SINCE the dawn of history, man has tried to express himself in different ways starting from rock art to the use of computers. What we are trying to do in this article is to take the reader through this evolution process and see the milestones of this journey.
Anthropologists estimate that our early fathers the Homo sapiens have appeared on earth more than a hundred thousand years ago. They were very primitive people that lived in the caves and lived mostly on hunting. The early expressions of such primitive people were some prehistoric drawings on the walls of these caves by what is known now as the rock art.
One of the oldest paintings on cave walls is in the cave of Lascaux in France which dates back to 17,000 years ago. These paintings contained mainly figures of different animals such as oxen, horses, etc.
About 10,000 years ago, man started to settle down in small communities or settlements, especially in south Mesopotamia and Egypt. This led, about 5.000 years ago, to the start of expressing himself in writing. There is a big debate between archeologists about who started writing before the others; the Egyptians or the Sumerians in Mesopotamia.
But in any case, it is a matter of difference of hundred years, out of five thousand years, which does not count much.
The writing started in Egypt by what is known as Hieroglyphs which are syllables that are in the form of pictures representing either a body of a human being, part of a body of a human being, a body of an animal, part of a body of an animal, …etc. The media that were used to perform this writing was engraving on the stone. One of the masterpieces of early Hieroglyphic writing is the tablet of king Narmer who is the first ruler to unify Egypt and form its first Pharaonic dynasty. Another fascinating example of this early period is the pyramids text which is covering all the walls of the burial chamber of king Ounas in the area of Saqqara.
On the other hand, in Mesopotamia, the writing started with what is known as cuneiforms which are shapes formed by engraving wedge-like shapes in certain combinations to form certain syllables. The media that was used to write on was in the form of mud tablets that were easy to engrave by imbedding wedges or nail shapes in it and then dried and heated to harden up. The most famous tablets from that period, are the mytholo¬gy of Gilgamesh.
About 5,000 years, after the Egyptians started engraving on the stones, they invented a wonderful media for writing which is the Papyrus. The papyrus is made out of the stem of the papyrus plant which is about two centimeters wide. This stem is cut into long strips. Then strips are set beside each other. Then they are covered by another layer of strips perpendicular to it. The two layers are then pressed together to get rid of the moisture. Then it is left to dry. It will finally form a sheet which is a little bigger than the size of of A4 sheet that we are using today. Finally the sheets are stuck together to form a scroll that can be as long as few meters.
Next week we will follow the course of development of writing techniques along history.
