Petroglyphs:
A petroglyph is an image carved or etched into rock. Essentially, a petroglyph is made by scratching away the uppermost surface of a rock to reveal rock of a different colour underneath.The petroglyph is among the earliest known forms of art and record-keeping and prehistoric petroglyphs exist around the globe, some dating back as far as
10,000 years. The petroglyph was a viable art form for thousands of years. Some Native Americans were still engaging in the practice at the time of the European conquest. A
petroglyph can consist of many different types of images. Some are representative in nature, depicting recognizable human and animal figures, while others include geometrical shapes and patterns or what appear to be early systems of writing. Because of their age, it is impossible to interpret most petroglyphs with any degree of certainty.
Native American Petroglyph
Hieroglyphics:
Hieroglyphics is a system of writing which uses
logograms, rather than an alphabet, to record a language. Logograms are single
characters which may represent an idea, a subject, or a word; several modern
languages use logograms including Chinese and Japanese. In the Ancient world,
the Egyptians and Mayans both used extensive hieroglyphic languages, as did
several Mediterranean cultures, such as Crete and Anatolia. Numerous examples
survive on the walls of tombs, in scrolls, and on well preserved paper artifacts
and stone tablets. Once ancient hieroglyphics were translated, they provided
valuable clues into the lives of the people living in those cultures. The word
“hieroglyphics” is very old, and was used by the Greeks to describe the Egyptian
system of writing in the Ancient world. It is a compound of two Greek words,
hieros, for sacred, and glyphein, for writing.
Hieroglyphic
Ideograms:
An ideogram is a symbol, often used within a written language, which
utilizes a picture, rather than letters, to represent a particular idea or concept. This type of image is usually conceptual or abstract in nature, as the image frequently represents something greater than what can be expressed through a direct representation. An ideogram that represents an action, for example, might depict something associated with that action rather than a graphic representation of the action itself. These types of images can also include pictograms, which are images that represent a particular thing through
a direct depiction of that thing, such as a man or an animal. There are a number of languages that have used ideograms in depicting various ideas or concepts.
Egyptian Ideogram
Pictographs: Visual presentation of data using icons, pictures, symbols, etc., in place of or in addition to common graph elements (bars, lines, points). Pictographs use relative sizes or repetitions of the same icon, picture, or symbol to show comparison. Also called pictogram, pictorial chart, pictorial graph, or picture graph.
Pictograph
Alphabets: An alphabet is the ordered, standardized set of letters that is used to write or print a written language. A letter is a character in an alphabet that represents one or
several, alternative phonemes (i.e., the fundamental sounds of a spoken language) and/or that is used in combinations with other letters to represent one or several, alternative phonemes. A character is any letter, symbol or mark used in writing or printing a language. In addition to letters of alphabets, characters include numerals, punctuation marks and symbols used by non-alphabetic writing systems. Alphabets are by far the most common of the
several types of systems, also called scripts, that are used to write languages. Most alphabets, including that used by the English language, are based on the Roman alphabet (also referred to as the Latin alphabet), which was first used by the ancient Romans to write Latin.
Qoph 19th letter of the Hebrew Alphabet
The advantages and Limitations of
ideogrammatic codes ? Using theses codes means that, in learning
to write, there is an immense number of different signs to be learnt, not only
26 letters but there is no such thing as alphabetical order, so that dictionaries, files, catalogues, etc., are difficult to arrange and linotype is impossible; that foreign words, such as proper names and scientific terms, cannot be written down by sound, as in European languages, but have to be represented by some elaborate device. So what is the advantage of an ideographic system ? First, it is closer to the representation of things : after all, you go
directly from the idea to the paper, whereas in alphabetical systems, you must go through the sounds (idea-sounds-letters). But this advantage is offset by the fact that you need to master thousands of little symbols to be able to write a language you already speak, whereas the alphabetical system lets you do that with less than 30.The biggest interest of an (artificial) ideographical system is that it could be read in any language. Just look : China has a huge territory, with many different cultures and many different languages. When people from different regions talk together, they don't understand each other. But because they share the same writing system all over China, and it only writes ideas and not the sounds used to communicate them, every Chinese can read a given text in his own language. For example, the ideogram for sun will be pronounced XXX by a cantonese but ZZZ by a mandarin speaker. Yet, both would write the same text and understand it when they read it.
Advantages and Limitations
of alphabetic codes? The reason for the great advantage of the alphabet
is that in most languages the number of phonemes (speech sounds) is only around
forty, with a range of between twelve to sixty, a limit probably due to the
restricted range of sounds that humans can distinguish in listening or
articulate in speaking. It defines the maximum number of letters needed to
represent them, which need to be learnt. Since the necessary letters are so few
in number, they can be simple and distinctive, and easy to write and to copy. We
do not naturally consciously hear as separate elements in our speech the speech
sounds that are distinguished in a language to make up its words, and which are
the building blocks of alphabetic spelling. We hear them as part of the
continuous sound wave. To map spelling to sound requires an explicit and
abstract analysis of what we hear.
Modern Communication Tools that combine pictographic/
ideogrammatic/ alphabetic codes ar A computer, cell phone.
Contemporary Civilization,
which uses an ideogrammatic rather than an alphabetic written code is China.
Papyrus is a product of the water reed of the same name found along the banks of the Nile River in Egypt. It was probably made from the outer skin since the center is pithy. Layers of the reed were laid on a stone slab side by side and the next layer was laid on top of the first at right angles to those on the bottom. The whole mass was then moistened with water, pressed, and dried, resulting in a laminated mass. The dried material was hammered to make it more compact and rubbed with a smooth stone to produce a writing surface. Samples of papyrus have been found dating back to 3,500 B.C. Greeks and Romans also wrote on it, and its use persisted until about the 10th century A.D. when overproduction or disease wiped out the crops. Papyrus has been reintroduced, and the Center for Papyrus Research near Cairo, Egypt, makes small quantities using the old methods. Paper developed separately in China around 200 BCE. It differs from papyrus in that the plants have been beaten to separate the fibers, suspended evenly in water, placed on a webbing to drain off the water, and dried. The beating allows a hydrogen bonding to form between the fibers. This hydrogen bonding gives paper its cohesion and tearing strength. Paper can be made from any cellulose-containing plant such as cotton, hemp, wood chips, bagasse, straw, kenaf, etc. Paper derives its name from papyrus and is a transferred application of an old name to a new material. |
Parchment and papyrus used a reed-pen and ink, from the hollow tubular-stems of marsh grasses, especially from the jointed bamboo plant. They converted bamboo stems into a primitive form of fountain pen. They cut one end into the form of a pen nib or point. A writing fluid or ink filled the stem, squeezing the reed forced fluid to the nib.
Clay tablets used a bronze or bone tool to scratch the surface of the moist clay. Slates can be written on using a slate pencil. This is a rod made of soft slate, soapstone, or pressed clay, which makes a thin white line on the slate. Chalk can also be used. The writing can be wiped off with a soft cloth. Writing slates, although not made of the rock, are still used. Stones were used to carve into rock surfaces. |