Module 5: Recording Ancient Language

Language has played an important role in most, if not every, civilization since the birth of civilization itself. Furthermore, perhaps an even more critical aspect of language in the development of these civilizations is the way in which these spoken languages were transcribed and recorded. One of the first known examples of this are the pictograms used by ancient Mesopotamians to communicate basic information about taxes and crops over five thousand years ago (British Museum 2013). This “writing” system eventually evolved into a more complex system of communication, as it developed into a script that is now known as “cuneiform”. Cuneiform was used for thousands of years by Mesopotamian scribes to record trade transactions, astronomy, literature, and even simple day-to-day activities and events on clay tablets. This cuneiform script was eventually adapted into different languages and adopted by many different early civilizations as they needed a way to record things, yet they did not have their own alphabets and systems for writing down their languages (British Museum 2013). Over time, however, more and more civilizations and groups of peoples began to develop their own systems and practices of recording information. Alphabets such as Latin and Cyrillic were developed in most parts of modern-day Europe, logographs were established in Asian territories, abugidas could be found among Arabic and Hebrew cultures, and ancient Egyptians used a method of recording their language known as hieroglyphics (Johari 2016). Each of these methods of writing were used to record historical events, tax accounting, astronomy, etc. in their respective places of origin. Moreover, one could argue that some techniques are more difficult to record/translate than other. However, one common characteristic between these methods of written communication lies in the fact that they were all written down or recorded two-dimensionally in some way. Many people may not know this, but on the other side of the world, in the Western Hemisphere, a group of ancient people known as the Inca had a method for chronicling their stories and transcribing their information. What may be considered an “outside-of-the-box” way of thinking, the Inca used a three-dimensional approach to recording their information called a “Khipus." These were complex knotted instruments made from hand-spun threads that were used to transmit information in a completely revolutionary fashion that was never before even thought about in other parts of the world (Johari 2016). These knots were originally used to record very simple collections of data such as crop count and tax accounting (similar to the pictograms used in ancient Mesopotamia), however, they very soon became more complex and used to record more important and detailed plots of information such as stories of the Spaniard conquests or astrological phenomena. The full meaning and translations of the information found on the Khipus is still not known as the Incan Empire was around for only about 100 years, and the conquistadors destroyed most of them in the effort to convert the Inca people to their god as well as learn their language.

While much about this method of language recording is still unknown to this day, it is still amazing to me that a  group of people from such a bygone era could invent and formulate a system of recording information that was so far outside the normal train of thought for transcribing a language. What is even more remarkable is that these people were able to do this completely independent of any other civilization in the world at the time, and in the time period of just over 100 years. It just goes to show that one should not judge a book by its cover and that not everything is as it seems.

(Picture 1) Example of ancient Mesopotamian cuneiform script carved into sandstone tablet.
(The British Museum; www.mesopotamia.co.uk)

(Picture 2) One of only 600 surviving examples of Khipus in museums and private collections around the world. (Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian; www.newsdesk.si.edu)


References:

British Museum, The. 2013. Mesopotamia: Writing. www.mesopotamia.co.uk. Accessed February 15, 2017.

Johari, Fuad. 2016. Counting the threads of time: The Khipus of the Incas. www.unravellingmag.com. Accessed February 10, 2017.

Neuman, William. 2016. Untangling an Accounting Tool and an Ancient Incan Mystery. www.nytimes.com. Accessed February 14, 2017.


Porter, Jessica. 2016. Smithsonian Snapshot: Quipu. www.newsdesk.si.edu. Accessed February 14, 2017.