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Computer science
Course: Computer science > Unit 3
Lesson 1: Ancient information theory- What is information theory?
- Origins of written language
- History of the alphabet
- The Rosetta Stone
- Source encoding
- Visual telegraphs (case study)
- Decision tree exploration
- Electrostatic telegraphs (case study)
- The battery and electromagnetism
- Morse code and the information age
- Morse code Exploration
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Origins of written language
Created by Brit Cruise.
Want to join the conversation?
- What were they painting with in caves and things that made the images last for so many years?(96 votes)
- They painted with natural pigments (derived from plants). However, the reason these were preserved for so long was due to the geography of the cave. I recommend everyone check out this interactive tour of the cave - it's beautiful:
http://www.lascaux.culture.fr/?lng=en(147 votes)
- I don't understand how symbols are interpreted as sounds?(27 votes)
- it's like how you interpret A as "ah" or B as "buh"(66 votes)
- How come so many cave paintings have most of the same things even though the paintings themselves are seperated by long distances?(26 votes)
- Prehistoric cave paintings were normally about hunting because hunting was the only source of food for humans at that time.
P.S: Great question!(17 votes)
- What base did those people who made the tablet use?(16 votes)
- Actually, most ancient cultures used base 60 (sexagesimal) counting.(30 votes)
- Isn't art a form of language?(14 votes)
- It is definitely a form of communication but it wouldn't meet the modern criteria for definition as a language. People colloquially say art is a language in the same way they say that birds talk. Surely the birds are communicating to each other with their constant chirps but their chirps do not meet the complexity, grammatical and other linguistic qualities needed to really call it a "language" in the way you would typically think of languages (i.e. English, French, Japanese, etc). Same way with art. There is no doubt that a whole lot of communication is happening. There is also no doubt that there are established methods for producing certain kinds of feelings. But it is not a language in the strict sense. (As a side note some scientists are doing studies to see if maybe whales or dolphins actually have a language but as of right now it is unknown if any other species has the capacity for language).(20 votes)
- Ideograms are mentioned at. Another commenter mentions ideagrams (spelled with an A) Is there a difference? I had taken it for a misspelling but it seems to have traction on Google. Is it a derived term? 3:55(8 votes)
- I understand that it's ideograms that are mentioned in the video. That was nicely displayed. But I was asking about ideograms in relation to another person's comment (here in the question section) that referenced ideagrams. So, I will go look it up some more elsewhere.(4 votes)
- Athow does Bob know Alice painted that picture? 2:26(5 votes)
- I am not sure but i believe Bob and Alice represent a larger group of people. The video just simplified it by making them individuals. It just shows you how and why written language was invented, it bridged the gap between different cultures so they can work together for things like trading.(6 votes)
- what information could be important enough that cave art stopped and an oral language was created?(5 votes)
- How would a person know that another person could decode their ideogram?(4 votes)
- You don't. Which is why you add as many extra symbols as you can to make it especially clear. That is also why people came up with languages.(5 votes)
- Could they make everything they needed to show someone with the paintings(4 votes)
- Well drawing, as was mentioned above, was once somewhat a survival skill. I assume that compromises were made when there were lapses in creativity. For example, now-a-days, when people find something indescribable they use analogies. Well in the video they use translations in ideas (setting sun gives way to direction) which are similar to that.(4 votes)
Video transcript
Voiceover: Imagine Alice traveled back over 50,000 years to find
her distant ancestor, Bob. Now up until this time, human culture was
relatively unsophisticated, utilizing the same primitive stone tools which went unchanged
for thousands of years. But somewhere around 50,000 years ago something interesting happened. And nobody knows for sure why. There was a sudden explosion of diverse cultural artifacts, including instruments for making music, new tools, and other forms of creative expression. (chanting and clapping) Voiceover: Humans developed the ability to externalize their inner thoughts. They began to communicate using language. So Alice begins her search
by looking for water. She knows that human
and animal populations tend to migrate towards and along rivers which are the life blood of ecosystems. Eventually she comes across an interesting marking, Bob's hand print. This marking contains
very little information. Simply that he was here
and could possibly return. Alice knows Bob is equally intelligent. He can communicate orally. Although his culture has not yet developed the ability to read or write in their native language. At the time, the universal
written language was art. So she finds natural materials around her to paint him a picture in case he returns. She renders an animal she is tracking, hoping this will offer a clue of the direction she is
traveling in the future. Our ancestors use natural
materials to create pictorial representations
of their reality. Here is an actual cave painting from around 30,000 years ago found preserved deep inside Chauvet cave in France. Similar renderings are found in the caves of Spain as well. A common theme among
these ancient paintings are animal forms, as
well as the human hand. Perhaps a signature, a story, or a ritual calling. Voiceover: When Bob
returns to the waterfall he finds her painting and proceeds towards the river where
he thinks she might be. When he arrives he does not find her, though he finds a sign
that she was here before. He decides to paint her a picture explaining where he is going next, which is half way up the river towards the setting sun. He has little time to paint a picture as night is approaching. Therefore, he needs a fast way to visualize his message. He thinks about it for a moment and realizes his message only contains three distinct mental objects, middle, river, west. So he decides to use simplified pictures to represent them. For river, he draws a symbol which resembles its natural form, known as a pictogram, which is a drawing that resembles the physical object it represents. Pictograms are an important step in the evolution of writing. Here is a ceremonial
slate palette found in Egypt dated before 3,000 B.C. The surrounding scene shows the stuggle between civilized humans and the wild and ferocious animals. However, it's difficult to draw pictures of abstract concepts such as calm, old, dangerous, or
in Bob's case, middle. For this, he draws a line
with a box over the middle. It represents half way. This is knows as an ideogram, or conceptual picture of an abstract idea. Here is an example of this same symbol on an ancient Chinese bronze inscription. For the idea of west
he decides on a picture of the setting sun. Now he does something interesting. He combines these individual symbols in terms of their meaning
to create a message, meaning plus meaning equals new meaning. He leaves this in hope
of Alice finding it. Voiceover: Some of the earliest artifacts of this symbolic merging are found in ancient Mesopotamia, now modern Iraq, home of the Sumerians. This is the birth place of many of the world's earliest civilizations. Here we find clay accounting tablets which are some of the oldest written documents ever found, some dating before 3,000 B.C. The rectangular tablets record the payments in cattle,
shipments of cattle to shepherds for fattening, and gifts of cattle as an offering. Notice that instead of drawing a picture of 10 sheep, they draw a symbol representing 10 using small notches and another symbol
representing sheep or donkey, meaning simply, 10 sheep. We call this proto-writing. Finally, Alice returns
to the base of the river and finds Bob's message. She interprets the meaning correctly, half way west down the river. So she marches down river towards the setting sun, and eventually they finally meet. Voiceover: Over time, Bob learns to speak Alice's language, allowing them to use
the same oral language to communicate shared concepts and ideas. This gives them an idea, the root of a more
powerful written language. It starts with something very simple, writing her name. She disassociates the sound from the picture. For her name, Alice, Alice, Alice. She combines the
mathematical symbol for all and the picture of ice. All ice. Alice. Notice her name has nothing to do with the individual symbols. Sound plus sound equals new meaning. This is know as the Rebus Principle. Voiceover: A great example of this was found in Egypt along the Nile River. Dated to around 3,100 B.C., it contains some of the earliest hieroglyphic inscriptions ever found. The Narmer Palette depicts the Egyptian pharaoh, Narmer. On the back we see him to the left of a kneeling prisoner who is about to be struck down by Narmer, who we see standing tall, wearing a crown. What we are looking for
is on the other side. Between the two bovine heads at the top we see an inscription of his name. It's written as a fish and a chisel, which translates to nar mer. Narmer. Two sounds separated from the pictures together giving new meaning, a key development in the
history of written language. But before they could advance towards what we know of as an alphabet, something had to happen. They needed to save time.