Writing and Civilization: From Ancient Worlds to Modernity

It is said that writing exists only in a civilization and a civilization cannot exist without writing; probing the validity of this statement; the critical functions that writing serves during the past 5,000 years; an introduction to pictography.

Three beliefs or myths about where writing comes from and how it develops; the theories of monogenesis versus polygenesis; whether writing is only invented once or independently in locations around the world; writing systems are resistant to change.

Most alphabets in use today are derived from one script developed over 4,000 years ago; what accounts for the vast popularity of the Roman or Latin alphabet; in Ancient Egypt, probing the origin of the alphabet; the contributions by the Canaanites.

Runes are often mistakenly thought to be a semi-magical system of signs used for divination and ritual; nothing could be further from the truth; the real history of the Runic alphabet, also known as the Futhark; why writing systems rise and fall.

The Chinese script and its derivatives are used by more than 1.5 billion people around the world; popular myths about Chinese writing as one discovers the earliest evolutions of Chinese characters; the five sign groups found in Chinese.

Japanese writing is a highly complicated script; it is used by more than 100 million people daily; how and why Japanese writing takes on the complex form it has today; attempts to simplify it have had little success; not one to be abandoned.

The earliest writing systems are known only through the efforts of archaeological decipherment; history on cryptography and the differences between decipherers and code-breakers; the theory and methodology of decipherment; the evidence it considers.

The five preconditions necessary for decipherment to be possible; paying particular attention to script type; the typology of logograms, phonograms and semantic signs found across the world; how these signs are combined in different writing systems.

The second pillar of decipherment; how epigraphers find a broad, accurate and readily accessible corpus to study; contrasting early and modern illustrations of the Classic Maya site of Palenque in Chiapas, Mexico; origins of epigraphic illustration.

Language is the third pillar of decipherment; the decoding of ancient Sumerian, the language of ancient Mesopotamia; philologists use the comparative method of linguistic restoration to compare related languages and reconstruct their shared ancestor.

The fourth pillar of decipherment is cultural context; most epigraphers' efforts begin with recognizing proper nouns; the ancient Greek historian Herodotus; he becomes the source of information for the cultural context of Old World writing systems.

Napoleon's expedition to Egypt is known for its discovery of the Rosetta Stone; it contains ancient Greek writing, Egyptian hieroglyphs and demotic script; this icon of decipherment is a famous example of a biscript; how common such artifacts are.

Before Jean-Francois Champollion deciphers hieroglyphic writing in 1822, no one has been able to read a word of Egyptian; knowing why Egypt's ancient language and writing system are forgotten; learning what clues lead Champollion to success.

Professor Zender reads hieroglyphs that Champollion's efforts helped to recover from oblivion; deciphering this blend of phonetic signs, logograms and semantic signs; the interaction of Egyptian writing and culture; the practice of damnatio memoriae.

Georg Grotefend contributes to the study of ancient writing and civilization; the methods he uses to decipher Old Persian cuneiform in the Achaemenid texts of Persepolis; this culture's language; the foundation established for the decipherment.

Scholars expand upon Grotefend's breakthroughs; relating Old Persian to the ancient cuneiform scripts that precede it; writing evolves through 3,500 years of Mesopotamian history; what ancient texts teach about ancient cultures of this region.

The decipherment of Linear B changes views of ancient Aegean civilization; epigraphers perplexed by many Linear B spellings; the decipherment and contents of the writing system; measuring it against the decoding of Egyptian and cuneiform scripts.

Whether the features of Old World scripts such as Chinese and Egyptian hieroglyphs apply to the unrelated scripts of the New World; Yuri Knorosov's decipherment of Mayan hieroglyphic writing; living in Cold War Russia both helps and hinders his work.

The strikingly similar structural features of the Mayan and ancient Egyptian writing systems; how Mayan writing works through a comparison with Egyptian hieroglyphs; what scholars learn about ancient Maya civilization; some fascinating inscriptions.

Complex views of Aztec civilization are often replaced with a one-note narrative that focuses only on the practice of human sacrifice; Aztecs write their Nahuatl language; it is still spoken by countless modern Mexicans in the form of local dialects.

There are still dozens of undeciphered scripts; the failures of decipherment and the lessons drawn from them; focusing on the attempted decipherment of Etruscan and Meroitic scripts, which record languages with no known relatives or descendants.

Moving to scripts that are deliberately designed by an individual or group, often for use as a universal system; these writing systems betray their intentional design; examples include Korean Hangul and J. R. R. Tolkien's Tengwar and Certar.

Whether on papyrus, bamboo, stone or wood, writing shows an important relationship between medium and message; media's influence on writing's shape, direction and use; the origins of terms used for writing implements; the process for making papyrus.

Knowing if typing will replace handwriting and if e-books will make printed books obsolete; Professor Zender analyzes the future of writing based on past events; movable type and new signs; spelling conventions inspired by the QWERTY keyboard.