 Hello. Welcome to the first of two e-lectures about writing, where this one deals with the evolution of writing and the second with a classification of modern writing systems. Writing is defined as a set of specified visible or tactile signs or symbols representing the utterances of a language. Without writing, our world as we know it today would certainly not exist. Among the most important prerequisites for a set of signs to be classified as a writing system is the existence of a language with a set of rules and conventions that is grammar shared and understood by a group of people. The next step is to preserve certain ideas or facts for a specific reason. That is, we need contracts, lists, religious motives, etc. And subsequently, a set of signs or symbols has to be developed that is able to represent the basic elements of speech along with a convention as to how to order these elements accordingly. Finally, a form of a distinct representation on a medium for the developed system needs to be chosen in order to store and interpret the signs. In contrast to a writing system that is always linked to a specific language, other signs, paintings, icons, street signs, maps used for communication do not necessarily depend on the prior knowledge of a language in order to be understood. Mathematical symbols, for example, convey an abstract idea rather than a set utterance. Thus, the symbol for the number 8 can be pronounced in many different languages but still retains the exact same semantic value. Writing did not appear from scratch. A long, evolution process proceeded before a set of signs could be called a system. At some point in the past, our ancestors felt the need to preserve certain information. Paintings done some 17,000 years ago depicting hunting scenes and animals of the time are the first documents our forefathers left behind for others to see. Lascaux is the setting of a complex of caves. In southwestern France, famous for its paleolithic cave paintings. These paintings are estimated to be 16,000 years old. They primarily consist of realistic images of large animals, most of which are known from fossil evidence to have lived in the area at the time. Altamira is a cave in Spain, famous for its upper paleolithic cave paintings featuring drawings and polychrome rock paintings of wild mammals and human hands. The world's famous feature of this cave is found on the ceiling. Coloured paintings, mainly from the beginning of the Magdalena period about 15,000 years ago. Most paintings show bison, but there are also other animals and some other figures in a simpler style. The development from then on can be subdivided into three phases, proto-writing, early writing and modern writing. Let's look at proto-writing first. Long before true writing came into existence, people in all parts of the world already used sets of signs to convey meaning. Memory aids or mnemonic devices were used to keep track of obligations for accounting purposes and many other listings. However, no linguistic units are connected to the marks applied, hence they cannot be seen as writing proper. Here are three of the best known examples. Tullies or tally sticks, for example, were bones or sticks with notches carved on their surfaces. They were used virtually all around the world for record keeping and to document numbers and quantities. Or take the kipu, a recording device used in the Inca Empire between 1300 and 1600 BC. It consists of a series of knotted strings joined together on a cord. The knots were encoded in the decimal system and were used to record tax accounts, astrological notations, mathematical operations and other numerical recordings, for example dates. Well, and then here are the Sumerian clay tokens, small, differently shaped clay objects that have been found all over the Middle East. It has been suggested that specific shapes were connected to specific entities such as numbers or everyday objects or both. One specific token for 10 sheep, for example. Clay tokens thus could have been used for record keeping and accounting. Systems of this kind were in use long before and often also alongside writing and mainly served as reminders and controlling devices. But what about real writing? New findings suggest the beginning of script was in Transylvania in Romania. Several sets of signs found imprinted on clay tablets are associated with the new civilizations that lived in Tataria and created these tablets in about 5300 BC. But although 200 and more signs have been found, it is not clear if the set can be classified as a writing system. No recurring sequences of signs have yet been identified. The discovery, by the way, caused great interest in the archaeological world as it predated the first Minoan writing, the oldest known writing in Europe. Later on in the Sumerian Empire, around 4000 BC, people began to develop the first acknowledged true writing system, the so-called cuneiform. This script is one of the earliest known forms of written expression. Emerging in Sumer around 3000 BC with predecessors reaching into the late 4th millennium, cuneiform writing began as a system of pictographs. In the course of the 3rd millennium BC, the pictorial representations became simplified and more abstract. Cuneiform documents were written on clay tablets by means of a blunt read for a stylus. The impressions left by the stylus were wedge-shaped, thus giving rise to the name cuneiform, wedge-shaped from Latin cuneos, meaning wedge. Writing was done on a clay with a special triangular-shaped pen. The symbols were pressed into the wet clay surface, then dried in the sun or baked for preservation. Often these early writings were contracts, or they were done for record keeping. Eventually a number of different writing systems appeared all over the world. Many of them are clearly related to one another, since great cultural achievements of one culture were often recognized as extremely useful, for example, by neighboring states or conquering armies. Today, less than 15% of all 7000 attested languages have writing systems, and not all writing systems encode information in the same way. Modern writing systems can be divided into two central branches. There are logographic writing systems, which make use of symbols that represent words or concepts, where the shape of the symbol employed is often closely related to the meaning of the respective concept. And there are phonographic writing systems that establish some sort of relationship between the written symbol and its pronunciation. Both modern writing systems have several variants, which I will introduce in a follow-up e-lecture entitled Modern Writing Systems. Until then, have a nice time and thanks for your attention.