Why Was Writing Invented?
Memory Overload - Ch.7
Post-Agricultural Revolution…
Even after adopting agriculture and becoming sedentary, the size of any human group still has serious limits. We’re having many more children but as groups grow too large, we split off into two smaller groups.
The limit is our own brains. The human brain isn’t designed to store “empire-sized databases”, because
it has a limited capacity
it is erased, along with all the information inside it, when a person dies
it evolved to store specific information for survival and social interaction
How do we solve this problem and grow into historically recognized empires like Sumer, Egypt, China and the Incas? We use scripts AKA writing.
Writing was invented as a way to store and handle information. The first-recorded writings are from Sumer around 3000 BC and they are the most beautiful poems you will ever read…
“'29,086 measures Barley 37 months Kushim.’ The most probable reading of this sentence is: ‘A total of 29,086 measures of barley were received over the course of 37 months.” (Sapiens, 138)
There was no written poetry at the time. The language then was a “partial” script, meaning it couldn’t be used to store entire natural conversations. An example of that today is math. Math is a language but you can’t gossip using math. The earliest written languages were the same way.
The written word was invented as a way to store and organize information. Languages spread and differed by region, each one adopting slightly new structures to organize the information differently.
Remember that, as Seneca said, wisdom is written in truths, not words. Words only carry information. And not all information can be transmitted in words.
Question of The Day
What do you use words for? How could you use them better?
Your Biggest Fan,
Noah “BigNerd” Sochaczevski