My Science School

The Indus Valley civilization was one of the greatest civilizations of ancient times. We get much of our knowledge about this civilization from over 2000 inscribed seals that have been discovered in good condition. The Indus people did not engrave inscriptions on stones or place papyrus scrolls in the tombs of their dead. All we know of their writing is derived from the simple inscriptions on their seals. The inscriptions are in the form of some 400 signs. The signs are the written language of these people.These seals tell us a lot about the way the people lived, the gods and goddesses they worshipped, the animals they reared and, other interesting bits of information about their culture

The people in the countries around the Mediterranean and the Chinese all started using signs as a means of writing at about the same time. the people of the island of Crete developed a script known as Linear B which has ideograms, numbers and signs.  The Chinese way of writing was very complex, and has over 50,000 signs! Fortunately, only a few thousand are needed for everyday life, but Chinese is still a difficult language to learn. It has changed very little during the last 4000 years, which means that modern scholars can still read the ancient texts.  The Chinese characters are made up of 26 different strokes, and the Chinese place a lot of importance on the art of fine handwriting. In fact, Chinese children spend a lot of time copying characters before they can write quickly and correctly!

We know that the first form of writing was in the form of pictures of animals, people and objects. These were called pictograms, and they first appeared about 3000 BC. It was easy to read this type of writing since it was easy to recognize the symbols. But it was also a little confusing, because these pictures could not always express ideas or actions fully. So, ideograms or symbols to express thoughts and actions were developed. For example, a picture of a pair of legs walking can mean ‘go’.In time, these symbols changed their shape into signs that did not look much like the real thing… but they kept their meaning. In ancient Indian civilization for example, there were over 400 signs that represented things, and names of people and places

Can you imagine what it would be like if there was no writing? We would have to pass on information only through spoken words, and remember everything in our heads! There would be no books from which we could learn, and we would not be able to communicate with people far way.Writing is a method of putting down information so that it can be stored, and passed on to others. No one person invented writing. It evolved gradually from the need to keep accounts or record events. Writing took many different forms over the ages, from simple picture writing to modern scripts. It was done on different types of materials too… on rocks, clay, pottery… and of course, paper.

The ding-dong theory holds that speech arose because there is a mysterious connection between sound and our senses. People react to stimuli in the world around them by spontaneously producing sounds. For example, a nursing baby produces a sound similar to ‘mmmmm’ as it drinks milk, and this sound eventually became the word ‘mama’!

When you are surprised or hurt you make sounds like ‘OH!’ or ‘OUCH’. Some people believe that the sounds we make when we are angry, frustrated, sad or happy were the starting point for the development of language. This is called the ‘pooh-pooh’ theory about how language began… but to be frank, many people ‘pooh-pooh’ this theory!