The Rise of Civilization and Writing :: World History

The shew of Civilization and WritingThe phenomenon of musical composition has been invented indep set asideently five separate times in the history of man. While History textbooks almost exclusively splatter about the writing of Mesopotamia and Egypt, writing has also been developed in the Indus Valley, China, and Mesoamerica. This remote phenomenon has led many historians and anthropologist to conclude that writing is necessary for a multifactorial society to exist. Nevertheless, there was a society turn up in the Andean Mountain in present day Peru in which writing was neer invented yet it is still consider complex or, in other nomenclature, a civilization. This civilization, instead, used a method of recruit keeping that functioned in swan of writing. This suggests that although there is a strong correlation between the development of a civilization and writing, it does not necessarily mean that writing is one of the causative factors in its rise. However, a record keep ing strategy is crucial to a societys evolution towards complexity. One civilization that developed writing was the Sumerians in Mesopotamia which is located in present day Iraq. The Sumerians impressed wet clay with the end of a reed leaving a wedge-shaped form. This kind of writing on clay is called cuneiform, from the Latin cuneus, meaning wedge. Cuneiform owes its origins to the urgency arising from public economy and administration. With the rise in production of the country, accumulated wastefulness were sent to the cities. This necessitated a method of keeping account of all the goods orgasm into the cities as well as of manufactured goods leaving for the country. However in the beginning the first lozenge was written, the Sumerians used an uncomplicated but inefficient system of recording movements. It involved enclosing clay tokens signifying certain commodities and their quantities in a round clay object called a bulla. Seals of the individuals involved in the transa ction were placed on the outside(a) to validate the even. However to check the veracity of the deliverer, the bulla had to be destroyed to reconcile the goods with the tokens inside thereby destroying the record of the transaction as well. So to preserve the record, they impressed the tokens on the outside of the bulla before sealing them in. As time passed the bulla became the tablet and the impressions of tokens became symbolized by wedge-shaped marks. Eventually these marks came to denote distinct words and syllables of their spoken language. The purposes for writing also evolved.