Ancient History: The Alphabet

Applied math

Information Theory

What is Information Theory?
Prehistory: Proto-writing
Ptolemaic: Rosetta Stone
Ancient History: The Alphabet
Source Encoding
Visual Telegraphs (case study)
Decision Tree Exploration
Electrostatic Telegraphs (case study)
The Battery & Electromagnetism
Morse Code & The Information Age
Morse code Exploration
Symbol Rate
Symbol Rate Exploration
Introduction to Channel Capacity
Message Space Exploration
What's Next?

Ancient History: The Alphabet History of the Alphabet. This video introduces the Hieroglyphic, Cuneiform, Hieratic, Demotic & Phoenician writing systems.

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Ancient History: The Alphabet

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Informally we can think of information as some message
stored or transmitted using some medium
When you paint you are representing your message using a continuous pattern
with a seemingly endless numbers of possible forms. You are
free to express yourself
When humans began developing writing systems, we naturally had to divide
our world into a finite number of atomic units which we express using symbols
Now any written language can be thought of in this way
Messages are formed by arranging symbols in specific patterns
Lets return to 3000 B.C and explore two ancient writing systems
First in ancient Egypt we had hieroglyphics
A priestly form of communication reserved for governmental, fiscal, magical and religious purposes
It was practised by a select few writers, known as scribes, and writing was generally
unintelligible to the common people. The symbols themselves broadly fall into two categories:
word signs, which are symbols that represent a single meaningful concept
and sound signs. These symbols represent chunks of sound
Now the total number of different symbols in common use
was over 1,500 and if you divide all of these
symbols into word signs verses sound signs, we find a much smaller portion
of sound signs. There are around 140 sound signs and of these, only 33 represented distinct
consonants. A tiny fraction of all the symbols in use.
At the time the medium used to store the symbols was primarily rock
and this was ideal for durable inscriptions allowing messages to travel into the future.
Mobility was not a main concern when communicating messages in this way.
However a new physical medium for storing symbols was emerging at the time.
Along the Nile, silk deposits, left from flooding, made the surrounding land extremely fertile
and one of the many crops they grew was papyrus. It could be sliced into strips and
these strips were then soaked
and weaved together and finally pressed, allowing the natural sugars to act as glue.
After several days, it dried and formed an almost weightless tablet
This medium was ideal for sending messages across greater spaces rather than the more
durable inscriptions focused on time. Now this shift towards cheap, portable mediums for storing symbols
coincided with the spread of writing into the hands of more people for new purposes.
Gradually as people began to write more on papyrus, the symbols evolved to suit more rapid writing.
This led to a cursive script known as "Hieratic"
For example here is the world's oldest surviving surgical document. It's written in heiratic script
dated to around 1600 B.C. Now these symbols were based on hieroglyphics however the pictures were
simplified to match the swiftness of writing. An ancient shorthand
Also the number of common symbols in use began to shrink, down to around 700.
By escaping from the heavy medium of stone, thought gained lightness. A marked increase in writing by hand
was accompanied by the secularisation of writing, thought and activity.
This led to a new writing system called "Demotic". Around 650 B.C which was devised specifically to
facilitate the ease of rapid writing. For example this text is known as a marriage contract and is one of the
earliest known examples of demotic script. It's interesting to notice that there was a dramatic reduction again
in the total number of symbols with this new system. Roughly 10% of the total number of symbols used before.
This was due to a shift towards the use of phonetic symbols, or sound signs, over word symbols or meaning signs.
And the new simplicity meant that children could be taught to write at a young age.
We see this same pattern in other cultures
Let's return back to 3000 B.C and visit Mesopotamia where "cuneiform" was the writing system originally used for
fiscal purposes as it was a powerful method of tracking debt and surplus commodities before the invention of coins.
For example here is a document recording someone's stock of animal hides and this type of writing evolved to suit
other needs, for example this tablet contains a recipe for bread and beer.
And here's another tablet which contains a legal document. Now originally the writing system was used by the
Sumerians and there are over 2,000 different symbols in use which could also be divided into word signs
and sound signs. Akkadian gradually replaced Sumarian as the spoken language and here is the earliest
known dictionary from 2300 B.C. It contains word lists in Sumerian and Akkadian.
And this was discovered in modern Syria. When it was adapted by the Akkadians and fitted to their language
they reduced the number of symbols to around 600. And they did this again by moving towards sound signs.
Again we see both hieroglyphics and cuneiform using several hundred sound symbols in their more evolved forms.
And as writing systems escaped their formal usage and spread to more and more people, the soil was ripe for
the invention of a brand new writing system for the people
One of the great discoveries in the history of writing, is dated to around 1700 B.C
The Sinai inscriptions were found in the Sinai Peninsula and there were about 20 ft apart.
This was important because each picture denotes a consonant sound and no word signs are used
When sounded out correctly, the letters would produce words in ancient Semitic
Although not fully deciphered, this message appears to be of the form: name, rank, prayer.
The two words deciphered are "Chief" and "God".
This innocent example was part of a writing revolution creating meaning by merging sound signs only
By 1000 B.C, we arrive at the Phoenician alphabet, which emerges along the Mediterranean used by the Phoenicians
who are a maritime trading culture. The Phoenician writing system was based on the principle that one sign
represents one consonant and it was used to write a northern Semitic language containing only 22 symbols
total. These symbols chosen to represent these sounds were often borrowed from hieroglyphic pictures so that
the letter's name began with the letter sound. For example, "Mem" which stood for the water, became what we know of
as the letter "M". "Alph" which stood for ox, became what we know of as the letter A
But the secret power of this alphabet, unknown to its inventors, was that it did not need Semitic speech
in order to work.
With modest adjustments these miraculous letters would be fitted to diverse tongues of Europe, India and
South East Asia. Carrying literacy around the globe.
This was the source of the Greek and later Roman alphabet forms we know today.
The idea of an alphabet is a powerful method for transmitting and storing information
Realize it doesn't really matter what the symbols are or how you choose them or even what language it is in
Information is just a selection from a collection of possible symbols
And over time we've always looked for faster, more efficient ways of transporting information across greater
and greater spaces. When we try doing this using new mediums which travel faster than any human
or animal, an engineering problem presents itself.

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