1. Anthropology 340 LANGUAGE AND CULTURE Writing Systems

2. The Beginning of History When: Writing began about 3,400 years ago. Where: The earliest evidence for writing has been found in Mesopotamia, located in what is now Iraq. Who: The Sumerians Why: The earliest evidence for writing appears to be for recording quantities and concepts, not for representing speech.

3. Types of Writing Non-Phonetic Pictographs Ideographs Logographs Phonetic 1.Syllabic 2.Consonantal 3.Alphabetic

4. Sumerian Script Sumerian script began as a pictographic writing and then became more stylized as time went on and the Sumerians gave way to the Babylonian and Assyrian cultures.

5. Pictographic Writing Pictographic writing tells stories through pictures

6. Pictographs Minoan culture developed on the island of Crete in the Aegean Sea south of Greece and south west of Turkey at about 2000 BC.

7. Examples of Pictographs Used Today

8. Easter Island Writing The writing from Easter Island has not been decyphered. It appears to be at least partially pictographic but may be ideographic or logographic in nature.

9. Ideograms 1. Hittite Culture that ruled Anatolia (what is now Turkey) between 2000 and 1700 BC 2. Nigeria in the early 20 th Century 3. Indus Valley

10. Modern Idiograms

11. Anatolian Hieroglyphics (Turkey) are Logograms

12. Chinese Characters as Logograms

13. Mixtec Logographic Script http://www.ancientscripts.com/mixtec.html Arabic Consonantal Alphabetic http://www.ancientscripts.com/arabic.html

15. Chinese (Older Version)

16. Modern Korean

18. Maya Glyphs

19. Egyptian Hieroglyphics are a mixture of alphabetic and logographic writing.

21. The Transition from Hieroglyphic to Phonological Script as the Phoenicians borrowed and modified the Egyptians’ writing system

22. Consonantal Writing The Phoenicians developed a phonological writing system based on consonants only, depending on the reader to fill in the vowels. This characteristic was carried on in Hebrew until diacritic marks were added to consonants to fill in some of the vowel sounds.

23. Syllabic Script from Cyprus

24. Japanese Writing Systems Kanji = characters of Chinese origin (combine logographs and syllabary symbols) used for nouns and verb stems Hirigana = a syllabary used for verb ending and grammatical participles (on, to) Katakana = used for non-Japanese words or loan words

27. Alphabetic Writing is a phonological writing system that has a different symbol for each vowel and consonant sound.

30. Runic Carving with Writing

38. Study Guide WritingSyllabic writing MesopotamiaConsonantal writing SumeriaAlphabetic writing PictographsKanji writing IdeographsHiragana HieroglyphicsKatakana GlyphsRunes Logographs