History Of Writing

Around 4100-3800 BCE, the tokens began to be symbols that could be impressed or inscribed in clay to represent a record of land, grain or cattle and a written language was beginning to develop. 

The pictures began as representing what they were, pictographs, and eventually, certain pictures represented an idea or concept, ideographs, and finally to represent sounds.

Eventually, the pictographs were stylised, rotated and in impressed in clay with a wedge shaped stylus to become the script known as Cuneiform. The pictograph for woman, became .

The Phoenician Alphabet was adopted by the early Greeks who earned their place in alphabetic history by symbolising the vowels.  

Phoenician
Early Greek
Roman

 

Part of a series on the
History of printing
Woodblock printing 200 CE Movable type 1040 Printing press 1453 Etching c. 1515 Mezzotint 1642 Aquatint 1772 Lithography 1796 Chromolithography 1837 Rotary press 1843 Hectograph 1869 Offset printing 1875 Hot metal typesetting 1884 Mimeograph 1886 Screen printing 1910 Spirit duplicator 1923 Photocopying 1938 Inkjet printing 1951 Dye-sublimation 1957 Phototypesetting 1960s Dot matrix printer 1968 Laser printing 1969 Thermal printing c. 1972 3D printing 1984 Digital press 1993
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