Science and Medicine

History of writing

The history of writing traces the development of writing systems and how their use transformed different societies. The use of writing – as well as the resulting phenomena of literacy and literary culture in some historical instances – has had myriad social and psychological consequences. Each historical invention of writing, the first being within the last 6,000 years, emerged from systems of proto-writing that used ideographic and mnemonic symbols but were not capable of fully recording spoken language, and only a subset of spoken languages have been represented in writing. True writing, where the content of linguistic utterances can be accurately reconstructed by later readers, is a later development. As proto-writing is not capable of fully reflecting the grammar and lexicon used in languages, it is often only capable of encoding broad or imprecise information. Early uses of writing included documenting agricultural transactions and contracts, but it was soon used in the areas of finance, religion, government, and law. Writing allowed the spread of these social modalities and their associated knowledge, and ultimately the further centralization of political power.

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See also

• ▸Bernard Rimland
• ▸Danish folklore
• ▸Hunterian Society

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