Early human writing was to describe the shape of animals on wet clay tablets, and then dry the clay tablets in the sun. This is the earliest hieroglyph.
Around 2500 BC, people began to carve symbols on clay tablets with reed poles. The trace left by the reed stem tip on the clay tablet is thicker than the trace of the stem body, and it is wedge-shaped. This kind of writing is what we now call cuneiform. In the next two thousand years, cuneiform became the common language of ancient people in West Asia.
By14th century BC, Akkadian cuneiform had become a common language in West Asia and North Africa. Even Egyptians, Hittites, Syrians and ancient Persians used cuneiform characters.
The Italian explorer Valais found some bricks with strange symbols when he traveled in the two river basins of 1685. In a letter to a friend, he copied five cuneiform symbols and explained the writing direction. He was the first person to try to explain cuneiform.
1799 In August, a soldier of the French Expeditionary Force discovered the famous Rosetta Stone in a place called Rosetta in the west of the lower Nile Delta. Champollion, a famous French historian, linguist and egyptologist, was the first scholar to decipher the hieroglyphic structure of ancient Egypt and the Rosetta Stone. He became the founder of Egyptology and was called "the father of Egyptology" by later generations.
It is said that English hieroglyphs were created by the ancient Greeks when they saw hieroglyphs carved on the walls of Egyptian temples.
In fact, Egyptian hieroglyphics are the oldest writing form evolved from painting. Pictographs first appeared about 5500 years ago, a little later than the cuneiform characters in the ancient two river basins.
The most typical early hieroglyphic inscription is the Palermo stone tablet unearthed in Egypt in 3 100 BC.
Hieroglyphs are usually carved on stone tablets, or on the walls of temples and tombs, and sometimes appear on papyrus. But later, its scope of use became more and more limited to historical sites.
Pictograph is one of the oldest characters in human history. However, due to the limitations of hieroglyphics, they can not meet the communication needs of complex human society and are gradually replaced by other characters.
In the 14 dynasty or earlier, the Egyptians invented a faster form of monk writing.
Around 700 BC, the secular script replaced the monk script. Secular writing was a common form of writing during Ptolemy and Roman rule.
Coptic characters were born in the third century. After Christianity was introduced into Egypt, Egyptians borrowed 24 letters from Greek and added 7 secular characters as supplementary letters, creating Coptic language to facilitate copying and translating the Bible. Coptic was gradually replaced by Arabic after the Arabs conquered Egypt.
The latest existing hieroglyphic document is the flying inscription in 394.
Alphabetic characters used in most parts of the world today were first produced in West Asia. Around 2000 BC, some characters appeared in Bables, Palestine. Because some characters are like hieroglyphics, they are called pseudo-hieroglyphics. There are 80 symbols in pseudo-hieroglyphics. Compared with hundreds of Egyptian hieroglyphics and hundreds of cuneiform symbols, the number of characters in pseudo-hieroglyphics has been much less, and this pseudo-hieroglyphics has also begun to strive for fewer characters.
Around 1500 BC, the original Sinai alphabet literature appeared in Sinai Peninsula.
In 1000 BC, the Phoenician alphabet was basically formed. Phoenician alphabet is considered as the origin of western Greek and Roman alphabet.
In the 7th century BC, this alphabet spread to the Romans and became the basis of the Latin alphabet. With the expansion of Roman Empire and the spread of Christianity, Latin alphabet became the language of European countries. With the great geographical discovery, it spread to America and Oceania.
The characters used in China today are still hieroglyphics. It is the most widely used language in the world at present. It is also the only one in the earliest written language in human history that has not died out. The legend of the origin of Chinese characters is recorded in Shuo Wen Jie Zi: "The dragon family is a rope to unify its affairs and govern its affairs. Its affairs are complicated and its ornaments are born." It means: Shenlong originally recorded daily affairs by tying ropes. But after a long time, there are more and more troubles and misunderstandings. Later, Cang Xie, a historian of Qin Shihuang, created Chinese characters based on the traces of animals walking. Of course, this is just a legend, and the formation of China characters has a very long process. "
In 22 1 year BC, after Qin Shihuang unified China, Chinese characters were standardized, and Xiao Zhuan became an official script, and gradually became a popular character in folk official scripts.
The word-making methods of Chinese characters were summarized by the ancients as pictographic, ideographic, knowing, pictophonetic, phonological, transliteration and borrowing. The principle of separation and combination of sound, form and meaning of Chinese characters is very suitable for different phonetic languages. People from different nationalities and regions can use the same characters despite their different accents, which is of decisive significance to the long-term stability of the feudal dynasty and the inheritance of Chinese culture. With the spread of China culture, the characters of many neighboring countries and nationalities have been influenced by Chinese characters. There are Chinese characters in Xixia, Qidan and Jurchen scripts in ancient China, and there are also Chinese characters in Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese scripts.
The enlightenment of written materials to human civilization is immeasurable. Where there are cheap writing materials, the level of human civilization is more common. The writing materials of early characters have experienced the history of large volume, light weight, portability and low price.
In ancient West Asia, clay was the cheapest writing material, and reeds used to make pens were everywhere in the delta, so clay tablets were the most important writing material for a long time. In Asia Minor, the situation is different. In the ruins of Hittite Kingdom in Asia Minor, the clay tablets found are all royal documents. Some people think that the Hittites introduced new writing methods from the two river basins, so they also introduced clay tablets and reed pens to write cuneiform characters. Because these two materials are rare in Asia Minor and must be imported, cheap clay tablets and reed pens have become rare and valuable treasures that can be lived in, and they have been patented by the royal family.
In Egypt, writing materials are much richer. Papyrus is a plant that can be seen everywhere in the Nile Delta. The processing and pressing of papyrus papyrus paper into pages is very simple, and it is also very convenient to record, carry and save papyrus paper. The use of papyrus helped the ancient Egyptians to establish a civilization that lasted for centuries, and its influence is still very significant today. Through communication, papyrus spread from Egypt to ancient Greece and Rome.
In ancient China, the writing materials of characters ranged from pottery to Oracle Bone Inscriptions, bamboo slips, silk books and stones. Among China's great inventions that have influenced the world, one is the great change of writing materials and the invention of papermaking.
The greatest contribution of writing to today's world is preservation. We say that taking history as a mirror, through these written materials, we can know the rise and fall of history, which is of great significance to our development today and in the future. Today, there are more than 2000 languages in the world. There are more than 200 languages with a population of over one million, and more than 50 languages with a population of over ten million. The number of people who use larger languages exceeds 96% of the global population, and less than 4% of the population use more than 2,000 languages, which are dying out. How can we save and protect these disappearing cultures?