Writing – a method of visual markings representing the devices of the language that is specific

Composing – a method of visual markings representing the devices of a language that is specific happens to be conceived separately when you look at the Near East, China and Mesoamerica. The cuneiform script, developed in Mesopotamia, present-day Iraq, ca. 3200 BC, was. Additionally, it is truly the only writing system that could be traced to its earliest prehistoric origin. This antecedent associated with cuneiform script had been a system of counting and goods that are recording clay tokens. The development of composing from tokens to pictography, syllabary and alphabet illustrates the growth of information processing to manage bigger levels of data in ever greater abstraction.

Introduction

The 3 writing systems that developed separately when you look at the Near East, Asia and Mesoamerica, shared an extraordinary security. Each preserved over millennia features characteristic of these initial prototypes. The Mesopotamian cuneiform script could be traced furthest back in prehistory to an eighth millennium bc counting system making use of clay tokens of numerous forms. The growth from tokens to script reveals that writing emerged from counting and accounting. Composing had been utilized solely for accounting before the 3rd millennium BC, if the Sumerian concern for the afterlife paved the way to literature by making use of writing for funerary inscriptions.