Monday, 9 April 2012

Pictographs to Cuneiform


It appears to be an "universal" truth that any script that starts life as a pictographic system eventually evolves into an abstract form. Mesopotamian cuneiform influenced script development from Asia Minor (Hittite cuneiform) to Persia  and developed from primitive or perhaps primal is a better word forms used by the Sumerians to the wedges hence "cunei" of later scripts.


and finally



If anyone's thinking after seeing this last one ... ah ha proof of an ancient universal script! ... not necessarily ... there's only so many ways you can represent a mountain with as few strokes as possible.

It does seem however to be a general principle that 


Symbols come before sound in the development of  scripts.





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