Behold the Oldest Written Textual content within the World: The Kish Pill, Circa 3500 BC


Picture by José-Manuel Ben­i­to, through Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Some check with the writ­ten Chi­nese lan­guage as ideo­graph­ic: that’s, struc­tured accord­ing to a sys­tem wherein every sym­bol rep­re­sents a par­tic­u­lar concept or con­cept, whether or not summary or con­crete. That’s true of cer­tain Chi­nese char­ac­ters, however solely a small minor­i­ty. Most of them are actu­al­ly logographs, every of which rep­re­sents a phrase or a part of a phrase. However for those who dig deep sufficient into their his­to­ry — and the his­to­ry of oth­er Asian lan­guages that use Chi­nese-derived vocab­u­lary — you’ll discover that some begin­ed out way back as pic­tographs, designed visu­al­ly to rep­re­despatched the factor to which they referred.

That does­n’t maintain true for Chi­nese alone: it seems, in reality, that each one writ­ten lan­guages started as types of pic­to­graph­ic “professional­to-writ­ing,” at the very least judg­ing by the ear­li­est texts cur­hire­ly identified to man. If we take a look at the previous­est of all of them, the lime­stone “Kish pill” unearthed from the location of the epony­mous historic Sumer­ian metropolis in mod­ern-day Iraq, we will in some sense “learn” sev­er­al of the sym­bols in its textual content, even 5 and a half mil­len­nia after it was writ­ten. “The writ­ing on its sur­face is pure­ly pic­to­graph­ic,” says the nar­ra­tor of the temporary IFLScience video under, “and rep­re­sents a mid­level between professional­to-writ­ing and the extra sophis­ti­cat­ed writ­ing of the cuneiform.”

Cuneiform, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured right here on Open Cul­ture, was utilized by the traditional Child­lo­ni­ans to label maps and report stew recipes, amongst oth­er impor­tant duties. “First devel­oped round 3200 B.C. by Sumer­ian scribes within the historic city-state of Uruk, in present-day Iraq, as a method of report­ing trans­ac­tions, cuneiform writ­ing was cre­at­ed through the use of a reed sty­lus to make wedge-shaped inden­ta­tions in clay tablets,” says Archae­ol­o­gy magazine­a­zine. Over 3,000 years, this ear­li­est prop­er script “was utilized by scribes of mul­ti­ple cul­tures over that point to write down a num­ber of lan­guages oth­er than Sumer­ian, most notably Akka­di­an, a Semit­ic lan­guage that was the lin­gua fran­ca of the Assyr­i­an and Child­lon­ian Empires.”

Cuneiform was additionally used to write down the Scheil dynas­tic pill, which dates from the ear­ly sec­ond mil­len­ni­um BC. Meaning we will learn it, and thus know that it com­pris­es a lit­er­ary-his­tor­i­cal textual content that lists off the reigns of var­i­ous rulers of Sumer­ian cities. We must always word that the Scheil dynas­tic pill can be, some­occasions, known as the “Kish pill,” which positive­ly caus­es some con­fu­sion. However for the anony­mous author of the ear­li­er Kish pill, who would have lived about two mil­len­nia ear­li­er, the emer­gence of cuneiform and all of the civ­i­liza­tion­al devel­op­ments it will make pos­si­ble lay far sooner or later. His pic­to­graph­ic textual content might nev­er be deci­phered prop­er­ly or mapped to a his­tor­i­cal­ly doc­u­ment­ed lan­guage, however at the very least we will inform that he should positive­ly have had fingers and toes roughly like our personal.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Outdated­est Recognized Sen­tence Writ­ten in an Alpha­wager Has Been Discovered on a Head-Lice Comb (Cir­ca 1700 BC)

Easy methods to Write in Cuneiform, the Outdated­est Writ­ing Sys­tem within the World: A Brief, Attraction­ing Intro­duc­tion

Dic­tio­nary of the Outdated­est Writ­ten Lan­guage – It Took 90 Years to Com­plete, and It’s Now Free On-line

How Writ­ing Has Unfold Throughout the World, from 3000 BC to This 12 months: An Ani­mat­ed Map

40,000-12 months-Outdated Sym­bols Present in Caves World­huge Might Be the Ear­li­est Writ­ten Lan­guage

Primarily based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His initiatives embody the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the ebook The State­much less Metropolis: a Stroll via Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­ebook.



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