The Beginnings of Writing

Abstract

THERE is no more fascinating subject for study than the development of the art of writing through its various stages, from the first rough pictures drawn by primitive man to the alphabets in use among the civilised nations of the present day. But the historic systems of writing go back to a remote antiquity, and although we can trace some of them back many hundreds of years, the question of their first origin is one that is beset with many difficulties. It is at this point, however, that the anthropologist comes to the antiquary's help, for he shows that the mind of savage man always works along the same general lines of development. All primitive races, whether in China, Central India, Western Asia, Europe, North Africa, or North America, have used the same rude means to record their thoughts and actions, scratching on their rocks or weapons rough pictures of their possessions and pursuits. The methods used by hunters of the Palæolithic age to record a successful hunting expedition resemble those which the North American Indian now employs. From these rude pictures the savage passes, by a natural law of development, to the representation of ideas, expressing motion or condition by means of gesture-signs. Then, after certain pictures have become associated with certain words, he begins to use them to express their sound but not their meaning; in fact, he begins to write phonetically. His pictures, as he writes more rapidly, change to signs, which become more and more simplified, and finally his system of syllabic writing he develops still further till he reaches the most perfect phonetic system of writing, the alphabet.

The Beginnings of Writing.

By Walter James Hoffman With an Introduction by Prof. Frederick Starr. Pp. xiv + 209. (London: Macmillan and Co., 1895.)