How did writing affect communication in ancient civilizations?

Answer 1

Writing developed in Ancient Mesopotamia long ago. Cuneiform is a group of lines and wedges that were used with sharp tools that carved letters and words in to clay tablets. When people in Ancient Mesopotamia realized that cuneiform was too complicated, the Phoenicians developed an alphabet. The Phoenician alphabet was so much easier than cuneiform. The Phoenicians also used purple dye from snails to write with. Because of this, scribes weren't as important in Ancient Mesopotamia.

Answer 2

Writing was important because it enabled a society to keep records and maintain knowledge of previous practices and events. Writing also made it possible for people to communicate ideas in new ways, which is especially evident in Mesopotamian literary works.

Answer 3

The Sumerians invented writing around 3500 B.C.; but it would be almost 1,000 years before writing was used for all the other less practical reasons. Historians think that before writing was invented, business transactions were recorded with the exchange of clay tokens that represented the items being traded in Sumeria. The earliest forms of Sumerian writing were pictographs. At this stage the pictographs were "drawn" rather than "written". The resultant appearance of the Sumerian signs, composed of short angular lines, is what gave cuneiform writing its name, from the Latin cunei, meaning "wedge". Sumerian was a very difficult language to read and write, even for the scribes. There were many complicated signs that had to be memorized, and all of the signs had multiple meanings and pronunciations. There were very few clarifying rules of grammar, and there wasn't any capitalization, punctuation, or spaces between the words; so it was difficult to tell where one word ended and another began. A sentence was just one long string of symbols.

Answer 4

Mesopotamia is the oldest in written history. Writing enables communication and ability to communicate with new ideas which is evident from the literary works of Mesopotamia.