WRITING IS DRAWING

In the beginning, it was oral.

The vessel of cultural knowledge, in the beginning,  was oracular;  humans communicating with each other with sounds that come from their mouths. The traditions and history of cultures was passed thru generations by re telling the stories.  We began to communicate orally around 500,000 years ago,

Then, we started to draw.  We drew symbols, or pictures, on the walls of caves.  The purpose of these drawings was to communicate societal and cultural knowledge thru time.  We began to draw on the walls of caves about 300,000 years ago.  The more we drew, the more information that our drawings contained.

Our evolution from the oral to the visual continued thru the use of petroglyphs (left), which were carvings into rock surfaces.  There was greater longevity to carvings when compared to drawings.  Thus, we could communicate thru time with greater confidence.  Petroglyphs were made around 20,000 – 10,000 BC.

Pictograms (right) were drawn images which told a story.  They could be arranged sequentially.  Pictograms were a form of proto writing.  But they were still primarily visual;  if you wanted to communicate something about the sun, you drew a circle.  At around 5000BC, pictograms served as the basis for upcoming writing systems.

Ideograms (left) were slightly more abstract pictograms.  The lines we drew began to be distinct from the form of the object we were describing.  There was also the beginning of rules governing how the symbols and images could be arranged and ordered.

Then we created writing systems at around 4000 BC.  The lines that we drew on our papers, or on our clay tablets, were a combination of symbols and graphic pictures.  But what we drew had all of the ingredients of what we call a writing system.  The first writing system was Sumerian cuniform.

And as they say, the rest is history.  We continued to develop a way of drawing marks on our papers which developed into what we now call the alphabet.

From this schematic historical summary, what should be clear is that writing is still drawing.  We don’t think about it this way.  Culturally, writing is completely separate from drawing.  In elementary school, we learn to draw alphabetically, which is what we call writing.

Yet it is still drawing.  We are still putting marks on our papers.  When seen in this historical context, it makes you wonder at the great cultural disparity there is between putting marks on paper that are either alphabetic or graphical.

In a way, it is sad that we have evolved this chasm between writing and drawing in our culture.  After all, they both are nothing more than putting marks on a piece of paper.