During the Stone age, people already have the knowledge to make a picture representing an object. Cave men carved shapes of animals on the walls. And these is how they still communicate with us today, by the pictures they drew on the walls. You may wonder, it’s not writing, it is called drawing. However, it is how the art of writing was first formed. Pictures became more complicated.
The Native American Indians had also different kinds of picture writing long before when Columbus arrived. One examples are the Mayans in Central America which highly developed their written language as well as their hieroglyphics.
It was when they took a giant step when they made pictures to represent sounds and not only objects. The Ancient Sumerians living in Mesopotamia which is now Iraq, discovered this 5, 000 years ago. The Chinese, still have one of the most complicated form of writing, until today. In their language, each symbol makes only one symbol. And therefore, they have thousands of them to write.
The next step in improving the art of writing was to invent the written language which each symbol stands for a single sound rather than one word. This is now what we call the alphabet. The word “alphabet” came from first two letters of the Greek Alphabet which are alpha and beta. The first people to use the alphabet were the Hebrews, the people living in Mediterranean and the Phoenicians.
One of the causes why ancient books where so precious and rare is because it took a lot of time and skills to be able to finish each one of them. The second is because there wasn’t a lightweight material that the people could write on. However, the Chinese already knew how to make paper from materials like bamboo silk and linen. Not until Marco Polo visited the China they knew about the paper. When it comes to ink, the Egyptians and the Chinese were the first.
Interesting Facts for Kids 