Page 104 - 100 Events That Made History
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Reckless records
Before writing came about, people
had no way to easily keep track of
the things they owned and made.
FARMERS, for example, would rely
on sight alone to make decisions
on how much produce they had
harvested, and how much they could
sell—but the eyes can deceive!
Cuneiform script, from modern-
day Iraq, is one of the earliest
Getting symbolic examples of writing. This cuneiform
Traders often used stones to tablet records
represent the things they owned. food and drink.
Around 4000 BCE, some bright
person began to use SYMBOLS
inscribed in clay instead. One of the
earliest examples we have comes
from the Sumerian culture in Ur
(modern-day Iraq). These became
more sophisticated, and proper
writing had begun by 3200 BCE.
First writing How it changed
Writing allows us
to communicate with
How we SCRATCHED and one another, and also to
SCRAPED our very first words preserve information for
future generations.
the world
Did you know? “Hieroglyph” means “sacred carving” in Greek.
The first alphabet was
developed by the Semitic
people from modern-day
Egypt, sometime between Sounds like…
1850 BCE and 1550 BCE. The process was complete a little
later on when symbols known
as HIEROGLYPHS came into
fashion. These represented
This hieroglyph of sounds—making the written
a fat bird was the symbol a representative of how to
symbol used for pronounce the word for the first
the sound “S.” time. Today, our symbols are
letters, but the idea is the same.
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