Who Invented Writing? 

I don't feel as bad about the legibility of my handwriting after seeing some of these early examples.

I recently learned from Digital Hammurabi that a previously unknown language was discovered in the Hittite area. The linguists are slated to publish in February. If memory serves, it was rendered in cuneiform and the fragment is about 15 lines

It's interesting to think that nowadays, if you asked a random person on the street, someone whose native language is Indo-European, to invent a writing system, they would likely create an alphabet based on syllables or single letters. This stands in contrast to the pictographs used by ancient humans to represent words and ideas.

So interesting. I never heard of the Balkan scripts before

My friend asked me if I thought the Egyptians or Sumerians invented writing first or if one influenced the other. I told him they probably appeared within a few hundred years of each other but that it doesn't really matter which one came first. In my opinion both of their societies probably became large and complex enough around the same time to require the development of more complex systems of record keeping rather than one system being inspired by an earlier one.

Prof. Gimbutas (I know, I know !) has published extensively about European writing and proto writing in "the language of the goddess".

Super interesting! Amazing that so many places happened to develop writing around the same time. Thanks professor!!

New intro graphic is sick!

Thank you, professor Miano, for mentioning the Dispilio wooden tablet. It was discovered in the neolithic lakeside settlement of Dispilio at lake Kastoria in northwest Macedonia, Greece - a must-see!

Thank you again sir 🙂 Your take on the subject is very much appreciated 👍

To clarify on what is said about potential Olmec writing: There's a number of engraved Olmec artifacts that seem to have some sort of writing or proto-writing script on them, the most notable example being the Cascajal Block, which is dated to around 900BC. I'm not quite sure why Dr. Miano decided to not clarify on this more: There IS debate about if this is actually writing or some other form of symbolism, but the Zapotec script itself may not fully meet the definition of a true writing system either, depending on how one defines that (under the strictest definition of "writing", the only script in the Precolumbian Americas which would qualify would be Maya writing) so I would have included it. The Cascajal Block in particular is also debated about in terms of if the dating is reliable or if it's even a legitmate prehispanic piece at all, but as I noted, there are other Olmec pieces which seem to have the same characters or glyphs or symbols on them too.

Blessed Yule tidings to you and yours, David.

Love your presentations 💖

As always, thank you so much. Food for thought and reflection as well as full of knowledge and info. In his seminal book "Tristes tropiques", Claude Levi-Strauss relates of an Amazonian Chief who pretended to understand writing when interacting with C L-S in public, and responded by drawing wavy lines looking vaguely like C L-S's writing. He also includes in the book symbols used mostly as tattoos. These symbols are very abstract, and the Indians do not quite know what they mean, it seems (no agreement as to meaning that is).

We can always depend on straight talk and the "breakdown" from our friend the Doctor. This channel has stoked imaginations and passions for history that universities wish they could create through their courses... I find it interesting that other RU-vid channels that are absolutely respectable and knowledgeable always give a nod and a tip of the hat to Dr. Miano and what he's doing here.. there is no better place to be than here 😉

Awesome video. I am actually surprised that we do not have more examples of much earlier writing systems that were lost or simply never really progressed. When it comes to writing we are definitely under a bias that, once invented, it would immediately be recognized for its usefulness and continue to develop. We know now that technological development is not usually a straight linear progression but a series of starts and stops with many failures before something actually catches on. Sadly, because many of these earliest attempts were likely written exclusively on perishable materials, we may never find them. I doubt we have found, or will ever find, humanity’s first actual writing but I wouldn’t be surprised if we found more examples of proto-writing, or even full writing systems, that go back many thousands of years before Mesopotamia and Egypt. They just never progressed for one reason or another. Truly this is a fascinating and compelling topic.

Keep up the great work, Dr Miano!

Amongst many great videos offered by you, this might be your best. Great topic, and it looks like you had fun

In the writings of Shumer, there is one passage in which a king boast of being able to read the writings from before the flood.

Great video! Who invented writing? I'd have to go with dozens and possibly hundreds around the world. Who invented it first? That changes with every new discovery. 'That we know of' will always be the best answer. It is a true pleasure to listen to someone who knows that we do not know everything. Side note: I am looking forward to your lecture series. As with Physics lectures from Lewin, Constitution from Hillsdale College, etc. I will wait until the great grand kids are here so that we can dive in as a family.

could not be more interesting & more clearly laid out for us - thanks doc! 🎉

Excellent program! Informative and interesting.

This was very interesting. I especially liked the distinction between symbolic, protowritten language and mature written. Maybe future videos could explore: Norse runic writing and any examples of indigenous writing in sub Saharan Africa. Your RU-vid shorts documenting your dates with women who also have an interest in ancient history are a hoot.

This is fascinating! Thanks for making your videos.

Who invented writing? A tax collector.

In an age where every valley has a different dialect, and there are many languages, it seems more practical for symbols to represent things, so that the symbols can be understood to represent the same thing across languages. Such proto-writing may be actually superior to writing in a language. There may be other conventions that aren't easily conveyed through the centuries, such as positioning of the symbols relative to each other. I just looked up "number of writing systems in the world," and was surprised to find that there are 293 writing systems. I was expecting to find a couple of dozen. You would think that we would have standardized some of these down to a manageable number by now.

Thank you for all your work.

Thank you. Very comprehesive and also well writen.

Great video. Hopefully we keep finding more early examples.

Great presentation. Thx

I was the obnoxious commenter on your "Big News" video... Well prof, do not panic but I'm going to give you a compliment! Excellent video and I learned things. Way to go to promote your course. Most things I saw of you were debunking vids in which you (rightly) are a little elitist. But when you stick to teaching: Compliments! Please don't stop debunking BTW... Peace? O yeah, time for new spectacles? I've also appended my comment on your "Big News" video to recommend your new course/lecture

Subscribed. I found it fascinating. Thank you. Cheers ✌🏽🌻

Very informative as always.

Very interesting! Thank you for the video 🙏🏼

Good video... Very well researched! Thx

Interesting video, I enjoyed it. Thanks for the content. Liked and now subscribed.

To be clear, not all writing relates to speech sounds. Logographic writing systems convey morphemes (meaningful components of language), with no direct indication of sound; as opposed to something like an alphabet that marks the sounds. It would be more accurate to say that writing is a physical representation of language, just as speech is a vocal representation of language. It's important because all of the earliest examples of writing are logographic. Alphabets and syllabaries, which both encode actual speech sounds, were a later innovation. As far as I know no culture ever invented writing based on speech sounds initially, there was always an intermediate step of logographic writing or exposure to another literate culture. The main difference between logographies and pictograms or ideograms is that they bypass language and goes directly for meaning. This is what's called "proto-writing", the step between artistic drawing and formal writing. Edit: Oh and you didn't mention Rongorongo, which is from Polynesia. This and the origin in Mesoamerica makes a single origin point highly implausible.

So glad you clearly define writing. I was fortunate enough to visit several areas in Henan a few cities and sites several years ago. One of my delights was to see a couple turtle plastrons from Jiahu displayed in the Henan Museum in Zhengzhou. One clearly had a ri(日) symbol I remember but as you said were symbols not writing. Also got to visit the National Museum of Chinese Writing which has many Shang dynasty oracle bones (earliest Chinese writing known) as well as visit Yinxu near Anyang where the earliest oracle bone writing is found dating from about 1300 BCE onward mostly on cattle scapula and turtle plastrons but also on some bronze artifacts.

that's a nice lookin' shirt and tie combo! love your channel Dr. Miano

You make an interesting topic even more interesting :)

Great video, thanks

So the interesting thing about the cave art that was shown is that marks around many of the animals have been correlated to the length of time between rut and drop in these animals. So, keeping track of gestation length.

Thank you David

Many thanks!

I see cave arts and petroglyphs, even tribal tattoos as a written form of communication as well. Although we must recognise most forms of life have forms of communication. ❤ Thanks Dr. M.!

Love 🥰your knowledge. I find it very interesting to listen to

Very Fascinating . I Love this.

Thank you for mentioning the Vinca culture. It might be useful to produce a video about the prevailing writing system, how it developed into our present world-wide Latin alphabet used by everybody in one way or another. So, the Mesopopatmians are the source where it came from, via Phoenicia, the Greeks, the Etruscans.

Very informative.

I just wanted to thank you for your videos. Every time I see one of those ancient alien type videos it makes my blood pressure rise and I just see red lol. I have to watch one of your videos as an antidote to stupidity. 😁

I'm pretty sure that one Uncle who decides my future every annual examination result day is the one who invented writing. He studied in Australia, France, Canada and America "simultaneously". He's also an astrologer btw, can't forget that.

Brilliant Video. One story that needs a bit of digging is about the library of Alexandria. The brilliant film r Movie 'Agora' depicts that and the Intellect Hypathia. It was burnt down by early Christian Fanatics. However some books were rescued and saved. Some manuscripts were turned into Palimpsest. They had a particular thirst for manuscripts from the libraries of the Far East. I would really love one on this topic and on early knowledge or internet of ancient times. Many 🙏 for the enlightenment 😊

Thanks!

Thank you.

excellent video, and perfectly outlines how writing as we know it; evolved from a supremely advanced tally system.

Proto-writing and writing were used to record economic transaction and produce statements of account. As such writing is the first step in the invention of money.

Mind blown was when paper making vessels were discovered and dated back to 11,000 BCE: Pulp jars and flats with presses to compact fibers. Did they write? What were they doing with the pressed fibers? According to cave paintings, there were symbols for direction, weather, rough numbers, duties, and negative and positive (no and yes). Unfortunately, over 90% of human stuff was made from wood and wood doesn't survive long. The paper and what they decorated it with are gone longer than the wood artefacts which have also disintegrated into dust. All we have left are the clay and the stone. 😔

Thanks for this terrific, thorough, and fariminded summary of evidence for writing. I have occasionally challenged some conventional wisdom in your videos comments on this topic, but I think you did a fantastic job here. It is first absolutely true that the oldest writing we somewhat understand and therefore create a chain of memory and evidence to is the ~5000 year old(3000 BCE) examples from Egypt and Mesopotamia. The possible exception is China but my knowledge there is limited with your video here giving examples I was unaware of, and it seems the earliest possible examples of writing in China are not well understood even by professionals partly due to the limited number of surviving examples. For pre ~3000 BCE writing I personally find the examples in the Balkans by far the most compelling because they provide relatively strong evidence of a sophisticated communciation system(whether full writing or "proto-writing") prior to the systems with direct links to modern writing systems or known history . Given that it appears that writing arose independently in multiple places on the globe( at least the middle east, china, and central america, with possibly India, Egypt and others are independent as well) I would not find it at all surprising, In fact, I find it probable that it arose at other places and times before 5000 years ago, but many of those communication systems failed to survive to the present day, and if there was a state, or collection of city-states in the Balkans with a writing system 6-8,000 years ago, but the writing was mostly perishable and its memory was all lost, the evidence for that might look quite similar to what we have actually found in the region. I wonder what other parts of the world might yet be hiding.

If tin could travel a thousand miles by caravan, I'm sure information (like proto-writing) would spread along with it.

As it has been presented in film, the critical point is to determine where and when pictograms started to act as individual sounds. We could not say that some pictograms were not any form of simplified writing. Of course, they might be if one picture represented a single syllable not even an individual letter. Beside of these, I agree with conclusions that language must have a structure, each graphic sing corresponds to individilual letter, and there is a specific way of putting letters in a rows.

I enjoy your works

Love the new intro!

(YIKES! On certain sites I'm stimulated to write a lot apparently, thanks for your videos!) ....But continuing with the Chinese language discussion, the Chinese writing system since its inception has historically developed as primarily an ideographic system which is used throughout the Far East regardless of the country or culture or language. There are many connoisseurs of Chinese calligraphy in Japan or Korea, for instance, who don't understand a word of Chinese yet who understand the Chinese written language perfectly. As another example, you can have a Korean, a Chinese, and a Japanese together in one room who do not understand at all each another's language, but who can yet communicate very effectively using the universal written language of Chinese characters (up to a point). Even within China itself there are educated Chinese who can be mutually unintelligible with one another when speaking, yet who can read the same newspapers as both are literate with the same writing system. I myself was educated as a scholar of Japanese art, one benefit of which I can read Chinese although I understand only a few spoken words of Mandarin. So you can have a written language completely divorced from a spoken language. Also, when I think about symbols considered as tools for communication with aliens in our age I think about the symbols on the plaque on the Voyager spacecraft. I see symbolism carefully considered for communication with an alien species. I see scientific symbolism divorced of language such as mathematics. And what about handicapped people who are hard of hearing, yet who if profoundly deaf from birth who may have problems with understanding spoken language? They can certainly learn to write and read. Perhaps the Paleolithic hunters mouthed out the words when counting the dots next to the paintings on the walls of the caves, a name for each dot representing seasons or the months of gestation of the animals or whatever they intended to convey. I personally think that the pillar top you showed from Gobekli Tepe shows households (and houses) of prominent families in the settlement, each with its own animal totem and each with its forever unknowable spoken name. The impulse to write seems only a part of a generally human program of using symbols for purposes of communication. In my opinion the paintings of the cave animals you showed are part of this general human impulse, as are arguably all arts, which is at base the impulse to communicate. SZ BA MA Seattle

5:03 the figurine on the left ball looks like the figurine of the glass translucent greek sculpture with colored glass that changes when you light it from different angles. Maybe the mesopotamians had streets lights that where lid by fireflies at night or decorative lamps or clothing that used the insect as a coating?

& then we go back to symbols 🎠🎠🎠🎠🎠

In 2020, "NOVA" (on PBS in the USA) did a 2-parter called "A to Z". The 1st episode was "The First Alphabet", which also explored this topic. They traced how letter forms evolved from pictographs and spread. Episode 2, "How Writing Changed the World", traced the development from parchment to papyrus to paper. Very interesting!

Traffic stuff. Thanks for your efforts.

The "one culture that was copied," seems like such a pinpoint hypothisis that I don't know how one would prove it. Seems closer to Tartaria thinking than scholarly. We already know languages themselves don't seem to share one common ancestor. Many do but not all language familys are connected to another. So it would seem very reasonable that those language families would also evolve writing separately from one another.

Yep, I think it's very clear that writing had to be invented by multiple different people in multiple different places. Much like farming and metalworking. But what I find really fascinating is that the idea of an alphabet was probably only invented once. (The earliest forms of writing are not alphabets, of course, they're much more complex--the first alphabet not being invented till around the time of the bronze age collapse. There are of course many alphabets today, but every subsequent alphabet seems to have been created only after coming into contact with another alphabet).

Nice new intro graphic!

Enjoyable info! Also very shocked by 11:02 ... early south east China compared to ancient Egyptian. . Eg, bird on 'square'. wow!!

That little globe is pretty cool!

For me the tortoise shells indicate a decade in the man's life. Also the Indus script is real writing. But I know nothing. From your video I still go for Sumerian being the first writing but Vinca makes me doubting

Good video

I like the subject. the invention of writing tools and materials for it along with forgery. Conte, employed by Napoleon Bonaparte invented the pencil. The Conte Crayon is still widely produced as solid in art supply stores....

Thanks!🎉

In the Americas, it is possible that the Mayan script is close to the Zapotec as well. The earliest we found and clearly dated so far seems to be from San Bartolo and is dated somewhere between 300 and 400 BCE but the excavation of pre classic Maya cities is a bit spotty at best. For instance have only a tiny fraction of El Mirador been excavated and I think the oldest writing I heard of from there is dated around 100 BCE but the city seems to have been settled around 700 BCE and it was a massive city, maybe the largest in the new world at the time and with a tiny bit mostly from later periods have seen any archaeology yet, I assume there are at least somewhat older writing there too (I can of course be wrong). I find it pretty hard to manage a massive city with 200 000 people without any administration so it is certainly a place worth looking into at least. But it is still hard to say who first invented writing. I think Ur probably have the best claim with the evidence we have at the moment followed by Egypt a couple of years later but since we are talking about less then 100 years of the earliest in both places (even if the early Egyptian seems more primitive) a single find could switch that up. We also need to dig more in the Balkans and specifically China, the evidence for either is inconclusive. We only know that writing seems to have showed up in the old world around 5000 years ago and maybe 3000 years in the new from the evidence we have so far. One never know if the evidence already have been found and is lying around some museum with the wrong date on them or not even investigated, like those tiny clay figurines Claus Schmidt found and traced to Göbekli Tepe in the early 90s. I don't think writing was only invented once though. We find different proto scrips and symbols in use in too many places too far from each other for that to be the case. Sure, I could buy that the Harappan script could be inspired by Cuneiform since we have signs of trade between the western Harappan cities in Afghanistan at early times, they were not that far away and seems to at least had some kind of goods exchange so it is possible they were inspired by the Summerian seals on goods. I don't think the same thing is true for China or Mezzo America though, in China we see signs of proto language way before we see signs of contact or trade and we also see the signs slowly evolve which speak for them inventing them as a slow process. As for the Zapotecs, we have zero evidence of them trading with anyone with writing and the American symbols differs significantly from any others which speak against that. Some written languages were clearly inspired by others though, like the Scandinavian runes for instance (oldest known is from Norway dated to between 0-200 CE). Current theory is that someone was either trading or a mercanary in Roman service and realized the use of writing but wanted a simpler system that was easy to carve on stone, wood and antlers (that is was simpler can both be proven about the relatively high literacy in Scandinavia and the fact that it took me like 2 days to learn them, they were still common among Swedish peasants up to WW1 who couldn't write in Latin letters). In any case, it is a mystery and part of the problem is that this period of time have gotten less focus then the slightly later periods which affects funding and where archaeologists dig. Also, many regions have either been war torn or not gotten as much archaeology done which further makes finding the evidence harder. Hopefully new evidence will pop up in the future.

This was fascinating!

Thank you for not having a guitar in the background.

I would love to hear ur thoughts about connection between Vinča script and linear A and B. Thanks @World of Antiquity

A comment for the algorithm. Thank you for your efforts 💜

"noo pa, ive got better to do then go to the fields with you, im a writer" 😂 -the one who invented writing probably 😅

One direction to think about would be who developed writing in a way that stayed and was part of what transpired later and where we are today. When we ask “who invented x?” One meaning is where we got it from. Sumerians Egyptians and Chinese created systems that lived on and had descendants. If Balkan script is writing, presumably it did not have descendants.

Thank you for this video Professor Miano! This is my favorite one yet, and that’s saying something. I have a couple of questions if you have time. 1. Why is it difficult to accept writing developing without being accompanied by things like states? I’ve heard that there used to be a concept called the “Neolithic Package”, with the idea being that things like monumental architecture, large settlements, strict hierarchies, animal and plant domestication etc. all tended to appear at the same time, but in recent scholarship this has been effectively challenged and examples of each of these things have been found to have developed independently of the others. Why hasn’t writing also been freed from this package? 2. I’ve grown to assume that when writing develops it isn’t forgotten, but I don’t know if this is a valid assumption. Might writing or proto-writing have developed multiple times in prehistory and been abandoned or forgotten, leaving no evidence behind?

I think that complex and abstract social constructs probably always come from some form of tradition that slowly builds and changes over time. This would include writing among various other things

I found this to be infinitely more interesting than you debunking videos. Not as entertaining, mind you, but more interesting by far.

Personally, I believe it was a group effort. Maybe one culture came up with the idea of writing, then another developed the concept further, then another further... It's also possible that the idea died out at some point and was discovered again in another place.

Human speech is symbols of ideas, words itself are not ideas itself. Long as able to communicate ideas then it's writing no must to represent speech which is just another type of symbols.

6:14 3150 BCE, that's a looong time ago. Would be interested to put that in context of when these cultures developed spoken language. History at this range seems like space travel, very hard to really grasp what it was truly like, such a long way (in time).

I always thought of the development of writing as an evolutionary arms race between bureaucrats and tax evaders but these early possible examples you provided are making me rethink that!

I wonder if the Vinča culture use of only a few symbols on the artifacts were similar to the Nordic use of symbols of the futhark script to 'cast spells', assigning things like spindle whirls, luck or perhaps a blessing from a weaving god. Futhark symbols were often used like this in groups of 3-4.

The theory of Denise Schmandt-Besserat about development of cuneiform writing from tokens was thoroughly criticized and abandoned already in 1990s (there is a series of scathing reviews of her work by Michalowski, Englund, Zimansky, etc.; newer publications also repeat their arguments). So most scholars disagree with that theory rather than the other way around. As for Sumerian being the language for which the cuneiform was invented, while this opinion is common, notably Robert K. Englund doesn't agree with it and he has some good arguments (and he is one of the foremost experts working on early cuneiform).

Interesting to ponder that writing essentially had the equivalent of convergent evolution.

Just as language, writing must evolve to keep up, and the old scripts are eventually replaced, evolved, or forgotten. The process of script relative to the evolution of languages could allow for prehistoric origins of the first writing systems, not necessarily more than depictions of songs, tales, wisdoms, in oral tradition. But the interesting thing is that there could be a way to 'genetically' track evolution of language and writing as collaborative pairs, and thus we could eventually find the earliest found depiction being part of long forgotten prehistoric writing. It would be marvelous to track this evolution pair of spoken language and writing, just as it can be equally related to art and stone carving, monument building in general. Fascinating how the human ways are deeply rooted in genetics.

I wouldn't be surprised if some Neolithic cultures had writting, but having clear evidence is obviously important. Great vid👏🏻

👍👍nice.

Don,t forget dispilio of kastoria,petralona of chalkidiki,vrahographies of paggaio

What do you think about the knotted cord system used in the americas? Sorry I can’t remember which culture used it. I don’t believe it is translated yet, but there is some debate over whether it is record keeping or true “writing.”

"no not that tartaria 😮‍💨" Lol 😂

Can you make a video on the Danube civilization or Provadia Salt Mines, or something from the Balkans?