They began to stand erect, perhaps as a defense mechanism. Tool making was an obvious major step in becoming civilized and dominate.

Transcription

1 Chapters One: The Invention of Writing and Chapter Three: The Asian Contribution It is not known precisely when or where the biological species of thinking humans emerged. It is believed that the first humans came from South Africa, and spread out from there. They began to stand erect, perhaps as a defense mechanism. The hand became a tremendous asset... For carrying food and for holding objects. Tool making was an obvious major step in becoming civilized and dominate. Speech was another major quantum leap... It allowed groups of humans to organize. Writing is the visual counterpart of speech. Marks, symbols, pictures or letters are the graphic counterpart of speech. Limitations of speech are human memory and immediacy of expression... Until the present electronic age, speech could not be saved. The earliest human markings are the cave painting in Africa, over 200,000 years old (The Paleolithic) to 35,000-4,000 BC (Neolithic). The most famous cave paintings are located in Lascaux caves in southern France. Black was made from charcoal, the lighter colors were made from a variety of iron oxides. These were mixed with animal fat and applied either with a plant brush or with hands. These cave paintings were not the beginning of fine art -- rather they were the beginning of visual communication. They had utilitarian purpose: survival. Close inspection reveals spear marks on the paintings, indicating a ritualistic and magical purpose. Perhaps to gain control over the animals an insure success in the hunt... Perhaps as a teaching aid. There are also abstract signs found along with the paintings... No one knows what they are. The beginnings of protowriting? These cave paintings are called: Pictographs: elementary pictures or sketches to represent the things depicted. Throughout the world prehistoric people also left numerous Petroglyphs: carved or scratched signs or symbols in rock Petroglyphs could be pictographs... But also can be Ideographs: symbols that represent ideas or concepts.

2 An antler horn found in Lorthet France, dating from the Paleolithic period, shows deer and salmon. But also shows two abstract symbols. Paleolithic artists began to simplify and use increasingly minimal amounts of lines... By the late Paleolithic, some of these pictographs began to resemble letter forms. CRADLE OF CIVILIZATION Until recent discoveries about Thailand, archaeologists believed the ancient land of Mesopotamia the land between two rivers was the cradle of civilization. Between the Tigris and Euphrates -- modern day Iraq. Conditions were good for the beginning of village culture. They planted wild grain and domesticated animals... 8,000 BC. By 6000 BC tools were being made from copper. By 3000 BC copper and tin ushered in the Bronze age followed by the wheel. The leap from village culture to high culture occurred after the Sumerian people arrived in Mesopotamia around 3000BC. The Mesopotamians were developing tools and agriculture, but the Sumerians brought a system of Gods. Religion created an intricate system of Man-God relationships. These rules of order allowed the village culture to evolve into a much larger city culture... It provided social order. These Sumerians developed the invention of writing. Waves of invaders came and went -- and spread the inventions, the writing, the culture. Religion dominated city life. Ziggurat Temples housed Priests and scribes... Writing may have been actively invented to keep track of God s inventories. The Priests were controlling everything... And to insure the smooth running of the city, they needed to keep track of important facts: Who delivered their taxes as crops? How much food was stored? How much seed was need for the next crop? How much for human food, how much for animals? One theory holds that visible writing evolved out of the need to identify sacks and pottery containers used to hold food. Small clay tags were put on these items with a pictograph to identify the contents and amount in a numbering system based on fingers. The earliest examples are found in the city of Uruk. It is believed that it is a list of commodities in pictograms accompanied by numerals and personal names. The scribe would hold the clay in his left hand, then start carving the symbols with a sharpened reed in his right -- staring at the upper right corner. The tablet was dried or fired in a kiln. This system evolved over the next few centuries... The scribe would often smear the symbols as he wrote, going from right to left and vertically. Scribes began turning the symbols on their sides and writing from left to right. This made the pictographs less literal and increased speed. Switching from a pointed reed, to a wedge shaped reed also increased speed. The wedge shaped reed was pushed into the clay instead of dragged across it. Which in turn made the pictographs less of a picture and more of a series of strokes... This was called Cuneiform (Latin for wedge shaped )

3 In the early stages of Sumerian writing, some pictographs evolved into Ideograms: a symbol representing an abstract idea The symbol for sun also meant day and light. The scribes tried to develop their written language so it would function closely to their speech. But they found they needed to represent spoken sounds not easily represented by pictures. Picture symbols began to represent the sounds of the objects instead of (or in addition to) the objects themselves. Cuneiform became Rebus Writing: Pictures and /or Pictographs representing words and syllables with the same or similar sound as the object depicted. Those symbols are known as Phonographs: Graphic symbols used for sounds. Cuneiform was difficult to master. Even after the Assyrians simplified it down to 560 signs. Youngsters who were to become scribes entered the Edubba (writing school called Tablet House ) at the age of ten and labored from sunup to sundown six days a week. Professions of priesthood, estate management, accounting, medicine and government were reserved for those who could read and write cuneiform. The general population held scribes in awe and magical. It was believed that death occurred when a divine scribe wrote his name in a mythical Book Of Fate. Early Sumerian artisans mixed pictures with writing. The knowledge explosion made possible by writing was massive. Libraries of mathematics, histories, law, medicine and astronomy were organized. Poetry, myths, hymns, epics and legends were recorded. Writing fostered a deep sense of history. The reigns of each monarch were recorded, and thousands of commercial contracts and records remain intact today. Writing allowed the society to stabilize under rule and law. Measurements and weights were standardized and guaranteed in writing. Law codes the spelled out crime and punishment were recorded... Like the code of Hammurabi which was carved in careful cuneiform on an 8 foot tall stone. Natural by-products of the evolving civilization were ownership of property and specialization of trades and crafts. Cattle brands and proprietary marks needed to be developed. Identification was also needed for commerce issues... Good quality or bad quality. Something that was forgery proof. The Mesopotamian Cylinder Seal provided this forgery-proof method and was in use for over 3,000 years. The last glory of Mesopotamia was during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar (538 BC), when the city of Babylon reached about 1 million and was the richest city in the world. But Babylon fell to the Persians, then to the Greeks, then to the Romans. By the time of Christ, Babylon was in ruins. EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPHICS When the first dynasty was formed, around 3100 BC, many inventions from the Sumerians had reached Egypt. The cylinder seal, architectural design motifs and writing.

4 But unlike the Sumerians, who evolved writing into abstract cuneiform, the Egyptians retained their pictograph system... Called: Hieroglyphics: Greek for sacred carving after the Egyptian for the god s words. It is believed that the last carvings in hieroglyphic was in 394BC and the last people to read hieroglyphic were 4th century temple priests. It was unknown how decipher for the next 15 centuries. In August, 1799, Napoleon s troops were adding an addition to their fortification in Roessta, and Egyptian town. A black stone slab was unearthed. It had an inscription written in two languages using three different scripts: 1. Egyptian Hieroglyphics 2. Egyptian demotic script 3. Greek It was written in 197BC... A large council of Temple Priests commemorating the ascension of Pharaoh Ptolemy V. It was realized that the inscription was most likely the same in all languages. Since Greek was well known and studied, the translation of the hieroglyphic and demotic script could begin. Dr. Thomas Young discovered that the direction in which the animals faced determined the direction in which the hieroglyphics should be read. But the Major deciphering of the Rosetta Stone was done by Jean Francois Champollion. He determined that some signs were alphabetic and some signs were syllabic... And some were determinative (signs that determined how the preceding signs were to be interpreted). He also noticed some repeating symbols... Glyphs inside of brackets. These are known as Cartouches. Realizing that the symbols inside these brackets functioned as phonographs, and not pictographs, Champollion was able to sound out the names Ptolemy and Cleopatra. This breakthrough happened in 1822 when he was looking at a photograph of a different monument and saw the same cartouches. He began to translate all of the cartouches he could find, and after his death at age 42, both his Egyptian Dictionary and Egyptian Grammar was published. The Egyptian hieroglyphics are a REBUS system of writing... Pictures for sounds. Although they never devised glyphs for connecting the sounds, it did provide a skeletonized form for every word.

5 By the start of the New Kingdom, in 1570BC, there were over 200 hieroglyphics of which were strictly pictographs. Because the Egyptians had so many homonyms (such as a pool of water compared to a game of pool), determinatives were used after these words to insure the reader could decipher the correct meaning. Hinew could mean either a liquid measure or neighbors. In the former use, it would be followed by a glyph of a beer pot, in the later by glyphs for man and woman. Egyptians had hieroglyphs on everything... Walls, temples tombs... And also clothing, utensils and jewelry. They were carved into stone and sculpted as relief. Design flexibility was greatly enhanced by decisions about writing directions. PAPYRUS AND WRITING A major step forward was the development of Papyrus: early paper. The Cyperus Papyrus plant grew along the Nile in Shallow marshes and ponds. The reed grew to about 15 ft. above the water. The flowers were used as garlands. The roots were used as fuel and carved into utensils and the reeds themselves were the raw material for sails, mats, cloth rope, sandals and papyrus. The reeds were harvested and the outside rind peeled away. The inner pith was then cut into long strips and laid side by side. Then another layer of strips were placed on top at a right angle. Then it was soaked in the Nile river, then pressed and hammered into a single sheet. The glutinous sap acted as an adhesive. After drying in the sun, the sheets were polished with ivory or stone. The sheet was then pasted together into a scroll. In Egypt (as in Sumer) knowledge was power, and scribes and significant power and privileges, not the least of which was the exemption from taxation. The wooden palette became the trademark of the scribe. It had at least two depressions at one end to hold ink cakes. Carbon was used for a black ink and red ocher was used for red. A gum solution was used as a binder and then it was dried into cakes (like today s watercolors). A slot in the middle of the palette was used to hold brushes -- made from rush stems. The scribe would chew on the end of the stem to separate the fibers and make a brush. Holding the scroll in the left hand, the scribe would start at the top right corner and write down in columns. The hieroglyphics were the same as what were carved on monuments... But soon evolved into a quickly drawn gesture. By 1500 BC a quicker form of hieroglyphic writing was developed called Hieratic (Greek for priestly ) by temple scribes and priests. The use of the rush stem brush produced this simplified writing. By 400 BC an even simpler form evolved for the expanded secular use of writing called demotic (Greek for popular). It was used for commercial and legal writing. These two scripts did not replace traditional hieroglyphics, they were a supplement to it. THE FIRST ILLUSTRATED MANUSCRIPTS The Egyptians were the first to produce illustrated manuscripts -- where words and pictures were combined to convey information.

6 The Egyptians had a major preoccupation with death the hereafter. Much of their lives were spent preparing for the life after death. They entombed themselves with many material things that they would need in the hereafter, as well as road-maps and instructions on what to do after death. They wanted to be found worthy and not suffer eternal damnation. Scribes and artists were commissioned to prepare these instructions -- funeral papyri called The Chapters of Coming Forth By Day. A 20th century scholar gave them a new name: The Book of the Dead which is today s common name. The Book of the Dead was actually the third evolution of Egyptian funerary text: The first was pyramid texts - hieroglyphics carved in the massive tombs of the pharaohs. The second was coffin texts - hieroglyphics carved on all the surfaces of the sarcophagus. This allowed nobles and officials (who couldn t afford massive stone monuments) to have some advantage in the after life. The third was written on papyrus and buried with the dead allowed even Egyptians of modest means to secure a place after death. The widespread use of these funerary papyrus texts mirrored the increasingly secular and democratic aspects of Egyptian life. The Book of the Dead was written in a first person narrative to help the deceased triumph over the dangers of the underworld. It would foretell what would occur to the dead. Magical spells to give power; passwords to enter special places of the underworld and protection form the gods were included in the papyrus. What your job would be was also included... Travel with the star god, help RA in his sun boat or help Osiris rule the underworld. The journey to the underworld was depicted as a chronologically journey... Here is the final judgment of ANI: The jackal headed god Awubis, keeper of the dead, prepares to weigh ani s heart against a feather to see if it is free from sin. Thoth, scribe of the gods, is read to write the verdict. The monster Ammit is ready to devour Ani, should he fail the test. The top register shows 12 of their 42 gods and negative confessions: I have not stolen I have not done evil, I have not killed people. In the early versions of the Book of the Dead, scribes would design the manuscript and leave space where artists would fill in the illustrations... Then it eventually reversed, the artists leaving blank spaces for the scribes. Eventually a person could order his book of the dead from stock manuscripts and just have his name filled in the blank. He could select the number of chapters and choice of chapters. The length and what kind of illustrations. The book of the Dead scrolls ranged from 12: high by 15 to 90 feet long. By the collapse of the Egyptian culture they were only a few sheets. Like the Sumerians, the Egyptians used carved cylinder seals to mark pottery and clay items. They also developed seals carved from stones... Many have been found and it is believed that everyone had one... But little has been found about their actual use. It is thought that they were more important as a charm or talisman, then actual utilitarian function. Between the Egyptian and Mesopotamian cultures the innovations triggered the development and graphic communications in Phoenicia and the Greco-Roman world. THE ASIAN CONTRIBUTION While civilization was developing in Mesopotamia and Egypt, there was also another civilization evolving on it s own: China. Many major technological advances were being made: the compass, gunpowder and not the least of things: Calligraphy (which is still in use today), paper and printing. All of these Chinese inventions were eventually adapted by western cultures and used to propel the Europeans even further.

7 CHINESE CALLIGRAPHY Chinese Calligraphy is purely visual -- it is not alphabetical. Every symbol is composed of a number lines within an imaginary square. Legend says it was invented by Ts-ang Chieh around 1800 BC who was inspired by claw marks of birds and footprints of animals. He proceeded to develop simple pictographs of things in nature. The Chinese sacrificed the realism found in hieroglyphics for abstract, and more asethic, images. Simple nouns were developed first, then characters were invented to represent feelings, actions, colors, sizes, and ideas. Chinese characters are Logograms: graphic characters or signs that represent entire words ($ is a logogram - a symbol that represents dollars). Ideograms and phonic loans were developed (borrowing a sign from a similar sounding word) but alphabets and syllables were never invented. Therefore there is no direct correlation between the Chinese written word and the Chinese spoken language. They are totally independent systems. A total vocabulary of 44,000 different characters. The Japanese, while speaking an entirely different language, were able to adapt Chinese logograms for their own. This kind of system also allowed different dialects of Chinese language to still have a common written language. The earliest known form of Chinese Calligraphy is called Chia-Ju-Wen ( bone and shell script), used from 1800 to 1200 BC. It was pictographic (like hieroglyphics and cuneiform) and has been found an tortoise shells and the bones of large animals. It s main purpose was in the art of divination. If someone wanted to contact an exalted ancestor, a message would be inscribed on the shell, then a hot metal bar was shoved into a hole in the shell. A series of cracks would occur, and the priest would interpret those cracks... A message from the dead. The next phase of Chinese Calligraphy is called Chin-Wen ( bronze script ). This is found inscribed on metal vessels, bowls, weapons, coins. Much more studied and orderly then Chia-ku-wen. These were messages from the dead, and were scribed in the castings. The permanence of bronze also made it ideal for contracts, law codes, treaties, etc. Artists developed different styles of the huge expanse of China... But writing underwent a major change under the emperor Shih Hunag Ti ( BC). He unified the nation into one country, one culture. He built the great Wall. He had thousands of Confucian scholars buried alive with their writings... He standardized weights and measures, laws, even axle lengths on carts. And he standardized writing. His Prime Minister, Li Ssu, had the job of designing the new style of writing called Hsiao Chuan ( small seal ). The lines are drawn with thicker, more even strokes, circles and lines are used, each character is more defined and fits the imaginary square better. The final phase of Chinese Calligraphy is called K ai-shu ( regular style ) and it is the style of writing that is currently in use today. It has an abstract beauty all of it s own. Subtle nuances can be combined by the artist. It is held in high esteem by the culture... Even higher than traditional art. Size, placement and use of white space are integral to the actual writing.

8 The evolution of calligraphic characters can be traced back to prehistoric times -- the three legged pot called a Li was an innovative way to heat contents rapidly in a fire. It was widely used and it s pictographic symbol evolved thru the different phases. The Album of Eight Leaves by Li Fangying shows how painting and calligraphy join. Thick languid strokes become mournful, light strokes become exuberant. Good use of white space adds impact. We do much the same today with use of different fonts to add emphasis to words. But we must keep in mind that the Chinese were doing this while the west was making marks in clay. Calligraphy is said to have: Bones: (authority and size) Meat: (proportion of the characters) Blood: (texture of the inks) Muscle: (spirit and vital force) THE INVENTION OF PAPER Dynastic records attribute the invention of paper to Ts ai Lun in 105 AD. He is defied as the god of paper makers. In earlier times Chinese wrote on bamboo slats or wooden strips with a bamboo pen. Ink was made from soot mixed with a gum solution, then formed into sticks. Then it would mixed with water when writing (like water color cakes today). But the slats and wood were heavy... And while they also used silk to write on, it was quite costly. Ts ai Lun s process for making paper remained unchanged until it was mechanized in the 19th century England. Natural fibers including mulberry bark, hemp fishnets, and rags were soaked in a vat of water and beaten to a pulp with beating mortars. Then a frame with a screen was dipped into the vat and just enough pulp was collected to make a piece of paper. Then, with split-second skill, the vat-man would shake to smooth it, then a piece of woolen cloth would be pressed into the front. The frame would be turned upside down, and paper and cloth would be removed to dry. A major improvement came when they started to add starch to strengthen the paper. These pieces of paper were glued together to form scrolls and wrapped around dowels tipped with jade. They also use this paper for walls, napkins and other uses. THE DISCOVERY OF PRINTING Printing in it s earliest form was invented by the Chinese. It is relief printing: the spaces around an image is cut away, the remaining flat surface is inked, a sheet of paper is placed over the surface and the ink is transferred to the paper. There are two theories about how the invention of printing occurred: The first is that it evolved from the use of identification seals... Carvings used to make impressions in clay. Early on these seals were used to seal bamboo writings, wrapped in silk, then sealed with clay stamped with the carving. These seals were called Chops -- characters carved into jade, silver, gold or ivory. These were pressed onto ink, then pressed onto the paper... Just like today s rubber stamps. This formed the basic foundation of block printing.

9 The second theory about how printing came to be focuses on the practice of making stone rubbings. Beginning in 165 AD Confucian classics were carved into stone to insure an accurate and permanent record of his teachings. Weight and space was obviously an issue... One historical work required 13 acres for storage. The stone pages were lined up like tombstones. Soon copies of these works were made by pulling rubbings from these stones. A piece of wet paper was placed on the stone, then using a firm brush, the paper was pushed into the carved depressions. Then an inked cloth pad was rubbed over the surface of the paper. This procedure also was used on temple and shrine sculptures. By 770 AD block printing was well developed. The artist-scribe would do his calligraphy and illustration on a very then piece of paper. Then a block of smooth wood would be covered in a thin paste. Then the paper would be pressed, face down onto the block. When the paste substance dried, the paper would be carefully peeled off, leaving a faint impression of the image. The block cutter would then cut away all the space around the image. Ink would be applied, paper placed over the top and rubbed with a stiff brush. An experienced Chinese printer could pull about 200 impressions an hour. During the 8th century AD there was a critical shortage of iron money. So the Chinese government began to issue paper certificates of deposit to Chinese merchants who deposited their coins with the state. In 10,000 the government took control of currency production and begin to issue paper money. Inflation and devaluation occurred and the government tried to restore confidence by printing on perfumed paper, with colored inks and on high silk content paper. Counterfeiting was punished by death. China became the first culture where people had daily contact with printed images. Religious block prints also had wide distribution. Also during the 10th century, errors were found in the Confucian classics. (The stone tombstones). The prime minister Fang Tao become deeply concerned, but lacked the resources to re carve. So he commissioned the early block printing industry to produce 130 volumes of the nine classics... It took 21 years. Although he goal was not to spread knowledge, it did stimulate the block printing trade. At this time the scroll was replaced with the beginning of books. The first style was accordion fold. Shortly thereafter a half-fold and stitched together was developed. Also at this time sheet dice were printed on paper.

10 All of these advances created an intellectual and culture renaissance. Movable type was invented by a Chinese alchemist, Pi Sheng, in the eleventh century. He made his type from a mixture of clay and glue, then hardened in fire, like pottery. He placed his type on an iron plate coated with wax. The plate was heated and then pressed down with a board to even the surface. Then he inked and printed. The plate was reheated and type removed for other use after printing. But because Calligraphy is not alphabetical, sorting was done by rhymes. And the sheer volume of characters (44,000) made it a very difficult process. The earth ware type was fragile and wood - tin & bronze characters were also developed.