Developing of writing

The seals of the Indus valley: from 2500 BC

As in the other great early civilizations, the bureaucrats of the Indus valley have the benefit of writing to help them in their administration. The Indus script, which has not yet been deciphered, is known from thousands of seals, carved in steatite or soapstone. 

Usually the centre of each seal is occupied by a realistic depiction of an animal, with above it a short line of formal symbols. The lack of longer inscriptions or texts suggests that this script is probably limited to trading and accountancy purposes, with the signs establishing quantities and ownership of a commodity. 
Chinese characters: from 1600 BC

The last of the early civilizations to develop writing is China, in about 1600 BC. But China outdoes the others in devising a system which has evolved, as a working script, from that day to this. Chinese characters are profoundly ill-suited to such labour-saving innovations as printing, typewriting or word-processing. Yet they have survived. They have even provided the script for an entirely different language,Japanese. 

The Non-phonetic Chinese scripthas been a crucial binding agent in China's vast empire. Officials from far-flung places, often unable to speak each other's language, have been able to communicate fluently inwriting.

Phonetics and the alphabet: from the 15th century BC

The most significant development in the history of writing, since the first development of a script in about 3200 BC, is the move from a pictographic or syllabic system (characteristic of Sumerian, ancient Egyptian and Chinese) to a phonetic one, based on recording the spoken sound of a word. This change has one enormous potential. It can liberate writing from the status of an arcane skill, requiring years of study to learn large numbers of characters. It makes possible the ideal of a literate community. 

The first tentative steps in this direction are taken in the second millennium BC in the trading communities ofPhoenicia. 
Phoenician is a Semitic language and the new approach to writing is adopted by the various Semitic groups in Phoenicia and Palestine. Versions of it are used, for example, for Aramaic and Hebrew. Only the consonants are written, leaving the vowels to be understood by the reader (as is still the case today with a widespreadSemitic language, Arabic). 

The contribution of the Greeks, adapting the Phoenician system of writing in the 8th century BC, is to add vowels. For some they use the names of existing Phoenician letters (alpha for example). For others entirely new signs are added. The result is a Greek alphabet of twenty-four letters. 

The alphabet takes its name from the first two letters in the Phoenician system, alphaand beta, borrowed and adapted by the Greeks. 

The Romans in their turn deveolop the Greek alphabet to form letters suitable for the writing of Latin. It is in the Roman form - and through the Roman empire - that the alphabet spreads through Europe, and eventually through much of the world, as a standard system of writing. With a system as simple as this, and with portable writing materials such aspapyrus,wooden tabletsor leaves written correspondence becomes a familiar part of everyday life.