideas as the history of societies and peoples.
If so, we'll try to do this from time to time.
Who knows? Maybe we'll even cover how we moved from the Sumerians writing syllables
to that incredible tool: the Alphabet
that most Western cultures still use today.
See you next week!
♫ [closing music] ♫
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