Anthropology 250Issues in Anthropology

Writing Systems

The Beginning of History

When: Writing began about 3,400 years ago.

Where: The earliest evidence for writing has been found in Mesopotamia, located in what is now Iraq.

Who: The SumeriansWhy: The earliest evidence for writing

appears to be for recording quantities and concepts, not for representing speech.

Types of Writing

Non-Phonetic1. Pictograph

s2. Ideographs3. Logographs

Phonetic1.Syllabic2.Consonantal3.Alphabetic

Pictographic Writing

Pictographic writing tells stories through pictures

Each picture represents a phrase , sentence or part of a story

PictographsMinoan culture developed on the island of Crete in the Aegean Sea south of Greece and south west of Turkey at about 2000 BC.

Examples of Pictographs Used Today

Ideogramsare symbols that represent ideas – a less literal representation than pictographs, but still a logical connection between the representation and the thing it represents.Examples:1. Hittite Culture that ruled Anatolia (what is now Turkey) between 2000 and 1700 BC 2. Nigeria in the early 20th Century3. Indus Valley

Modern Idiograms

Logographs and Ideographs

• Logographs are graphics that represent a word.

• Ideographs are graphics that represent an idea, sometimes more than a word.

• Many symbols can be said to be both ideographic and logographic

Chinese Characters as Logograms/Ideograms

Chinese (Older Version)

Modern Korean

Easter Island WritingThe writing from Easter Island has not been decyphered. It appears to be at least partially pictographic but may be ideographic or logographic in nature.

Mixtec Logographic Script• http://www.ancientscripts.com/mixtec.html• Arabic Consonantal Alphabetic• http://www.ancientscripts.com/arabic.html

Maya Glyphs

Syllabic Script from Cyprus

Japanese Writing Systems

• Kanji = characters of Chinese origin (combine logographs and syllabary symbols) used for nouns and verb stems

• Hirigana = a syllabary used for verb ending and grammatical participles (on, to)

• Katakana = used for non-Japanese words or loan words

Alphabetic Writing

• In Alphabetic writing, each symbol represents a single sound. Words are made up of sounds, and written words are made up of the symbols for those sounds.

• Alphabetic writing has symbols for both vowels and consonants.

• Consonantal writing has symbols for only consonants, and readers have to fill in the vowels from the context.

Runic Carving with Writing

The Evolution of Writing

• Egyptian Pictographs to Logographs• Logographs combined with alphabetic• Alphabetic evolves to be less pictographic and

more symbolic

Egyptian Hieroglyphics are a mixture of alphabetic

and logographic

writing.

The Transition from

Hieroglyphic to Phonological Script as the Phoenicians

borrowed and modified the Egyptians’

writing system

AlphabeticWriting is a

phonological writing

system that has a

different symbol for each vowel

and consonant

sound.

Consonantal Writing The Phoenicians developed a

phonological writing system based on consonants only, depending on the reader to fill in the vowels. This characteristic was carried on in Hebrew until diacritic marks were added to consonants to fill in some of the vowel sounds.

Bonobo Chimps and Writing

• http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/susan_savage_rumbaugh_on_apes_that_write.html

Study Guide

WritingPictographsIdeographsLogographsHieroglyphicsGlyphsSyllabic writing Alphabetic writing