Writing.
Series: Ancient peoples and places,; v. 25; Books that matter
Publisher: Praeger
Published: 1962
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 261
Subjects: Writing -- History
Description: A concise yet wide-ranging survey of the invention and evolution of writing. The invention of writing marked the real beginning of civilization as we know it. Without writing, scholarship, religion, philosophy--and indeed, knowledge of every kind--would be rudimentary, for all these things depend on the traditions of communicable intelligence that only writing really secures. As a conscious and systematic activity, writing began in the fourth millennium B.C., its first known manifestation being cuneiform in Mesopotamia; its second, the Egyptian hieroglyphs. Each represents an immense step forward in human intellectual development. Later, and still more dramatically, comes the first alphabetic script, which originated in Phoenicia and from which all the known alphabetic scripts used today are derived.--Adapted from jacket.
Notes: Bibliography: p. 179-184.