Since the beginning of time, humans shared stories. They shared legends, warnings, history. Every bit of what we knew was passed down, by word of mouth, to be learned and utilized by the next generation and the generations after that. Language was the very thing that set us apart from our earlier ancestors and the thousands of other animal species that have ever been in existence, It allowed us to pass down these bits and pieces of information in the most basic manner. And in this way, the spoken language served its purpose for thousands of years until it was no longer sufficient to carry on the complexities of newer societies. Thus, the written language was born.
Roughly 9,000 years ago, the first evidence of the existence of a writing system appeared. People needed a way to keep track of property and settlements in early agrarian societies. What started as counting tokens became symbols that led to cuneiform, the earliest script. Then, the Egyptians’ picture writing developed into one of the earliest forms of the alphabet—hieroglyphics. After dozens of other scripts, we arrived at the writing system we employ today. The written language has since revolutionized the way we, as humans, can thrive and advance.
Written language has allowed us to accomplish things that we never would have otherwise. It allows us to reach a larger audience, connecting us to people in almost any part of the world. With oral communication, only those immediately near could learn of the stories you had to tell. Unless you travelled the Earth, there was no way of sharing your lessons and wisdom with other communities and cultures. Thus, all over the world these different experiences, stories, and legends existed in their own “bubbles,” almost never coming together. In this way, we, as humans, lost a lot of potential for growth and innovation. They always say two (or three or four) heads are better than one. The combined accumulation of knowledge from different peoples all across the globe could have given us what we needed to make discoveries and realizations long before we were actually able to separately. After the employment of written language, a small group of people could bring large volumes of essays and written stories to far away lands to share what they had found. After the development of modern technology, sharing information was as easy as a few keystrokes on a computer. In this way, the writing has allowed for collaborations exponentially faster and easier and more far reaching than could have happened without writing.
Perhaps even better, writing allows us to document our history in ways that oral communication could never. What writing offers, that oral communication doesn’t, is permanence. Save for lost or destroyed texts, what is once written will remain there for all future generations to see and learn from. What is spoken can be changed, misunderstood, or lost altogether. What you do not pass on, and what those you speak to do not remember, will be lost forever. Those stories and experiences will never again become available to those who follow. George Santayana, a Spanish-American philosopher and writer once said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” By documenting the successes and mistakes of the past, we can learn and do better in the future. Rather than repeating all the failures of those who came before us, we can learn from their mistakes and reach higher goals than they could have. In this way, documentation of the past allows us not only to learn about where we came from and how people lived and worked years before us, it allows us to grow and succeed by circumventing the mistakes that those before us made.
Though nowadays writing seems like an instinct, a reflex that has become engrained in us through years of practice and usage, we must remember its roots. The road to the creation of writing was a long one. It took years, cultures, and countless bouts of trial and error to create the system that we now use every day. It is important to remember this and to appreciate all the doors writing has opened for us and the ways we have grown that those before us could never have even imagined.
Sources:
http://www.historian.net/hxwrite.htm
This was a very well written essay that benefited from its structure, organization, and clarity. Although your thesis could be considered argumentative, this read like more of a history than an argument which is not necessarily a bad thing. For an opposing viewpoint, perhaps you could talk about societies that value oral tradition over written word.
Hey Gina, I really liked your essay this week! I thought you took a really creative stance on the subject. Your thesis was very clear and the entire essay was pretty organized. I think you could’ve included more specific and concrete examples of how writing has helped humans document history and communicate simultaneously. For example, you could talk about the Bible, and how the religion is spread not only through people communicating the message orally, but also the stories and lessons written down in the Bible have helped many people be able to internalize and personalize the religion for themselves. The Bible has documented the stories of the past, and also communicated the many lessons in the writing to many people around the world. That’s just an example; you could use anything! Great job!
Hi Gina, I thought that this essay did a good job in its clarity and organization. For your thesis, however, I would suggest coming up with something more argumentative, rather than focusing on a topic that reveals or explains something. I definitely agree with most of the points you made, although one thing that stood out to me in the third paragraph is that you explain the way in which writing aids in long distance communication without mentioning that telephones and other such devices do the same thing. I wasn’t really sure if you were talking from a historical standpoint here, so if you were, maybe you could emphasize that this is why it was so important for writing to evolve in the old days, when there were no options.
Gina, I think it was interesting that you wrote about writing in the historical sense; it’s definitely true that I sometimes forget about how big of an impact writing has had on the world, like you said in your concluding paragraph, because I have always been exposed to it. Throughout your essay, you talk about the past of writing, and how writing has changed the world in the present. I think it might be helpful to maybe talk about the future of writing in your conclusion so that you introduce a newer idea to the readers at the end, instead of just stating that we should remember the significance of writing. Overall, great essay!