Ancient Communication

Communication begins with language, the distinctive ability which has made possible the evolution of human society. In modern times ‘town criers’ hold an annual contest to discover which of them can shout a message over the most significant distance. When running with a message, conveying it in spoken form makes it safer to do it oneself. Sending anyone else is unreliable, as the game of Chinese whispers demonstrates. Another requirement for efficient communication is a system of writing, such as papyrus or stone pillars. In the Canary Islands, the whistled language of Gomera is used to communicate across deep valleys but would be incapable of sending an accurate message.

Let us see a few methodologies used for teaching languages.

History of Communication

Primitive times

With the origin of speech around 500,000 BCE[citation required], human communication was revolutionized. Around 30,000 years ago, symbols were created. The imperfection of expression made it easier to disseminate thoughts and gradually contributed to the development of new modes of communication, improving both the range of communication and the longevity of knowledge. Many of those developments were based on the symbol’s main idea.

Cave paintings, a type of rock art dating to the Upper Paleolithic period, were the oldest known symbols produced for communication. Within Chauvet Cave, the oldest known cave painting is dated to about 30,0000 BC.

Petroglyphs

In communications history, the next breakthrough came with the development of petroglyphs, carvings into a rock surface. It took about 20,000 years for homo sapiens to switch from the first cave paintings to the first petroglyphs, dating from about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago to about the Neolithic and late Upper Paleolithic borders.

Several other means of communication were likely used by Homo sapiens (humans) of that period, mostly for mnemonic purposes – specially arranged stones, symbols carved in wood or earth, quipu-like cords, tattoos, but only the most durable carved stones survived in modern times.

Pictograms

A pictogram (pictograph) represents an illustrated idea, entity, action, location, or event. Pictography is a proto-writing type in which thoughts are conveyed by drawing. The next step in the evolution of communication was pictographs: the most significant difference between petroglyphs and pictograms is that petroglyphs merely show an occurrence, whereas pictograms tell a tale about the event, so they can be arranged chronologically, for example.

Since around 9000 BC, pictograms have been used by various ancient cultures worldwide, when tokens marked with simple images began to be used to label basic farm products and became increasingly common around 6000-5000 BC.

Ideograms

In turn, pictograms have grown into ideograms, graphical symbols representing a concept. Their predecessors, the pictograms, could only reflect anything close to their shape: so a circle pictogram could represent a sun, but not concepts such as ‘heat,” light,” day’ or ‘Great Sun God.’ On the other hand, ideograms may express more abstract ideas, such that an ideogram of two sticks, for instance, would mean not only ‘legs’ but also a ‘to walk’ verb.

Since certain concepts are universal, similar ideograms have been created by many distinct cultures. For instance, in Native American ideograms in California, an eye with a tear means’ sorrow,’ as it does for the Aztecs, the early Chinese, and Egyptian.

Writing as means of communication

Early Scripts

The oldest-known forms of writing were primarily logographic in nature, based on pictographic and ideographic elements. The first writing system is generally believed to have been invented in pre-historic Sumer. Egyptian hieroglyphs and the undeciphered Proto-Elamite writing system, and the Indus Valley script also date to this era. The Chinese script may have originated independently of the Middle Eastern scripts, around the 16th century B.C. (early Shang Dynasty) out of a late neolithic Chinese proto-writing system dating back to c. 6000 BC. The pre-Columbian writing systems of the Americas, including Olmec and Mayan, are also generally thought to have had independent origins.

Alphabets

The first pure alphabets emerged around 2000 B.C. in Ancient Egypt. By 2700 BC, Egyptian writing had a set of 22 hieroglyphs to represent syllables that begin with a single consonant of their language, plus a vowel (or no vowel). These glyphs were used as pronunciation guides for logograms, to write grammatical inflections, and, later, to transcribe loan words and foreign names. The Greek alphabet was introduced due to the need for the Greeks to find a better way to express their spoken language in a more accurate way. Early Greek scripts used the twenty-two West-Semitic letters and included five supplementary letters. Greek lettering we know of today traces back to the eighth century B.C.

The ancients revolutionized communication with various forms of writing based on spoken language. Written communication was transmitted by various media, including stone, metal, wood, wax, and pottery. Stone inscriptions allowed ancient communicators to have their messages read by generations to come. The metal was rarely used for ancient communications. Wooden tablets and boards are likely to have been widely used, although few have lasted for contemporary examination. The ancient Romans re-used whitewashed wooden boards for announcements and advertising.