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UNB/Year 5/Semester 1/HIST1001/In class notes.md
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@ -603,3 +603,70 @@ So what can we do
- Statues were painted with ochre (red) and carbon (black)
- Eyes were outlined in green/black
- Lots of fine details in plaster, knees, toes, toe nails, small ears
## Writing
- What is writing
- Talking about writing systems, a socially agreed upon method for recording information
- Physical form of memory, often taking memories or thourghts and putting them on a physical item in the world
- Made up of grapemes (symbols) which represent a wide variety of types of information
- Not necessarily linear
- Are symbolic maps or calenders writing?
- Different ways of writing
- Writing is inveted for a purpose which often determines (along with available material) its form
- Alphabetic - Latin alphabet, Arabic abjad, alphabet with no vowels
- Syllabic - Japnese, Cherrokee, Amharic
- Logographic - Chinese
- Ideahraphic/Semasiographic - Writing without speech
- Writing systems change over time, ie symbols change over time
- How and why is writing invented
- Always exists before proper writing, but may not lead to writing
- Early notation systems, usually numbers or single non numerical symbols
- Examples: Neolithic lunar counts, Andean Quipu
- Invention of writing
- Cuniform
- Earlies form of writing, originates from early numerical tablets, tags, and clay tokens
- First examples date to around 3200 BCE in southern mesopotamia
- Early texts are economic accounts of transsactions
- The script is logosyllabic, symbals can be words or sounds
- In use for over 3000 years
- Materiality
- Impressed into wet clay tablets or carved into stone reliefs (rarely painted), also writte n on wax but only one fragment survives
- Incredibly durable, turn rock hard when fired in city buidling destruction
- around a million still left in the ground, 100s of thousands in museeum collections untranslated
- Heiroglyphs
- Early wooden stoen tags with precursor symbols
- First examples around 3200 bce in ancient egypt (abydos)
- Script is logogosyllabic
- Early texts are found in funerary contexts and record owners...
- Materiality
- Carved into stone surfaces
- Inked onto papyrus
- Stone carvings survives and paints survives well in tomes, papyrus survives in tombs
- Very little survives outside of funerary contexts
- New discovers are allowing us to read previously ignored sources (trash heaps)
- Chinese
- Early pictoral inscriptions exist, and maybe knotted cords but evidence is scarce
- First examples around found around 1200 bce
- Early texts are records of divination recored on turtle shells called "oracle bones", soon after it us used fr royal inscriptions cast in bronze
- Script is logogprahic
- Still in use today
- Materiality
- The tutyle bones and cast metal peices survive well in the archelogical recor, wood and bamboo slips have until recently not been recovaerable
- Recent finds of intact banboo strips and the ability of conserve and read them has revolutionaited the field of Chinese literature
- First inention of printing (movalbe type) - 1040 CE
- Mayan
- Prior proto writing: Olmec, Zaptotec (as more is known theese might become full writing systems)
- First example date to 300 BCE in central america
- Early texts are primarily about ownership of objects and poltical power
- The script is logosyllabic
- Materiality
- Mayan script was written on a wide variety of materials
- Painited onto vessals and walls
- Carved into wood and stone
- Each material/method has its own rate of surviavbility, what does this mean if certain genres of text were written on certain materials
- Key takeaways
- Writing is independantly invented in multiple places at different times
- We use this inevntion of writing to demarcate a major divisiion in historical eras (prehisoroy vs history)
- The ivention of writing is a gradual process
- Early writing is invened for a variery of purposes
- Writing is not neccesaarily analogous to recored speech
- Writing is inenvted in already cmplex sociertys with forms of proto-writing and not ex-novo (out of nothing)