Scribes were a standard part of ancient Indian govern-
ments. Every court of law was required to have one. Kings had
them for recording government business. Professional scribes
attended births to record the predictions for the infant made
by the attending astrologer. Th at Asoka had his edicts placed
all over his kingdom in prominent places suggests that Indi-
ans were mostly literate. Some writings on stone, copper, and
gold have survived, while those committed to bamboo and
leaves have disintegrated.
Th e Harappan script seems to have died sometime aft er
the Aryan invasion of the 1000s b.c.e. In about 500 b.c.e.
Brahmi script emerged, becoming a robust written language
by the era of Asoka (r. ca. 268–ca. 233 b.c.e.). Th e letters are
beautifully graceful. From the end of the Maurya Empire in
185 b.c.e. to the start of the Gupta Empire in 320 c.e., Brahmi
split into two or three written scripts. By the end of the an-
cient era the scripts derived from Brahmi were being split
into new scripts to suit the languages of southern India.EUROPE
BY BRADLEY SKEEN
Writing was invented about 3000 b.c.e. in Mesopotamia and
spread from there through contacts between cultures. Writ-
ing that uses the alphabet—a small number of signs repre-
senting the various distinct sounds of speech—was developed
by Semitic-speaking peoples living in Egypt aft er 2000 b.c.e.
Th is system spread through the Near East and then to Greece.
From there it was adopted aft er 800 b.c.e. by the Etruscans
and Romans. Writing came to northern Europe from the Ro-
man Empire.
By the end of the Roman Empire (476 c.e) most societies
in northwestern Europe had some familiarity with the Latin
alphabet and language. Th e Latin alphabet is the system of
writing still used for English and other modern European
languages. Literacy was not very widespread and was limited
primarily to churchmen and government offi cials. Literacy in
northern and eastern Europe came with the spread of Chris-
tianity into those areas.Before writing, ancient European peoples expressed their
ideas visually through a variety of media. Th eir modifi cation
of the landscape and the size and positions of monuments
and tombs provided signals of group identity and territorial
ownership. In Scandinavia and the Alps, beginning around
5000 b.c.e. but especially during the Bronze Age aft er 2000
b.c.e., people inscribed fi gures on boulders and rock outcrops
to depict people, animals, and objects that had symbolic and
ritual signifi cance. Pottery designs were another important
medium of communication about group identity. Other
claims for writing in prehistoric Europe, such as the Tărtăria
tablets from Romania, do not stand up to scholarly scrutiny.
Paper made from cotton fi ber was a Chinese invention
that did not become widely used in Europe before 1100 c.e.
Th e main writing material used in classical antiquity, papy-
rus, was made from reeds grown in Egypt and was not widely
available outside the Roman Empire. Th e most common writ-
ing material used in northern Europe, therefore, was parch-
ment. Th is was made from animal skins. Th e skins were not
tanned as for making leather but were stretched and scraped
while held tightly in a frame. Th e parchment was typically
cut into single sheets or bound into a book, or codex. More
permanent documents, called inscriptions, were made by
carving letters into stone or metal plaques. Inscriptions were
sometimes made on wood, but because wood is highly per-
ishable, they have not survived in large numbers.
Runes are the earliest system of writing the Germanic
languages. Th ey exist only as inscriptions. Th e runic charac-
ters appear for the fi rst time on artifacts such as combs and
jewelry dating to the middle of the second century c.e. Th e
runic letters are clearly a variation of the Latin alphabet, but
they bear a close similarity to older forms of the alphabet that
were used in northern Italy as early as the fi ft h century b.c.e.,
suggesting that runes might have been invented and usedPillar edict of Emperor Asoka dating to 238 b.c.e., from Uttar Pradesh,
India: an example of the earliest readable Indian script (© Th e Trustees
of the British Museum)Painted pebbles from cave of Mas d’Azil, Ariége, France, dating to
8,000–10,000 b.c.e.; the decorations, which include dots and bands,
are thought to represent a kind of writing. (© Th e Trustees of the British
Museum)1188 writing: Europe0895-1194_Soc&Culturev4(s-z).i1188 1188 10/10/07 2:31:23 PM