The_Phenomenon_of_Writing

The Phenomenon of Writing The phenomenon of writing has been invented independently five separate times in the history of man. While History textbooks almost exclusively talk about the writing of Mesopotamia and Egypt, writing has also been developed in the Indus Valley, China, and Mesoamerica. This strange phenomenon has led many historians and anthropologist to conclude that writing is necessary for a complex society to exist. Nevertheless, there was a society located in the Andean Mountain in present day Peru in which writing was never invented yet it is still consider complex or, in other words, a civilization. This civilization, instead, used a method of record keeping that functioned in place of writing. This suggests that although there is a strong correlation between the development of a civilization and writing, it does not necessarily mean that writing is one of the causative factors in its rise. However, a record keeping system is crucial to a society’s evolution towards complexity. One civilization that developed writing was the Sumerians in Mesopotamia which is located in present day Iraq. The Sumerians impressed wet clay with the end of a reed leaving a wedge-shaped form. This kind of writing on clay is called cuneiform, from the Latin “cuneus”, writing, civilization, record, system, sumerians, society, keeping, form, first, developed, tokens, present, however, development, day, clay, bulla, anthropologist, written, two, similar, records, purposes, need, method, language, invented, information, goods, fact, events, egyptians, continuity, complex, called, been, about, words, word, without, wedge-shaped, very, transaction, towards, texts, tablet, script, rise, recorded, quipu, public