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Earliest "Writing" On 60,000-Year-Old Eggshells
New Scientist reports on research published in PNAS (abstract here) about what may be the earliest writing yet discovered, on eggshells dated to 60,000 years ago. "Since 1999, Pierre-Jean Texier of the University of Bordeaux, France, and his colleagues have uncovered 270 fragments of shell at the Diepkloof Rock Shelter in the Western Cape, South Africa. They show the same symbols are used over and over again, and the team say there are signs that the symbols evolved over 5,000 years. This long-term repetition is a hallmark of symbolic communication and a sign of modern human thinking, say the team. [Another researcher is quoted:] 'Judging from what we know about the evolution of art all over the world, there may have been many [written language] traditions that were born, lasted for some time, and then vanished. This may be one of them, most probably not the first and certainly not the last.'"
The written form of Chinese is mostly the same across the country, while the spoken language differs; the symbols have nothing to do with the pronunciation, they simply express the concept.
Does this means that people that can't talk to each other can write instead? Convenient then, no need to learn multiple languages.
Yes - actually, funny anecdotal story about things like that. A friend of mine went and travelled the world and he said one of the most interesting quirks about China is that everyone knows the symbols, but not the words.
So - when you are in lets say Germany, and you are looking for a Coffee shop, and you ask the person next to you - and they speak German not English, but you don't know the German word for Coffee. You might use words like Café, and so on and so forth, speaking to the person using different words to get your meaning across.
In China, whenever someone comes across a word they don't know (and it happens quite frequently) - they hold out their hand, and use the index finger of their opposite hand to draw out the symbol of the word you are looking for. This works so well because their symbols mean the words instead of the sounds.
I think I have to clarify something here - I am certainly not adhering to any "noble savage" theory here. I completely agree that from our point of view the quality of life and societal structure of hunter-gatherer societies are nothing desirable at all and with your assessment of the relative merits of our society compared to it. What I was arguing was that from the perspective of an early farmer, life has not really improved in the course of the neolithic revolution. I am not saying that there was a golden age we should strive to get back. I am saying that for the early neolithic farmer it might have looked that way, thus giving rise to the golden age myth present in so many cultures.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.