Page 16 - Eloquence 2017

DTM. Rekha Utham

Pathway Ambassador
Division K

Communication after breathing is probably es. For the first time in recorded history a mes-
what makes a species alive. All living creatures senger pigeon delivered the results of the first
communicate in some form or the other. While Olympiad in 776BC. The establishment of the
most species have limited growth in communi- first library by the Greeks also became a mile-
cation Homo Sapiens or humans are one spe- stone in the history of communications. To-
cies that have fine-tuned communication to suit wards the end of the BC period systems of
the anthropological, technological, social ad- long distance communications were an estab-
vancement that mankind has made. The first lished system. Around 200 to 100BC human
means of communication was the human messengers on foot or horseback with relay
voice. So shouting to make oneself heard was stations built were a common sight in Egypt
a form of communication. This proved to be and China.
inadequate if the distances were great and if It was in 14AD that the first postal service was
one wanted to confirm details of what one established in the western world by the Ro-
heard. mans. Even though this was the first docu-
The Kish tablet, discovered in the ancient Su- mented service such services were in practice
merian city of Kish, is considered to be oldest in China and India much before that. Ancient
form of written communication. Dated to 3500 Persia had its own legitimate postal system as
BC, the tablet is a prototype of the cuneiform early as 550BC, however it was used more for
signs to emerge later. Basically they were sim- intelligence gathering and relaying messages
ple symbols that conveyed meaning by its pic- from the King.
torial resemblance to a physical object. The China forged ahead in its pursuit of efficient
Egyptian Hieroglyphs, which date back to means of communication with their well-
around 3200 BC were also along these lines. developed writing and messenger systems. In
Rest of the world saw written language around 105AD when an official named Cai Lung sub-
12,000BC in China and 600BC in the Ameri- mitted a proposal to the emperor suggesting
cas. using “the bark of trees, remnants of hemp,
The first system to not use pictures as symbols rags of cloth, and fishing nets” instead of the
was the phonetic system where the symbols heavier bamboo or costlier silk material the
represented the spoken sounds. So the origin Chinese were on their way to inventing paper
of most of the modern alphabets which we are and paper making. The Chinese followed that
familiar with was from here. The early Canaan- up sometime between 1041 and 1048 with the
ite population in 19BC and the Semitic commu- invention of the first moveable type for printing
nities in 15BC which lived in Central Egypt still paper books.
had remnants of this system. This Phoenician Are we truly communicating or are we just lis-
system of communication was later picked up tening to our own voice? Was the eagerness to
th
by the Mediterranean states. In the 8 Century improve communication meant to end up in
BC when these symbols reached Greece, the such apathy in communication? It is time we
Greeks altered it to suit the Greek oral lan- started thinking.
guage. The addition of vowel sounds and hav-
ing the letters read from left to right were the
contributions the Greeks made to written com-
munication.

Once messages could be preserved the next
challenge was to communicate across distanc-

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