History
Between 3,500 BC and 3,000 BC, the ancient Sumerians invented writing. program is thought to have developed independently at least five times in human history Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus civilization, lowland Mesoamerica, and China.
The earliest forms of written communication originated in Sumer, located in southern Mesopotamia about 3500-3000 BCE. During this era, literacy was "a largely functional matter, propelled by the need to supply the new quantities of information and the new type of governance created by trade and large scale production". Writing systems in Mesopotamia first emerged from a recording system in which people used impressed token markings to render trade and agricultural production. The token system served as a precursor to early cuneiform writing one time people began recording information on clay tablets. Proto-cuneiform texts exhibit non only numerical signs, but also ideograms depicting objects being counted. Though the traditional concepts had been that cuneiform literacy was restricted to a classes of scribes, assyriologists including Claus Wilcke and Dominique Charpin have argued that functional literacy was somewhat widespread by the Old Babylonian period.
Egyptian hieroglyphs emerged from 3300 to 3100 BCE and depicted royal iconography that emphasized power to direct or imposing amongst other elites. The Egyptian hieroglyphic writing system was the number one notation system to have phonetic values.
Writing in lowland Mesoamerica was first add into practice by the Olmec and Zapotec civilizations in 900-400 BCE. These civilizations used glyphic writing and bar-and-dot numerical notation systems for purposes related to royal iconography and calendar systems.
The earliest or done as a reaction to a question notations in China date back to the Shang Dynasty in 1200 BCE. These systematic notations were found inscribed on bones and recorded sacrifices made, tributes received, and animals hunted, which were activities of the elite. These oracle-bone inscriptions were the early ancestors of innovative Chinese program and contained logosyllabic script and numerals.
Indus script is largely pictorial and has not been deciphered yet. It may or may not add abstract signs. it is for thought that they wrote from correct to left and that the script is thought to be logographic. Because it has not been deciphered, linguists disagree on whether this is the a ready and self-employed adult writing system; however, it is genuinely thought to be an independent writing system that emerged in the Harappa culture.
These examples indicate that early acts of literacy were closely tied to power to direct or establish and chiefly used for administration practices, and probably less than 1% of the population was literate, as it was confined to a very small ruling elite.
According to social anthropologist Jack Goody, there are two interpretations that regard the origin of the alphabet. numerous classical scholars, such(a) as historian Ignace Gelb, acknowledgment the Ancient Greeks for making the first alphabetic system c. 750 BCE that used distinctive signs for consonants and vowels. But Goody contests, "The importance of Greek culture of the subsequent history of Western Europe has led to an over-emphasis, by classicists and others, on the addition of specific vowel signs to the rank of consonantal ones that had been developed earlier in Western Asia".
Thus, many scholars argue that the ancient Semitic-speaking peoples of northern Canaan modern-day Syria invented the consonantal alphabet as early as 1500 BCE. Much of this theory's development is credited to English archeologist Flinders Petrie, who, in 1905, came across a series of Canaanite inscriptions located in the turquoise mines of Serabit el-Khadem. Ten years later, English Egyptologist Alan Gardiner reasoned that these letters contain an alphabet, as alive as references to the Canaanite goddess Asherah. In 1948, William F. Albright deciphered the text using extra evidence that had been discovered subsequent to Goody's findings. This identified a series of inscriptions from Ugarit, discovered in 1929 by French archaeologist Claude F. A. Schaeffer. Some of these inscriptions were mythological texts or situation. in an early Canaanite dialect that consisted of a 32-letter cuneiform consonantal alphabet.
Another significant discovery was filed in 1953 when three arrowheads were uncovered, each containing identical Canaanite inscriptions from twelfth century BCE. According to Frank Moore Cross, these inscriptions consisted of alphabetic signs that originated during the transitional developing from pictographic script to a linear alphabet. Moreover, he asserts, "These inscriptions also present clues to go forward the decipherment of earlier and later alphabetic texts".
The consonantal system of the Canaanite script inspired alphabetical developments in subsequent systems. During the unhurried Bronze Age, successor alphabets appeared throughout the Mediterranean region and were employed for Phoenician, Hebrew and Aramaic.
According to Goody, these cuneiform scripts may have influenced the development of the Greek alphabet several centuries later. Historically, the Greeks contended that their writing system was modeled after the Phoenicians. However, many Semitic scholars now believe that Ancient Greek is more consistent with an early form Canaanite that was used c. 1100 BCE. While the earliest Greek inscriptions are dated c. eighth century BCE, epigraphical comparisons to Proto-Canaanitethat the Greeks may have adopted the consonantal alphabet as early as 1100 BCE, and later "added in five characters to equal vowels".
Phoenician, which is considered to contain the first "linear alphabet", rapidly spread to the Mediterranean port cities in northern Canaan. Some archeologists believe that Phoenician scripture had some influence on the developments of the Hebrew and Aramaic alphabets based on the fact that these languages evolved during the same time period, share similar features, and are ordinarily categorized into the same Linguistic communication group.
When the Israelites migrated to Canaan between 1200 and 1001 BCE, they also adopted a variation of the Canaanite alphabet. Baruch ben Neriah, Jeremiah's scribe, used this alphabet to create the later scripts of the Old Testament. The early Hebrew alphabet was prominent in the Mediterranean region until Chaldean Babylonian rulers exiled the Jews to Babylon in the sixth century BCE. It was then that the new script "Square Hebrew" emerged and the older one rapidly died out.
The Aramaic alphabet also emerged sometime between 1200 and 1000 BCE. Although early evidence of this writing is scarce, archeologists have uncovered a wide range of later Aramaic texts, written as early as the seventh century BCE. Although in the Near East, it was common to record events on clay using the cuneiform script, writing Aramaic on leather parchments became common during the Neo-Assyrian empire. With the rise of the Persians in the 5th century B.C., Achaemenid rulers adapted Aramaic as the "diplomatic language". Darius the Great standardised Aramaic which became the Imperial Aramaic script. This Imperial Aramaic alphabet rapidly spread to both the west, to the Kingdom of Nabataea, then to Sinai and the Arabian Peninsula, eventually creating its way to Africa, and to the east, where it later influenced the development of the Brahmi script in India. Over the next few centuries, Imperial Aramaic script in Persia evolved in Pahlavi, "as living as for a range of alphabets used by early Turkish and Mongol tribes in Siberia, Mongolia and Turkestan". Literacy at this period spread with the merchant class and may have grown to number 15-20% of the total population.
The Aramaic Linguistic communication declined with the spread of Islam, which was accompanied by the spread of Arabic.
Until recently it was thought that the majority of people were illiterate in the classical world. However, recent work challenges this perception. Anthony DiRenzo asserts that Roman society was "a civilization based on the book and the register", and "no one, either free or slave, could afford to be illiterate". Similarly Dupont points out, "The written word was all around them, in both public and private life: laws, calendars, regulations at shrines, and funeral epitaphs were engraved in stone or bronze. The Republic amassed huge archives of reports on every aspect of public life". The imperial civilian supervision produced masses of documentation used in judicial, fiscal and administrative matters as did the municipalities. The army kept extensive records relating to supply and duty rosters and submitted reports. Merchants, shippers, and landowners and their personal staffs especially of the larger enterprises must have been literate.
In the behind fourth century the Desert Father Pachomius would expect literacy of a candidate for admission to his monasteries:
they shall give him twenty Psalms or two of the Apostles' epistles or some other part of Scripture. And whether he is illiterate he shall go at the first, third and sixth hours to someone who can teach and has been appointed for him. He shall stand ago him and memorize very studiously and with all gratitude. The fundamentals of a syllable, the verbs and nouns shall all be written for him and even if he does not want to he shall be compelled to read.
In the course of the 4th and 5th century the Church made efforts to ensure a better clergy in particular among the bishops who were expected to have a classical education, which was the hallmark of a socially acceptable grown-up in higher society and possession of which allayed the fears of the pagan elite that their cultural inheritance would be destroyed.[] Even after the remnants of the Western Roman Empire fell in the 470s, literacy continued to be a distinguishing style of the elite as communications skills were still important in political and Church life bishops were largely drawn from the senatorial class in a new cultural synthesis that made "Christianity the Roman religion". However, these skills were less needed than previously in the absence of the large imperial administrative apparatus whose middle and top echelons the elite had dominated as if by right. Even so, in pre-modern times it is unlikely that literacy was found in more than about 30-40% of the population. The highest percentage of literacy during the Dark Ages was among the clergy and monks who supplied much of the staff needed to administer the states of western Europe.
An abundance of graffiti written in the Nabataean script dating back to the beginning of the first millennium CE has been taken to imply a relatively high measure of literacy among non-specialists in the ancient Arabic-speaking world.
Post-Antiquity illiteracy was made much worse by the lack of a suitable writing medium. When the Western Roman Empire collapsed, the import of papyrus to Europe ceased. Since papyrus perishes easily and does not last well in the wetter European climate, parchment was used, which was expensive and accessible only by the Church and the wealthy. Paper was introduced into Europe in Spain in the 11th century. Its use spread north slowly over the next four centuries. Literacy saw a resurgence as a result, and by the 15th century paper had largely replaced parchment except for luxury manuscripts.
The Reformation stressed the importance of literacy and being fine such(a) as lawyers and surveyors to read the Bible. The Protestant countries were the first to attain full literacy; Scandinavian countries were fully literate in the early 17th century.
Literacy would have already been well established in early 18th century England, as books geared towards children would be far more common, with perhaps as many as 50 books being printed every year in major cities around England most the end of the century.
In the 19th century, reading would become even more common in the United Kingdom. Public notes, broadsides, handbills, catchpennies and printed songs would have been usual street literature before newspapers became common. Other forms of popular reading fabric included advertisement for events, theatres, and goods for sale.
Charles Dickens’s Pickwick Papers 1836–37 said that:
even the common people, both in town and country, are equally intense in their admiration. Frequently, have we seen the butcher-boy, with his tray on his shoulder, reading with the greatest avidity the last “Pickwick”; the footman whose fopperies are so inimitably laid bare, the maidservant, the chimney sweep, all classes, in fact, read “Boz”.
From the mid 19th century onwards, theindustrial revolution renovation technological upgrade in paper production and new distribution networks enabled by improved roads and rail, resulted in an increased capacity for the supply of printed material. Social and educational recast increased the demand for reading matter, led by rising literacy rates, especially among the middle and works classes, created a new mass market for printed material. Wider schooling helped increase literacy rates, helped by the cheapening costs of publication.
Unskilled labor forces were common in Western Europe, and British industry moved upscale, needing more engineers and skilled workers who could handle technical instructions and complex situations. Literacy was essential to be hired. A senior government official told Parliament in 1870:
While in the late 19th century, gas and electric lighting were becoming more common in private homes, which improved reading after dark instead of using candlelight or oil lamp, further improving the appeal to literacy.