Museum of the Origins of Man



ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF WRITING






Writing originates from the two-dimensional art, as, if by hypothesis art did not exist, perhaps writing would not exist.
From an evolutionary point of view, it can be considered a "deferred" invention: in fact, it is a set of inventions different in time and space, each of which has evolved several times over the previous one, until reaching the present writing.
Some of them became extinct over time, as also happened for several species of animals and plants, of which we found fossil remains.
The writing begins with anthropomorphic, zoomorphic and geometric "symbols" (images) already in two-dimensional art, although with different styles.
In art, the depiction of scenes of war, hunting, ritual dances and so on can be considered narration of events, a function that is similar also in writing, when the description is narration.
The Western visual representation of linguistic expressions has evolved further into the alphabet, while the current Chinese one is made up of ideograms, which have evolved over time.
There are many other types of writing, but at any time it has had styles of beauty as happened also in art: the current fonts, for example, have different shapes, ie different types of beauty.
For further documentation on the major ancient scriptures, consult a good encyclopedia.






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