This is unusually surprising given the fast technological development observed during  the last 50 years and the fact that planet Earth always provided the same basic/primary resources for human expression?!

https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=cave+art&qpvt=cave+art&qpvt=cave+art&FORM=IGRE

versus

https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=images+of+tamil+writing&qpvt=images+of+tamil+writing&qpvt=images+of+tamil+writing&FORM=IGRE

versus

https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=images+of+high+tech&qpvt=images+of+high+tech&qpvt=images+of+high+tech&FORM=IGRE

It is also surprising that even within a language, written language can express substantial changes in a period of let say 1000 years

E.g. Old versus Middle versus Modern English

It is also surprising that for a given modern language, new words seem to be invented every year!

So, why has it been so complicated to translate artistic expression into written expression?

https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=drawings+of+young+children&qpvt=drawings+of+young+children&qpvt=drawings+of+young+children&FORM=IGRE

Evolution reflected into ontogeny? Young children can draw before they can write, right? 

Are first signs of writng lost because they were done on substrates that disappeared?

Complex written language (e.g. old Tamil) cannot be invented from one moment to the next, so it requires time to develop it?

Dear Marcel,

As a naive man I think necessity of art – aesthetics – was most elementary and pregnant than that of documentation or using complex information. Think only on the mass of illiterate people in some countries who can survive. Even in the 18th century most of Europeans were illiterate.

Dear Andras,

In recent history, do you know famous artists that were not able to write at all?

Are paintings from chimps to be defined as art? Imagine the chimps are in the woods playing with mud spread out over a 'clean' rock surface: Is this artistic expression?

https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=paintings+from+chimps&qpvt=paintings+from+chimps&qpvt=paintings+from+chimps&FORM=IGRE

Dear Marcel,

It is difficult to answer each of your questions at the same time. Let us see the following: “So, why has it been so complicated to translate artistic expression into written expression?”

Art is a very ancient necessity and tradition. Art has not been for everybody easily understandable or its interpretation is difficult and ambiguous even these days. You can observe in RG threads people discussing art, music, opera etc. who had no art or music education and have never listened to an opera because there has been no opera house in their countries. Many think that without knowledge and experience on art they can be an oracle.

Another trouble may be the not proportional and continuous development of languages. There are countries where use and estimation of art was traditional. Their languages can more easily and flexible express artistic notions and effects than the language of traders or nomads. So this is a question of culture. Or, there are countries where visual representation of people as well as living beings has been forbidden by their state religion.   In addition, nomadic laws determine the life of many people even these days.

Dear sirs. Dear Marcel !

This is absolutely interesting, and one more of our dear Marcel's enticing quests ...

Thank you !

I am certainly not a specialist in Archeology, not Palaeontology, although I have been growing in interest, because I find it important to relate the development of the skull capacity and the ability of humanoid hands... 

Are you certain that nothing happened between 30000 years ago and 5000 years ???

Have you the certainty of being able to decrypt earlier signs of development? Couldn't humanoids have made drafts in forest leaves, before the invention of Egyptian papyrus? before the Tamil writings ??? Are you certain that there were no previous destruction of those signs?

Hard to believe...

( I think for myself as a compulsive drafter of pencil drawings. I destroy every imperfect drafting of my final proofs... I compulsively draw anywhere, from the sand on the beach, to the kitchen table. I expect this to be a simple humanoid procedure.)

I wonder.

A small child should be able to do this, I think

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/10/china-oldest-writing_n_3574624.html

Why are these 'primitive' artifacts on stone described as 'writing' and not as 'drawing'? Teachers asking very small children to put Something on paper like this would describe it as drawing or writing? Perhaps as writing in China and drawing in Europe?

There is an easy answer to the question. A picture is worth a thousands words. Why invent writing when there was no need? Writing is necessary to produce a record and transmit thoughts. The need to count resulted in numbers and a numbering system. When did numbering lead to math? Civilization was the impetus for math. Civilization was the impetus for writing.

Stories were told long before there was writing. Stories were transmitted by story tellers. Pictures and objects may have been mnemonics and precursors to writing. Story telling as a profession likely was a result of civilization.

Pre civilization messaging (directions, reminders, accounting, ...) might have been accomplished by marks on trees, scratches on rocks, bundles of sticks, knots on a string, stone piles or arrangements, pictures, ... Such messaging had no requirement to be language specific. Civilization would lead to language specific messaging and organizing of the messaging system and recording system.

I cannot help thinking also of the Native American culture, dear Marcel.

Why do you assume that humanoid language should be put to writing ?

Wouldn't humanoids have started with fire smoke signs? 

Or the tam-tam signs of Africans ?

Why expect for written language to absurdly arise immediately after pictorial art crafting ???

I wonder

Dear Marcel, this question is not amenable to opinions and improvisations. There is a huge bibliography on this subject. The past is not like the present. Our forebears were not "children" doing like children do. They were so intelligent that we were able to exist now because they worked hard to survive. We are their future. The fact that we do not have "objects" to prove that they were doing "important" things just means that either archaeology has not been fast enough in discovering the sites needed in order for us to see more of the past, or that our prejudices about the past are so strong that they do not let us see which are the sites and what should we be looking for there. I do not think that we, as the "future" of those first humans, are better or more intelligent. That is a false premise. It's harder to invent from scratch than to invent based on a whole accumulation of knowledge slowly amassed by humanity throughout millennia. Let's be more humble towards the past and its humanity. They worked harder than us with less resources.

Besides, you do not "decide" to write. You "discover" or "invent" writing because of a specific need. 

Warm regards, Lilliana

People like to know what happened in the past. Perhaps many of the stories told today, and found in the school books, have to rewritten in the future?  

PS: I think we not only underestimated our ancestors, but also the animals that were there before the human ancestors appeared  

Dear Ivo, it is always a pleasure and a adventure to attend your "master classes" in RG. It is a joy to read you. Thank you. :-)

In Spiro Kostof's investigations on urban development, we points to the development of methods for storing information as to property, business and the circulation of urban population and its needs. "Wring" is discussed in this context. See Kostof's The City Shaped: Urban Patterns and Meanings Through History and The City Assembled: Elements of Urban Form through History.

Warm regards, Lilliana

Iov's list from Childe is wholly relevant to the question. As most linguists will tell you, the need for a written language came about as society and technology, or civilization if you will, became too complex for word of mouth. Maria's observation of the North American Indian is a prime example. While often complex in interaction, there was no need for Native Americans to write down detailed plans on how to build a pyramid, no need to send an inventory to the king, no need to keep track of what each soldier was owed or where he was stationed. Look to the Americas again: the Maya had a form of writing because of those very things. They reached a point in their civilization where the transmission of ideas, orders, inventories, etc. was to difficult to carry out by word of mouth and a few pictures sketched on bark or hide. Thus, as the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention.

Dear Ivo, as to "naturalistic art", in a splendid exhibition on "Primitivism" at the New York's Museum of Modern Art in 1984, that compared "the primitive" with "modernist primitivism", one of the contributors for the exhibition catalogue indicated that actual "primitive art" used different methods and representational techniques for animals and humans. The depiction of human bodies  tended to be abstract, while animals were impressively naturalistic. The essayist proposed a strong symbolic purpose in that difference. Evidently, the artists of Lascaux and Altamira were excellent in depicting animals and there was no reason —except for symbolism— in keeping the hunters and their entourage almost abstract. It might be said that abstraction and naturalism were not stages in primitive art, naturalism being a mark of development to the "better". They were simultaneous, and therefore, techniques you could opt to use.

Also, when it comes to ornament, since the Neolithic, it has been abstract, formulaic and repetitive. It is still so today. In other words, abstraction and naturalism have been options available to artists probably at all times. 

Warm regards, Lilliana

Andras,

Yes, until the 19th/20th century in most of the world, reading and writing was used by the elite of society (politicians, clergy, royalty, merchant princes) as a means of controlling the masses. As I have noted before on RG, colonial Mexico is a prime example where baron ranchers and other powerful people would go to "university" in order to learn enormous and complex words in which to use in front of their workers as a means to show the "peons" how much more intelligent and worthy of leading the "commoners" they were.

I believe that this has been propagated by some university systems even now, when you get questions like "What is macrogamete?" or "Define staphylorrhaphy" or "What is flagitiousness?" on college GRE exams. As if the everyday person, even with a minor degree, knows these obscure words, much less needs to use them in everyday conversation.

But getting back to the question - as previously noted, writing arises when a society reaches a certain technological/social complexity. Some will use the Inca as argument against this, but the Inca are almost unique, for they used knots on cordage/string to convey words. Thus, like cuneiform, their "writing" used a system of relationships between the same basic element to convey letters/words. The need to count, to keep track of numbers/inventory, is seen by many to have been the basis for the rise of the written language in several cultures. Some of the first "writing" that we find are marks on clay tablets, some with stamps/seals to show author.

Ancient artistic humans had no idea about some thing like writing to be invented. He was motivated by his increasing needs for documentation.  It took time to develop documentation tool "writing" with relatively higher level of abstraction than drawing.

The first writing occured only in the first large scale civilisations because it was not necessary for the operation small scale tribal societies.  But with large scale state agriculture, large scale live stock the administration need an accounting system and a way to store a lot of numbers.  It become beyond the capacity of a human mind, human memory, to control and manage and remember all that without a numerical system and an accounting system and permanent data storage.  So writing only appear when it became a societal needed.  So the real question is why it took 30 000 years for large scale society to appear? 

Dear James,

What you wrote on the over sophisticated and mystifying technology of so called “elites” is a well- known power maintaining skill. However, aim and target of teaching even at university level could not have been the invention and distribution of not understandable words and expressions in order to cheat the working class. As you put it in the second part of your contribution, necessity of writing and with it the creation of very complicated words became a real need as scientific notions and relationships – even those among people - developed more and more complex.  In addition, life conditions and specialization of brain workers made an important push – here I could use also the word impetus - towards abstraction and complexity.      

Dear Marcel,

The time gap you mentioned cannot be a real fact only the lack of evidences lost in see of time. There is a similar discussion on the date of the invention of human made fire which is too difficult to be proven.  

Although I could not put my hands on the references right away, there is historical documentation from those "elites" about sending their children to university for the express reason of being able to vocalize large words in front of the workers in order to show them how outclassed the workers are in the social order. The age of scientific reasoning likely contributed to this practice. That is not to say that the development of words to describe scientific processes is bad, but it is often ridiculous when a five letter word accurately describes the same thing a 15 letter word describes.

Elites: it makes no sense to use complicated words that the vast majority cannot understand. There will be a moment that vulgarization will require complicated words to be translated into simple words, so why not using them from the beginning?!

I presume that in the beginning 'art' might have been used to impress, but because simple writing is much less impressive than 'art', one might assume that the origin of writing has been functional rather than impressing people?

If simple writing follows the same rules as animal traces, why are large communities required to induce people to start writing? Obviously, one might predict there is a positive association between the number of people to be reached with writing and the complexity of writing, or not? 

There must have been a lot of undiscovered 'training' going on?! 

The first steps of  human cognition of the nature:

Natural objects->Copying->"Pictures"->Compressing->Hieroglyphs->Compressing->Letters-> Pattern Recognition -> Multimedia >Multidimensional Abstract Data

 were very time-consuming since there were no " intellectual tools"

What are intellectual tools? If you start to discuss with simple drawings, this is the first step towards writing, right?

Example:

Cavemen A produces vocalizations while discussing with cavemen B, whereas cavemen B does not understand what cavemen A wishes to explain, e.g. because the vocalizations are not precise enough. The simplest approach for cavemen A would then be to start making a drawing on a rock using a piece of charcoal, e.g. thus creating a visual image of a mental thought? Right?

It's as simple as that!

And that might be the first step to create associations between vocalizations (e.g. talking) and drawn images (e.g. writing), perhaps....

Cheers 

http://www.copyblogger.com/simple-captivating-drawings/

To Marcel M. Lambrechts: YES! Painting is a copying of information. Writing is a coding of information. For a simple copying one must develop "brain-hand" connections. For writing the tools of abstract transformations  are needed. I see analogy in Boolean algebra.

How do you translate images of true versus false in simple drawings? Just simple face images indicating face expressions? Do you need drawings for this?

I think that spoken form and written form of any language both use identical abstract transformation process, just differ in media (voice and visual symbols).

Child can learn spoken language (recognition & speaking) without any aid, while he can learn reading and writing only by teaching by someone else. Human brain seems has much better ability to deal with voice form (spoken) of language than visual symbolic form (written) of language.

Dear Marcel,

I used to write bosses or politicians. Are these words clear and suitable?

Dear Marcel,

Your caveman example may be right but you cannot do any experiments with real cavemen. However there may be two opportunities: 1. observation of illiterate aborigines 2. observing language and character creating activity as a modern spiritual evolution of young underclass people.

Dear Andras,

I don't think we can learn about experiments with people from today to date the origin/timing of the appearance of written language, can we?

By the way, if cavemen would have used the coal from coal mines as writing tools, what would have been the estimated age of the cave drawings using the most modern radiocarbon dating approaches? 

Although I could not say offhand when writing came about, we have pushed back the date of the earliest known writing with recent finds. However, the question was why did it take so long from the time of rock art/cave drawings to writing, which is somewhat apparent in the nature of our earliest recovered writing.

Dear James,

I think production of overcomplicated words may not be the responsibility of science or scientists because in science logical ways are preferred. Unnecessary and too complicated words, expressions are inventions of bureaucrats in order to make the appearance of hard work, to hamper people’s understanding of the relatively simple work of clerks as well as to mislead simple people. I remember when I first visited the Kindergarten of my first child. I read the agenda and found a - for me - not understandable expression: “activity stimulating”. I inquired and it turned out that it was playing or  game.  

Dear Marcel,

For me the attitude and spontaneous invention process was important.  I think cavemen used when drawing and painting also coloured minerals without organic matter. This may be similarly problematic for present day scientists.  

Marcel I think we are witnessing somewhat the reverse, right now, with the massive shift away from the written/read word and to the image. Largely due to the necessity of communicating to many assorted native speakers who don't necessarily have even the words for some of our technological environment.

It requires work to have language, in a way that art does not (my artist partner will put paint in my hair for saying that! - just kidding).

We can look at images and immediately respond, perhaps have an immediate understanding of or reaction to the image.

But in order to have language one has to know what letters or symbols are, how they fit together to make words, how they are required to be arranged so that they are not mistaken for another, rather similar word.

Likewise it takes effort to teach people to read, to properly write the elements onto whatever surface is being used, to make the connections between the word, the image and the sound.  Just a few thoughts.

Dear Marcel,

Painting means an ability to copy what we see, only later some project of imagination. Writing means having written language, and historical development of this ability takes more time. There is an intermediate case - drawing informative pictures (pictograms), see for example Aztec writing: http://bahcesehira1y.pbworks.com/f/1229639718/image004.gif

Modern version:  http://www.alrenvirotech.com/gallery/Pictogrammes1.jpg

In this case, contrary to language, there is no procedure of common agreement on what this or that symbol means. Because such images are understandable by our brain even without explanation a priori.

But the meaning/interpretation of a pictogramme might change with the environment where the pictogramme is exposed? 

Imagine a pictogramme of a telephone in the middle of the jungle versus a building?

Yes, you are right. Aztecs might not understand the meaning of at least half of modern pictograms. But the situation is much more difficult being confronted with unknown language. In the world of pictograms of different cultures we are all a bit of polyglots even before studying. That is why this step between simple art and language was robust.

If you start with a small group of individuals that reach consensus between a simple drawing and a vocalization, and that the drawing can be used to inform group members in the absence of the person that made the drawing (e.g. like a trace): is this very complicated to install as a first step towards writing? 

I think that moving to letters (that also were pictograms, like in ancient Egypt) and then to words takes a lot of time for cultures. Too large work for a small group. At the same time, if we talk about language of many people (when not all know each other), then the main barrier is coordination on selection and meaning. As a self-organized process it could take many centuries. And the path to this is not unique: just compare the number of letters in European languages (about 30) and Chinese!

It was also impossible to have a large peaceful group before creation of kingdoms and empires. If for a small tribe any neighbor was an enemy, this could not promote coordination.

P.S. Probably I am going too far in my free flight of ideas...

Dear Yuri,

Drawing and painting are not (only) copying.  Both serve to find the general and special characters of objects and phenomena.  In the age of the cavemen painting must have been a kind of magic.

I think it more impressive to produce a painting than to write a symbol and to associate it with an external phenomenon?

https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=cave+art&qpvt=cave+art&qpvt=cave+art&FORM=IGRE

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/10/china-oldest-writing_n_3574624.html

30.000 years gives you a lot of time!

Dear Andras,

I just decided to go a bit into evolutionary hypothesis of language formation. Maybe in the end will be useful for philologists (or anthropologists), if they come to this page.

I did not think that time about the meaning of art per se 30 000 years ago. It might happen that some artists were also magicians. But probably some of them were not. Anyway, a skill to paint similar objects to what we see probably had to be developed before arrival of magical applications.

Writing is the art of fixing speech into graphic signs. The simplest explanation for this long interval is that it wasn't functionnal for a wider communication, which was mainly oral. It began to be a useful tool when the first larger communities have appeared, in correspondance with the emergent states, with a complex and stratified administration about five millenia ago.

But then how long does it take to go from simple writing (e.g. the first signs of writing discovered in China) to complex writing? Writing is a trace useful in the absence of the writer, which also could be conducted in very small communities, e.g. as animals (e.g. bears) do when they leave traces on trees?

https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=arab+writing&view=detailv2&qpvt=arab+writing&id=25C491ED0E52F2591B77F7F4C3B912B08FD8BA08&selectedIndex=15&ccid=tSApUrI1&simid=608037580384961754&thid=OIP.Mb5202952b23511fd81eac5c3f6e42afeH0&ajaxhist=0

The complexity of writing develops as the need to impart complex ideas and instructions grows. Keeping simple tallies and names does not require complex writing, but the descriptions and calculations of heavenly bodies and when and how their forces affect tides on the Earth does. These higher functions once were the purview of priests and scholars, thus language grew at two paces, the common and the scientific. Even late in man's history the church kept these things secret and sailors depended on them to forecast when the tides would be favorable for them to sail.

Language and knowledge was always partly esoteric. The complexity to learn it only a part of the story. Even part of knowledge that could be taught to everybody (I mean people were not so stupid and be able to understand) remained hidden. Knowledge of magic and astrology was part of such knowledge. Bur even an ability to write and to do mathematical calculations were hidden from mass public for long time.

So we have here 2 processes: a) emergence of knowledge and language to describe it (mathematical and astronomic languages use symbols different from normal letters); b) evolution of distribution of this knowledge across population.

The problem for empirical testing is that we can observe very few facts at distant times. If there is a document that is let say 30000 ago old  (now with physics we can measure that), we do not know if this was a typical document or just a rare case. But esoteric documents can normally be found only in very special libraries, if they were not destroyed.

Marcel,

Of course you are correct. We have taken the discussion from why it took so long to progress from drawing/painting to writing, to how and why writing proliferated. I still think it is important to understand the aspects of early writing in order to consider the question. But, one thing we may never be able to answer in the drawing/painting to writing question is exactly when writing started.

Consider this, Haviland (1979:262) notes that writing arose as "centralized authority" had need to keep records (the rise of true bureaucracy), but prior to that "writing" consisted of pictographs. What is "writing"? My old dictionary says that it is to "inscribe letters, words, numbers, symbols, etc. on a surface". Is a straight line with an arc representing a sunrise "writing"? Are up and down zigzags representing mountains "writing"? Is a double slash with a dot beneath representing the person called Ogg "writing"? If so, then at what early period in man's doodling do we say "this is where writing started", or do we start "true writing" at the point when symbols are strung together to form a sentence or phrase?

Marcel,

And by that we come to "intent". What did they intend? That is why we cannot answer the "when". Is a row of same-size pictographs of a deer, a circle, a triangle, and a slash make a sentence? Most probably. Is a hand print beside a painting of an aurochs a sentence? We can never know because we do not know that they were placed there by the same person, much less the same day.

Thanking you very much again for your constructive remarks!

The Long Summer

Interesting Book Review (see link)

http://www.diplomacy.edu/resources/books/reviews/long-summer-how-climate-changed-civilisation

Dear Talib,

But it is the first time in history that humans have a global view of the Earth changes based on global images (satellite pictures), perhaps making it more easy to anticipate?!

Interesting is that climate and sea levels changed independent from human activity, which obviously implies that factors other than humans are/have been involved. Some of them indicated in the literature are solar system mobility, solar activity, continental drift, volcano activity changing the chemistry of the atmosphere, habitat/vegetation structure, soil structure, etc... knowledge mainly based on image traces rather than written traces? 

Perhaps even today the communication via images is substantially more efficient than the communication via writing?

https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=images+of+global+change&qpvt=images+of+global+change&qpvt=images+of+global+change&FORM=IGRE

Cavemen only had access to the visible local environment to be inspired during painting?! They apparently did not paint stories told by others, e.g. those coming from other regions?!

Some thing between cave painting and written language

Oldest Lunar Calendar (15,000 B.C)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/975360.stm

Dear Talib,

As concerns your last message:

Perhaps, perhaps not? Is mind reading always correct?

The black dots are interesting. Why? I would have painted moon cycles in white or bright yellow, because that is what we perceive in the sky, right?

Hypothesis 1: the black dots represent the animal footprints/tracks, e.g. to explain why they are presented Under the animals near the leg ends!?

Hypothesis 2: the painters were teachers to transmit knowledge about associations between footprints/tracks and presence of animals?!

Were cave walls the ancestors of school black boards?

http://www.123rf.com/stock-photo/blackboard.html

Marcel,

Cave walls were the big screen of the paleolithic blockbusters.

Hello Marcel Lambrechts,

A lot of things can be possible in many communities but they generally become true when there is first a need to have them and when the control of technologies can make it reality.

I don't think that we can compare the traces of the bears on trees with the first scriptures (which are much more complex systems of communication), because the languages spoken by the humans are all very complex and sophisticated and the challenge was especially to fix the myths in written texts to justify the tribute (for what a system of writing the counts became also necessary). The best comparison would be with the traces by humans in the caves several dozens of thousand years before.

I can't answer fot the case of China but, in that of the birth of writing in Mexico, we can see that elaboration of writing occurred in the so-called Middle Preclassic period (1200-400BC) and the first linear texts with a syntax and logo-phonetic elements appeared in the following period (Late Preclassic, 400BC-200AD).

Emerging of Sumerian Language (Possible Story).

- Another pathway to emerge written language

"Sumerian cuneiform is the earliest known writing system. Its origins can be traced back to about 8,000 BC and it developed from the pictographs and other symbols used to represent trade goods and livestock on clay tablets. Originally the Sumerians made small tokens out of clay to represent the items. The tokens were kept together in sealed clay envelopes, and in order to show what was inside the envelopes, they press the tokens into the clay in the outside." (see link).

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/sumerian.htm

The known time interval between the onset of writing and the onset of artistic expression is apparently decreasing.

Did writing and art not appear in the same geographic regions, e.g. related to the availability of resources and places that protect creations against erosion. Could pyramids be defined as artificial caves that allowed protection of (colourful) art creations? Could simple writing in clay rather than colourful art be best expressed in desert environments? 

The language of ancient Sumer is a language isolate (see link). I think, there might be other language(s) traces emerging from the artistic expressions in other geographic place(s) in the ancient world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumerian_language

There seems to be overlap with the table organisation in Mexico (publication from Jean- Michel)? I doubt the people from Mesopotamia and Mexico had physical contact in the past? Telepathy or constraints on written expression using stone or clay tables or what else? Who knows?

Possible pathway to emerge  languages.

"Thus, Mesopotamia is different from Egypt, where writing seems to appear suddenly, in that an uninterrupted sequence of data in Mesopotamia illustrates how accounting developed, requiring more and more sophisticated devices to deal with larger amounts of data with greater precision. Because Egypt provides yet no indication of any antecedents to writing, it was logical to assume that phonetic writing leap-frogged from Mesopotamnia to Egypt about 3100 B.C.. The borrowing was supported by the fact that the Egyptian rebus principle was identical to that of Mesopotamia and therefore seemed to be connected." (see link)

http://archive.archaeology.org/9903/newsbriefs/egypt.html

Flight distance Mesopotamia - Egypt (high connectivity) versus flight distance Mesopotamia - Mexico (low connectivity)

There were at time no pigeons that transported messages at long distances......

The need to keep records.

I agree with @James

Interesting ancient epic:

"The Epic of Gilgamesh is an epic poem from ancient Mesopotamia. Dating from the Third Dynasty of Ur (circa 2100 BC), it is often regarded as the earliest surviving great work of literature.

 In the second half of the epic, distress about Enkidu's death causes Gilgamesh to undertake a long and perilous journey to discover the secret of eternal life. He eventually learns that "Life, which you look for, you will never find." (see link)

Apart from need for art and writing for other purposes in his life. It seems to me that human uses art and writings as traces left behind him to compensate his failure to avoid mortality.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh

Dear Talib,

I don't share that view from Gilgamesh, but perhaps some people have these kinds of hidden motivations in mind to create. What is the sense/meaning of modern art and writing in 10.000 years from now? Just one small step for men, and perhaps, who knows, a huge step for humanity?

Best regards again,

Marcel

Vasile,

I worked on two different investigations that totally and unequivocally invalidated two dissertations. By that time their authors were entrenched and accused us of bad science. So, no, many researchers would not like time travel for fear it would disprove their work.

I still believe that the need to keep track of things is how, let us call it "true writing", started. Stories like Gilgamesh can only come about when an author has the supporting population and ego to think that others would like to hear his words. Oral traditions work to a certain degree and several studies have found that stories transmitted by tribal story tellers for hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of miles contained only minor variations.

Dear Vasile

Quote from Stephen Hawking

Cheers,

First of all: take out 27.000 years when most population could not read at all. Very few could wright. And almost every one was too busy producing food sustenance.

Best Regards,                         Leonid 

As an individual, you always will be able to read silently what you have written down, where reading becomes recalling the association between what has been written by yourself and your own mental/vocal representation of the written symbols or letters? Even if all the other members of your community are not able to read/understand what you have written down, you still can use it yourself, e.g. to better memorize thoughts from the past. This is the basis of individual-based secret codes, or not? So the fact that others cannot read and understand your own written code cannot be a barrier against the initiation of writing?

Secret codes that nobody can understand is also writing, right?

When did the first signs of art appear?

"The 2D and 3D art forms that were created by Upper Palaeolithic Europeans at least 30 000 years ago are conceptually equivalent to those created in recent centuries ..............The origins of art are therefore much more ancient and lie within Africa, before worldwide human dispersal." (see link)

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2815939/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2815939/figure/fig03/

How do you estimate the age of these creations, even if the geological layer/substrate of discovery is quite old? Can these creations be buried in these old layers, e.g. because of cultural-inspired rituals?

Perhaps the cave paintings and other artistic creations resulted from people that simply wanted to be occupied during the long European winters or while waiting when the hunters came back with food (consequences of human restlessness fighting boredom?)?

Just some guess work, but can the hypothesis be rejected?

People from Mesopotamia and Mexico didn't had any physical contact in ancient times, and these times are also quite different (birth of writing in America, between 1200 and 400 BC, was the latest in the world history of scripts and the alphabet replaced the native systems only in the beginnings of modern times, with the Spanish conquest). The contraints on written expression were also different: stone and ceramics are what have more frequently survived but bark paper was actually the common support of writing in precolumbian Mexico.

The use of colors was important in the Nahuatl system (Aztecs) but not among the Mayas. All signs have the same black color in the mayan codices, where it's like in modern writing (unless if it was necessary to make someones more visible).

Should human work? (artistic creation is some kind of work).

Following quote may be helpful.

The origin of zodiac signs

"Near to the entrance of the Lascaux cave complex is a magnificent painting of a bull. Hanging over its shoulder is what appears (to us) to be a map of the Pleiades, the cluster of stars sometimes called the Seven Sisters. Inside the bull painting, there are also indications of spots that may be a representation of other stars found in that region of sky. Today, this region forms part of the constellation of Taurus the bull." (see link)

http://www.ancient-wisdom.com/zodiac.htm

I think this is a very educated guess about Lascaux and the dots. I don't buy that story

Cheers

The association between the date of the onset of writing and urbanization: perhaps huge constructions bias sampling methods and therefore bias where to find the first traces of writing?

http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/blog/mud-paintings-icicle-sculptures-and-more-temporary-nature-art

Mud paintings. Why wild chimps should not be able to create mud paintings as an occupation?

The date of the onset of artistic expression simply depends on how you define art....

"The Rosetta Stone is a granodiorite stele inscribed with a decree issued at Memphis, Egypt, in 196 BC on behalf of King Ptolemy V. The decree appears in three scripts: the upper text is Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, the middle portion Demotic script, and the lowest Ancient Greek. Because it presents essentially the same text in all three scripts (with some minor differences among them), the stone provided the key to the modern understanding of Egyptian hieroglyphs.

The stone is believed to have originally been displayed within a temple, possibly at nearby Sais. It was probably moved during the early Christian or medieval period, and was eventually used as building material in the construction of Fort Julien near the town of Rashid (Rosetta) in the Nile Delta. I t was rediscovered there in 1799 by a soldier named Pierre-François Bouchard of the Napoleonic expedition to Egypt." (see link).

I feel that traces of writing should be flourished in the same geographic location it emerged and it should reveal it self in our days irrespective of sampling methods.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_Stone

There is the wish and there is the reality, right?

What if the Rosetta Stone would not have been discovered, and crossing fingers the translations were adequate?! But it does not tell s Something about the onset of writing and the onset of art, just that one or more persons apparently mastered more than one language.

Cheers

Quote from Will Durant

In 99.9999.......% of the cases, people are physically absent at the moment events occur, which obviously implies guess work in the future about the past, and the stories of those that were physically present are not always accepted?!

History is like reconstructing a possible past?

Dear Marcel,

„The date of the onset of artistic expression simply depends on how you define art....”

If one accepts your assumption, everything and nothing is art depending what you accept and deny at the moment.

In this case nothing is right or true and everything is right or false if you define them like that. But if somebody else defines that you do not exist, your opinions, impressions, ideas and negations do not exist any more from this point of view. And you can continue like that…  

Dear Andras,

That's what people call philosophy, right?

Biologically speaking and from the point of view of a (conscious) individual-based mental state, most people mentally do not exist given that each individual will consciously encounter 0.000000....1% of the human population from today or the past or the future, or not?

This reasoning is what people might call philosophy, or not?

The perception of the 'mass' in front of you, will be perceived as the 'mass', not being able to perceive each individual living being contributing to the 'mass'?

Biologically speaking and from the point of view of a (conscious) individual-based mental state, most micro-organisms mentally do not exist given that each individual will consciously encounter 0.000000....1% of the micro-organism population from today or the past or the future, or not?

Just to stimulate discussion

Cheers

By the way, I also care for people I never physically met because I mentally construct an association between my mental state and the (possible) mental state of others. Is this empathy, intuition, imagination, hallucination, ......?

Is the reconstruction of the past only based on what has been consciously perceived in the past, and today, and in the future? To what extent does the consciously perceived history reflect history as a whole?

What would have been visible history without the actions of invisible history?