'Earliest Writing' Found In China

BBC ^ | 4-17-2003 | Paul Rincon

[Consort]

Scrimshaw.

[Lee Heggy]

Man! Those are some of the deadest people I've ever seen. Wonder what the inscription said? Hmmm..."symbols that resemble the characters for "eye" and "window" and the numerals eight and 20"...maybe it's a recipt from an early form of 'drive thru' instructing the purchaser to look for the cashier in the window and pick up their 8 egg rolls and 20 crab rangoons?

[MP5]

They were obviously NOT booing Michael Moore.

[liberallarry]

It's been a long time and I've forgotten the technical terms.

But weren't small containers with external markings indicating their contents used for a very long time in commercial transactions in Mesopotamia prior to the invention of writing? From something like 8000 to 4000 B.C.?

[albee]

"Man! Those are some of the deadest people I've ever seen. Wonder what the inscription said? Hmmm..."symbols that resemble the characters for "eye" and "window" and the numerals eight and 20"...maybe it's a recipt from an early form of 'drive thru' instructing the purchaser to look for the cashier in the window and pick up their 8 egg rolls and 20 crab rangoons?"

Some Freepers may not appreciate your sense of humor but I found this funny as hell!

[blam]

Click on the below link and go to post #18 to see some old writing.

Lost Civilisation From 7,500BC Discovered Off Indian Coast (That's 9,500 years ago)

[gcruse]

Heh. Well done. My surprise here is that people had windows eight thousand years ago, and evidently got it to run.

[aristeides]

Dated how? Carbon dating of remains found in graves? (If so, I suppose it's theoretically possible that the writings were put in the graves later.)

[gcruse]

Couldn't they date the turtle shell directly?
Look for a 'use by' date on it somewhere.

[Lee Heggy]

That would be Windows 8000? Should be just about finished booting up by now...nope the little hourglass thing is still there...

[gcruse]

Hmmm. An hourglass. Another anachronistic anomaly. There's more to this ark-yew-ology, as the White House calls it, than it thought.

[Dead Dog]

It translates into "I am so F'ng tired of rice"

[warchild9]

One of the things which makes the Chinese formidable is their long sense of history (rightly placed or not). They look ahead decades, and Americans only look ahead to the next election cycle (or sports season).

[gcruse]

Or the next fiscal quarter. Yes, we are typically shortsighted, especially when we are so evenly divided politically that either side can come into power and wreck the previous one's agenda on the whim of a sliver of the voters.

[Luna]

The Neolithic markings include symbols that resemble the characters for "eye" and "window" and the numerals eight and 20 in the Shang script.

H'm. Could be a mathematical equation, that when solved, openes up the window of heaven and the eye descends to reveal the mysteries of the universe and the inhabitants of the world are led into a Utopian peace.

[gcruse]

I see.

[D-fendr]

I remember something like "bola" or "boola". The theory was that writing evolved from bills of lading.

The seller would put small tokens of different shapes inside a sealed clay pot. The buyer would break the pot to compare with the arrived shipment (animals, grain, etc.).

The theory is that, in order to know the correct shipment along the way - without breaking open the container - impressions of the tokens were made on the outside of the container.

It was a short step from there to realizing you don't need the container any more.

I believe this is what you're talking about. It was the work of a profesor at the University of Texas at Austin.

[firewalk]

.

[liberallarry]

Yeah, that's exactly it. Is that work still valid?