What is the earliest writing in the world?

Oracle Bone Inscriptions is one of the earliest scripts in the world.

But some time ago, Ningxia discovered earlier characters than Oracle Bone Inscriptions.

\ Among a large number of independent rock paintings found in Damaidi, Zhongwei, Ningxia, the oldest picture writing in China, which is thousands of years earlier than Oracle Bone Inscriptions, was found. At present, the research results have been verified by Mr. Liu Jingyun, an expert on ancient Chinese characters in Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House. Finally, it is believed that the discovery in the rock paintings of Damaidi may rewrite the history of China's characters.

A surprising number of prehistoric rock paintings are preserved in the Damaidi rock painting belt in the Beishan area of Weining, Ningxia. Its early rock paintings can be traced back to the late Paleolithic period, about 20 thousand years ago. According to the investigation of rock painting experts in Northwest Second University for Nationalities, there are 8,453 individual figures in 3 172 groups of rock paintings in Damaidi, Ningxia, including the sun, the moon, the stars, the gods of heaven and earth, hunting and grazing, dancing and offering sacrifices, etc. Rock painting experts found that the early rock paintings were between 16000 and 10000 years ago by using the dating of Lishi Huang Yi. After nearly two years of on-the-spot investigation and a lot of research and textual research, the pictures and characters in rock paintings were finally verified by Oracle Bone Inscriptions expert Liu Jingyun of Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House.

There are still stone tools and pottery fragments of the Stone Age in the rock painting area of barley field and its adjacent areas. This shows that the barley field in primitive society is the gathering place of ancient human life and activities, and it is also the holy place for them to hold sacrificial ceremonies. The research shows that the picture symbols in the rock painting area of Damaidi are the original characters of China, and many hieroglyphs and abstract symbols already have the elements of ancient Chinese characters. The main reasons are as follows: these pictographs have the basic pictographs of China's original characters, and similar images can also be found in Wen Tao symbols of roughly the same period and later Oracle Bone Inscriptions; The complex composed of more than two pictographs has basically possessed the elements of writing, such as pictograph, ideograph and signifier. More importantly, this pictographic symbol is not accidental and isolated in barley rock paintings, but distributed in a star shape.

According to Li, a member of the International Rock Painting Committee and a researcher at the Rock Painting Research Center of Northwest Second University for Nationalities, more than 1500 pictures and characters have been found in a single figure of barley rock paintings, of which only a small part can be read and most can't. /

World: The name "cuneiform" was taken by the British. It comes from Latin and is a compound word consisting of cuneus and forma. This name expresses the most essential external characteristics of ancient Mesopotamian characters. In fact, cuneiform characters, like those of other nationalities in the world, have gone through the development process from symbols to characters.

Cuneiform is a great invention of Sumerians. Sumerian characters eventually evolved from picture characters to cuneiform characters, which lasted for hundreds of years and was completed around 2500 BC.

Archaeological findings confirm that in ancient Mesopotamia, the original appearance of words was not like a wedge, but just some flat pictures. Obviously, ancient Mesopotamian characters, called cuneiform by later generations, originated from hieroglyphics. Archaeologists once found clay tablets engraved with this pictographic symbol in the ancient city of uruk, and the textual research time was around 3200 BC. This is the earliest written record in the world. This writing is simple and intuitive. Sometimes complex meanings and abstract concepts are expressed by combining several symbols. For example, the combination of "eyes" and "water" is "crying", while the combination of "birds" and "eggs" is "life". This kind of writing is pictographic. If you want to express complex meaning, use two symbols together, for example, "sky" plus "water" means "rain"; "Eye" plus "water" is "crying" and so on. Later, it was developed that a symbol can represent many meanings, such as "foot", "walking" and "standing", which is an ideographic symbol.

With the development of society and the increase of people's communication, the things to be expressed are more and more complex and abstract, and the original graphics are more and more unsuitable for people's needs. So the Sumerians reformed the writing. On the one hand, it simplifies the graphics and often uses parts to represent the whole; On the other hand, it increases the meaning of symbols. For example, the symbol "foot" can mean "standing" and "walking" besides "plow", and the symbol "plow" can also mean "plowing" and "people plowing". In this way, hieroglyphics have developed into ideographs, that is, symbolic meanings are not directly expressed by graphics but extended by graphics.

Around 2500 BC, Sumerian language has developed into a kind of syllabic writing, that is, phonetic symbols are used instead of ideographic symbols. Words that appear at the same time usually share a character, and a symbol can also represent a sound. For example, the cuneiform word "star" is pronounced in Sumerian. If it is used to express pronunciation, it has nothing to do with the original meaning of the word "star", but only expresses pronunciation. This is also the inevitable result of social development, because since 3000 BC, Sumerians have been fighting for years, and the inscriptions describing the process of fighting for themselves have gradually increased. At this time, we often encounter some proper nouns, such as the captured city and the name of the ruler. In order to distinguish them, phonetic symbols have been used, which is a step further than ideographic symbols. One is that the number of symbols is reduced, and the other is that pronunciation symbols can express things that graphic symbols can't. The sentence meaning expressed in this way is more accurate. After these changes, Sumer's writing system gradually improved. In the process of simplifying hieroglyphics, Sumerians began to gradually replace hieroglyphics with cuneiform symbols, and finally created cuneiform.

Sumerian characters were first written on clay tablets. Carved on a clay tablet, it is only suitable for writing short and straight strokes. When writing, the indentation is wider and deeper where it is pressed, and thinner and narrower when it is pulled out. In this way, the beginning of each stroke of this writing symbol is thicker and the end is thinner, just like a wooden wedge, which is how the name "cuneiform" comes from. After the wedge became the standard font of words, it was also carved into this shape when it was carved on stones in the future.

At first, cuneiform was written straight from right to left and from top to bottom. The disadvantage of this writing method is that the written words are often erased by the engraver. Later, the glyph turned 90 degrees sideways and changed from left to right to horizontal.

Sumerians invented cuneiform, which is an outstanding contribution to world culture. The Sumerian language system is unique, which is unique in vocabulary, grammar and syntactic structure, and is very different from Akkadian, Babylonian and Assyrian, which later belonged to Semite language family. But so far, no scholar can solve the problem of which language family it should be incorporated into. Therefore, Sumerian, like Sumerians, is still a mystery. Moreover, Sumerian language existed for a short time, and became extinct language after King Hammurabi of Babylon came to power, so it was no longer common. Only priests use it in religious ceremonies, which is very similar to Latin.

At the end of the third millennium BC, Akkadian of Semitic language family replaced Sumerian language. Akkadians reformed and developed on the basis of absorbing Sumerian languages and characters, and established a relatively perfect cuneiform writing system. Later Babylonian and Assyrian were mainly perfected on the basis of Akkadian.

The spread of cuneiform characters is mainly in West Asia and Southwest Asia. During the reign of Babylon and Assyria, cuneiform characters developed greatly, vocabulary was enlarged and complete, and calligraphy was more exquisite and beautiful. With the spread of culture, other ethnic groups in the two river basins also adopted this writing method. Around 1500 BC, cuneiform characters invented by Sumerians had become a common writing system for ethnic exchanges at that time, and even cuneiform characters were used in diplomatic exchanges or treaties between Egypt and countries in the two river basins. Later, due to the development of commerce, the high Persians improved the cuneiform in Mesopotamia and gradually turned it into an advanced alphabet.