Episode #487 from 0:58
Origins of human language
And now, dear friends, here's Irving Finkel. Where and when did writing originate in human civilization? Let's go back a few thousand years. The first attempts at writing that we could call writing go back to the middle of the fourth millennium, say around 3500 BC, something like that. There were people in the Middle East, individuals who lived between the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers, who had clay as their operating material for building and all sorts of other purposes, and eventually as a writing support. They somehow developed the idea of the basis of writing, which means that you can make a sign, which people agree on, on a surface that another person, when they see it, they know what sound it engenders. That is the essence of writing: that there's an agreed system of symbols that A can use and B can then play back, either in their heads or literally with their voices, a bit like a gramophone record.
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Why this moment matters
And now, dear friends, here's Irving Finkel. Where and when did writing originate in human civilization? Let's go back a few thousand years. The first attempts at writing that we could call writing go back to the middle of the fourth millennium, say around 3500 BC, something like that. There were people in the Middle East, individuals who lived between the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers, who had clay as their operating material for building and all sorts of other purposes, and eventually as a writing support. They somehow developed the idea of the basis of writing, which means that you can make a sign, which people agree on, on a surface that another person, when they see it, they know what sound it engenders. That is the essence of writing: that there's an agreed system of symbols that A can use and B can then play back, either in their heads or literally with their voices, a bit like a gramophone record.
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