Search results
People also ask
Where did proto-writing come from?
What is proto writing?
What is a proto-writing system?
Why is proto-writing important?
Proto-writing consists of visible marks communicating limited information. Such systems emerged from earlier traditions of symbol systems in the early Neolithic, as early as the 7th millennium BC in China and southeastern Europe.
- Dispilio Tablet
The Dispilio tablet is a wooden tablet bearing inscribed...
- Neolithic Signs in China
Examples of Jiahu symbols. Jiahu is a Neolithic site in the...
- Kish Tablet
Proto-cuneiform. The proto-cuneiform script was a system of...
- History of writing
The first writing systems of the Early Bronze Age evolved...
- Dispilio Tablet
The chapter begins with proto-writing and then the first writing systems, which arose independently in different corners of the world. The discussion shows evidence of the earliest roots of writing from the Egyptian and Mesopotamian areas, as well as in China and Mesoamerica.
Modern (nineteenth-century) scholars called this type of writing cuneiform after the Latin term for wedge, cuneus. Today, about 6,000 proto-cuneiform tablets, with more than 38,000 lines of text, are now known from areas associated with the Uruk culture, while only a few earlier examples are extant.
Historical accounts of the evolution of writing systems have until recently concentrated on a single aspect, increased efficiency, with the Greek invention of the alphabet being regarded as the culmination of a long historical evolution.
The intellectual leaps embodied in systems of proto-writing are significant and demonstrate a uniquely human capacity for conceiving of names, numbers, and representations of things and quantities as part of individual human understanding and shared cultural practices.
