168Writing and printing
Imagine a life without books, newspapers, comics, magazines, menus,
letters, and emails—it would be a very different place. Writing gives us
news, entertains us, and, more importantly, documents history and teaches
and spreads ideas. Printing allows one person’s ideas to be communicated
to millions of people at the same time.
Hieroglyphics on the Temple of
Hathor, Egypt.TAKE A LOOK: WRITTEN LANGUAGE Cuneiform script was carved
into wet clay using a blunt reed.
Pictograms became simplified
into wedge-shaped markings.Methods of writing
Modern pens are very different from
the original methods of writing, such
as reeds for carving clay, or a quill
(bird feather) dipped in ink for writing
on animal hide. The Romans used lead
pencils 2,000 years ago, but the
graphite pencils we use today were
invented in England in the 1500s. But
some traditions remain: Japanese script
is still written with a brush and ink. LATIN writing evolved
about 2,600 years ago. It is
the most widely used
alphabet in the world. CHINESE is one of the
oldest written texts in the
world. It uses pictograms
called characters. BENGALI script is
syllabic—rather than
letters, it has symbols for
consonants and vowels. THE ARABIC
ALPHABET just uses
consonants, vowels are
indicated by signs
above or below the
consonants. Arabic is
read from right to left. CYRILLIC is
used by many
Slavic people (in
eastern Europe),
such as Russians. It
is thought to have
evolved from the
older Greek script.There are about 6,800 different languages spoken in the world today and
many of them have their own letters or characters when written down.
Although there are many localized styles of writing in the world, there are
five main types that dominate.CULTURE
The earliest form of writing didn’t use letters,
but pictograms—symbols that each
represent a single word or sound. Some of
the earliest writings are from ancient Egypt.
Known as hieroglyphics, these pictograms
have been traced back 5,000 years. Nearby,
in Mesopotamia, people started to keep
accounts about taxes and crops using
cuneiform script on clay tablets.ANCIENT WRITING