Earliest writing discovered in China

[Urban Ranger]

Okay, that's for a mature system though. If a system has just started, it would have only a few symbols.

[JCG]

Originally posted by ranskaldan Incan knotted strings

Funny, I've heard from a few people that have studied them that the complexity achieved by those strings actually does constitute an organized form of direct representation & communication of numbers/quantities/etc.. But nevermind.

Good to know that new discoveries are still being made.

[ranskaldan]

Originally posted by JCG


Funny, I've heard from a few people that have studied them that the complexity achieved by those strings actually does constitute an organized form of direct representation & communication of numbers/quantities/etc.. But nevermind.

Good to know that new discoveries are still being made.

Well, the genius of the Incan knotting system is quite amazing - considering that it kept together a pre-literate empire spanning an enormous mountainous area. But then, by definition, it's an accounting system, not a writing system, in that it doesn't record the Quechua language (at least not fully, afaik.)

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Okay, that's for a mature system though. If a system has just started, it would have only a few symbols.

Well, the systems being used by the Sumerians, Egyptians, Shang and Harappans were certainly at that level of maturity to qualify as "writing".

[Seeker]

Personally, I think that if a culture stores stuff in ceramics then they have a need for writing, if only to keep track of what all you have, especially if it is a large village.

And the chinese have had ceramics, villages, and agriculture for a long, long time before the Shang in 1100 BC. This doesn't surprise me very much, in my opinion there has always been a strange 'gap' at the beginning of chinese history when the other river valley civs were around for longer (Sumer, Mohenjo Daro).

A really interesting case of writing or pictures is Catal Huyuk in Anatolia. About 6 000 BC the town was devasted by an earthquake, and this seems to be depicted in a sort of wall mural.

[Ramo]

Very intriguing.

[Ecthy]

bumping oldest not archived thread

these news are amazing

I mean,

[Q Classic]

further proof that only asians really have culture.

[Solly]

Yeah Eccy..

[Brundlefly]

That's not all that the Chinese may have discovered first.

There was a story a while back that wreckage of Chinese ships predating Columbus had been found on West Coast of U.S.

So instead of America celebrating Columbus Day, maybe we should be celebrating....General Tso's Day?

[FrustratedPoet]

Oldest known thread discovered by silly Eastie, Scientists confounded.

[Ecthy]

maybe they had space travel first

[Ecthy]

FP, what a scientific wonder

have you got more sources for that novelty?

[Q Classic]

So instead of America celebrating Columbus Day, maybe we should be celebrating....General Tso's Day?

i'd rather be eating his chicken.

[Drake Tungsten]

further proof that only asians really have culture.

No, this is just further proof that only the Chinese have culture. Other Asians just conveniently "borrowed" it.

As for the symbols, it's pretty much impossible to determine whether they're writing or not. Due to the nature of Chinese characters, it's hard to know whether these are characters used in writing or just the ideographic symbols that the characters later developed from. Still very interesting, though.

[Skanky Burns]

Thought this thread was familiar.