History of Writing & Printing: Victor Hugo on Gutenberg's Press, "The Invention of Printing (TR)

American Minute ^ | August 24, 2019 | Bill Federer

[Perseverando]

HISTORY OF WRITING

The invention of "writing" was around 3300 BC.

Richard Overy, editor of The Times Complete History of the World, stated in "The 50 Key Dates of World History" (October 19, 2007):

"No date appears before the start of human civilizations about 5,500 years ago and the beginning of a written or pictorial history."

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson stated in the Cosmos TV series (2014, natgeotv.com, episode 10, "The Immortals"):

"It was the people who once lived here, around 5,000 years ago, who first started chopping up time into smaller bite-size portions of hours and minutes. They call this place Uruk. We call it Iraq.

... The part of Mesopotamia - the land between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. The 'city' was invented here.

And one of humanities greatest victories was won over the ceaseless battle of time. It was here that we learned how to write."

Writing was first on pieces of clay, then on papyrus reeds from the Nile Delta.

The reeds, which grew 16 feet tall, had their outer rind removed, leaving the sticky inner cores, which were cut into strips, interwoven together, soaked, pressed, and then dried.

The word "paper" comes from the word "papyrus."

It was the main medium to write upon for nearly 3,000 years.

Writing was invented in China around 2,600 BC during the reign of the legendary Yellow Emperor.

Instead of using reeds, the Chinese used bamboo, which was cut into strips and written upon vertically.

These strips were tied together creating bamboo annals or books.

Around the same time, writing appeared in the Harappan civilization along the Indus River Valley in Punjab and Sindh.

Harappan writing has never been deciphered.

Writing was also upon palm leaves, bark, bones, and

[Perseverando]

Time for another great American history lesson from American Minute.

[King_Corey]

This is the accepted timeline, but so much is unknown. This is just a theory. IMHO, it was rediscovered. The archaeologists are as slow to accept things, and artifacts point to very old stories. Göbekli Tepe points to something older. It hasn’t even been fully explored yet. It is far more advanced than they thought would be possible. The archaeologists have their heads in the sand. Much older things are out there waiting for us to discover. Some is underwater, and underwater archaeology is very limited.

[outofsalt]

There were paintings on cave walls that might be considered proto writings, but the earliest writing was probably used for counting things. Probably invented by protobureaucrats

[LibWhacker]

"Ancient writing's main function was to facilitate the enslavement of other human beings."

Here we go - writing is racist.

[King_Corey]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispilio_Tablet
The Dispilio tablet is a wooden tablet bearing inscribed markings, unearthed during George Hourmouziadis’s excavations of Dispilio in Greece, and carbon 14-dated to 5202 (± 123) BC.[1] It was discovered in 1993 in a Neolithic lakeshore settlement that occupied an artificial island[2] near the modern village of Dispilio on Lake Kastoria in Kastoria, Western Macedonia, Greece.
Discovery
Main article: Dispilio
The lake settlement itself was discovered during the dry winter of 1932, which lowered the lake level and revealed traces of the settlement. A preliminary survey was made in 1935 by Antonios Keramopoulos. Excavations began in 1992, led by George Hourmouziadis, professor of prehistoric archaeology at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. The site appears to have been occupied over a long period, from the final stages of the Middle Neolithic (5600–5000 BC) to the Final Neolithic (3000 BC). A number of items were found, including ceramics, wooden structural elements and the remains of wooden walkways,[3] seeds, bones, figurines, personal ornaments, flutes and one of the most significant findings, the inscribed tablet.

The tablet’s discovery was announced at a symposium in February 1994 at the University of Thessaloniki. The site’s paleoenvironment, botany, fishing techniques, tools and ceramics were published informally in the June 2000 issue of Eptakyklos, a Greek archaeology magazine and by Hourmouziadis in 2002.

The tablet itself was partially damaged when it was exposed to the oxygen-rich environment outside of the mud and water in which it was immersed for a long period of time, and it is now under conservation. The full academic publication of the tablet apparently awaits the completion of conservation work.