The Origin of Writing: Is Writing a Natural Tool of Political Ruling?

Some scholars who study the history of Chinese characters are discussing a question recently: What is the most important ruling tool? According to their "ruling hypothesis", after human beings invented writing, the early countries could know the population, land and economic output in time through writing, so that the elite could safeguard their power. In this process, these scholars went on to believe that writing has gradually become more flexible-it can not only record oral expressions, but also be used in poems, letters and even some word games, such as "Crazy Libs" and "fortune cookie".

James Scott is a political scientist at Yale University. In his book Anti-Grain, he described in detail the connection between words and the state. His goal is to overthrow people's previous understanding of the process of civilization. In this book, he used a large number of archaeological discoveries to prove that there were a large number of settlers and grain agriculture in Mesopotamia and China long before the birth of the earliest countries. These social activities are chosen by rulers, ruling classes and social elites according to their own interests. The elites do not engage in agricultural production or farm work, but they will make up a whole set of narratives and attribute these achievements to themselves. In this book, Scott subverts the previous views through political counter-narration, pointing out that elites are not the driving force of social progress. On the contrary, he believes that people's lives will be better when they are no longer ruled.

In Scott's anti-narrative system, words play the role of villains. Because in his view, writing is the tool of power rule, and it is writing that makes the ruled become the ruled. Scott wrote: "The state is a machine for recording, registering and measuring." It is also a compulsory machine that needs to make lists, collect taxes, decide food quotas, form an army and write rules. "The coincidence between the original country and the original written language," he wrote, "will lead us to a rough functionalist conclusion: the future founder invented the reference method because it is very important for governing the country." Scott believes that if there is no written language, then there is no country-if there is no country, there is no written language. He seems to think that any human activities related to writing words-myths, epics, love letters, articles, re-evaluation of the history of civilization-are by-products of bureaucratic documents.

Contrary to common sense

However, in my opinion (referring to Michael Ellard, the author of this article and a psycholinguist at Max Planck Institute), the evidence shows the opposite. I'm a nudist. When the whole world is leaning towards video, I am still a die-hard young artist-I hardly watch TV. Now this feature always makes others think that I am an old pedant. Every week, there seems to be all kinds of news that the future of written words is bleak, whether because of the continuous development of information interfaces controlled by AI and voice commands or because people think that Yan characters will become a universal writing system all over the world. Therefore, after reading Scott's book, I would like to raise some doubts about this logic in the book: if written words are the product of counting, so that powerful people can continue to control power, then let us release ourselves and return to the original state.

After all, who needs to write? If the military is used as an analogy, then the written words may be specially developed by the military like nuclear weapons; It is also possible that, like gunpowder, it has long been discovered, but it was later used as a weapon. Because at first, the alchemist wanted to refine the elixir that could make people live forever, but he inadvertently invented gunpowder. It was not until hundreds of years later that gunpowder became a weapon. Therefore, the question now is: at every stage of the country's evolution, will the ruling elite recreate a set of written words and make them the product of the country? Or is it that the written language originally contains some long-standing common reference methods, but after the emergence of the country, the written language system has been further expanded to meet the needs of the country and complex society?

Evidence shows that words are closer to gunpowder than nuclear weapons. On the one hand, as far as we know, in the four primitive countries where characters first appeared, there was no perfect recording function at first, but it gradually evolved into what it is now-that is, characters originated from some primitive characters, and the original characters originated from the original characters before, so I think characters are the product of accumulation of inventions and creations. At first, humans invented some pictures: drawing a permanent mark on the surface to indicate a certain meaning. At least100000 years ago, human beings began to do this-at that time, the bureaucracy did not appear, nor did it empower human beings. Later, mankind invented a symbol: let's draw this symbol different from all other symbols and give it a meaning that we all agree with. For a long time, human beings have done this. Then came an invention with linguistic significance: human beings realized that each image symbol can be given a sound, syllable and word. This invention is rooted in previous inventions and finally realized by breaking the old and creating the new. Finally, this set of symbols has more functions: let's use this set of symbols to list prisoners, or draft a contract to hire someone to feed them, or write a letter to a distant leader. It was this step-by-step action taken by alchemists that eventually produced gunpowder for writing.

When you explore these inventions layer by layer, you will find that there was no obvious political function in early Mesopotamia. David Wengelo, an archaeologist at University College London, wrote in his book What Made Civilization? This view was put forward in What Made Civilization. Weng Lu believes that in the 300-400 years (3300 -2900 BC) after the appearance of cuneiform in this area, cuneiform only had the function of keeping accounts, and it was used to manage temple factories at that time. "In my opinion, writing has almost no national function (such as dynasty tablets, and the writing of taxes, sacrifices and political events). It was not until the early generation that words began to have these functions. " He told me.

This is a greater blow to the "ruling hypothesis" than it seems, because in Mesopotamia, the predecessor of writing, that is, counting, did not need to rely on the state to develop. In 1960s, archaeologist Dennis Schmandt-Besara began to study clay markers. Thousands of such clay marks have been found in archaeological sites in the Middle East, including cylinder, pyramid, disc and sphere, but no one can explain what these marks are. These marks appeared in Neolithic archaeological sites before 8000 BC, much earlier than the first country in Mesopotamia. In the 1990s, I did research with Schmandt Bassett at the University of Texas in Austin. She thinks these markers can be traced back to 1 ten thousand years ago. In her view, these marks represent some items: a cone represents a unit of grain, a diamond represents a unit of honey and so on. At first, these marks referring to goods and articles were stored in groups, and one of the storage methods was to seal them in hollow mud balls. However, an obvious defect of this storage method is that people can't check what is in the closed mud ball. Therefore, in order to overcome this defect, early accountants pressed these marks on the surface of soft and wet mud balls to identify what was inside the mud balls. In 4000 BC, people realized that this indentation made it unnecessary for the clay ball to exist-we just had to press the indentation directly on the soil of the clay ball. Or, a better way is to simply create a written symbol to represent the mark. Therefore, people have taken more abstract steps to complete the whole process: creating written symbols to record sounds and word meanings.

At least for Mesopotamia, the meaning of this evidence is very clear. In the three thousand years before the invention of cuneiform, early countries did not write words, but relied on the marking system to count. Moreover, marks can't be developed only under the condition of owning a country-they appeared 2000 years before the country. So we now know that the appearance of counting precedes the appearance of complex economic organizations, and the appearance of words precedes the appearance of political functions. Both of these sub-arguments weaken the view that written words are related to the state.

Clay marking

In other places where writing developed, the "dominance hypothesis" also lacked strong evidence. For example, in China, the earliest writing can be traced back to the divination writing carved on the back of bones and turtles in BC 1320. These Oracle Bone Inscriptions are engraved with names, dates, sacrificial objects and other information. But at present, archaeologists have not found any evidence to show whether there were ruling, propaganda or literary characters in the same period. Moreover, archaeologists don't know what Oracle Bone Inscriptions's writing was before. However, the shape and engraving of Oracle Bone Inscriptions showed that a relatively perfect and capable class had emerged in the society at that time. This also shows that a complex society has emerged at that time. But is this society ruled by words? There is no evidence to prove this.

The written language of Mesopotamia further questioned this point. The most obvious examples are Maya and ZaPotec scripts, which can be traced back to 300 BC and 600 BC respectively. All the existing Mesopotamian characters are carved on stones or walls; Words written on palm leaves and other materials have been lost or destroyed by Spanish rulers. At present, the available evidence shows that there were traces of pictures here before the appearance of words. These early works involved leaders, rulers, captured prisoners, conquest and other related events and figures, but these works did not involve economic or state rule.

What we have seen time and again is that words are more like gunpowder than nuclear weapons. In the four ancient countries where characters first appeared, either there is no evidence or all the evidence shows that the original characters appeared before the need of state rule. Even in Mesopotamia, it took hundreds of years to count cuneiform characters before humans began to use written words to achieve political goals. In Mesopotamia, we can simply say that the counter invented writing. In this respect, words do come from counting. However, compared with the counter, the clergy in the temple made a greater contribution. "The clergy invented writing" is a simplified view that I can accept-this view holds that writing is a tool to contact the supernatural world. The clergy recorded the drift of the soul in words and observed God's will.

The popular "dominance hypothesis" has also been opposed by other scholars. Stephen Houston is an anthropologist who works at Brown University. In the postscript of his first writing, he concluded that although the dominance hypothesis is tempting, it is "still hypothetical". Houston sent me an email recently. He wrote that although the book has been published for 14 years, things have not changed, especially for Mesopotamia. "The earliest words we can see are all about kings, gods, ceremonies and statues. We seem to have reason to believe that some words tell the story of cadastre (recording land and its owners) that appeared in early Mexican colonies. However, we have no direct evidence to prove this. "

At the same time, there are some other anthropologists who observe more carefully the historical examples in which there are only words without countries, and the historical examples in which there are only countries without words. Pierce Kelly is a linguistic anthropologist who works in the Max Planck Institute of Human Evolutionary History in Munich. He believes that ancient countries in Hawaii never used words, while some "small non-state societies" used words. In fact, in different corners of the earth, in the long river of history, we will find that the inventors of writing invented letters and syllables to resist state rule.

Kelly studied religious and political movements in Southeast Asia and West Africa. In these places, charismatic leaders often invented words inspired by supernatural gods. Kelly pointed out that since the 1940s of 19, at least nine sets of written characters have been recreated in Southeast Asia, most of which were created by illiterate people living in highlands. These people's lives are threatened by a powerful country, so they need to "introduce another set of words as a resistance strategy to promote the development of the new movement, give legitimacy to its supporters, and make marginalized languages visible to people."

One of my favorite examples is a writing system called Miao Wen. This script was invented in the late 1950s by a Miao farmer who lived in the high mountains of Vietnam. His name is Yang. This incident is remarkable not only because Yang is illiterate, but also because he revised his writing system four times, and each version is more complicated than the previous one in linguistics (William A. Smali, Jia Kwa Wan and Gnea I. Yang described this in detail in the wonderful book Mother of Writing). Yang did not invent this writing system under the background of the emergence of the country, and he himself was not a privileged class. His livelihood is to weave baskets for catching squirrels and grow rice in the mountains. His followers believe that Yang's writing system was taught by two mysterious angels from heaven. Before that, no one could read and write this writing system. It was not until Yang later taught this writing system to others that people gradually learned this writing system.

As Yang's example shows, the phonetic achievement of a writing system is not the only thing worth mentioning. French anthropologist Pierre Deleux Archie studied the invention of writing in many cultures. He divided the writing into "restricted" and "unrestricted" forms. "Unlimited" writing forms include Latin alphabet writing. Latin letters have flexible pronunciation and diverse functions. When we communicate in English and French, we will use this information tool. "Restricted" written language may not be so familiar to us. It can only refer to a small part of spoken language and is only used by a few people. Among the "restricted" writing, there is an example: the history of Lakota people painted on blankets. This painting was painted by Swift Dog, a Lakota warrior. This picture is one of the "winter numbers", which refers to a picture that records history on buffalo hide. At present, there are about 100 "winter numbers" in the world, and this picture is one of them. The painters of these paintings are usually men. They will draw iconic symbols for important events, but these symbols are not exactly the same. Another example is the words on the stele of Olmec civilization. In the late 1990s, a snake-shaped stone tablet engraved with 62 symbols was found in Mexico. This stone tablet dates back to 900 BC. This is the oldest written language in the western hemisphere, but people haven't deciphered it yet.

Save the phonograph of Miao language

This script is similar to the shaman writing system, "created by religious experts, with strict restrictions and Oracle functions," a team of historians wrote in the 20 16 issue of Science. Face-to-face communication and oral language often use "restricted" written forms. Pierre mentioned that this writing form exists in many indigenous cultures in North America (ojibwa, Lakota, Navajo, cuna), South America (such as Inca and Quechua) and Asia (Naxi people in China and Daya people in kalimantan island). In his view, if you want to crack the "restricted" text, you must know what the text says. If it records chanting, rituals or curses (and other contents), then you may need to be an expert on these contents-therefore, this written word is not an effective tool to control power. Moreover, in his view, Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Central American and China were all "restricted" when they first appeared.

In the end, under the impetus of national interests, whether it is to strengthen imperial power politics, manage the economy, or raise funds for the elite, or all of these are included, the "restricted" characters will evolve into "unrestricted" characters. The huge national demand can force people to expand what they need to record. Therefore, the liberation of written language will bring the power of invention (even strictly speaking, the expansion of written language is not an invention). Suddenly, humans began to have to record their own names, including the names of locals, foreigners, prisoners of military aggression and so on. Humans must record the source of trade goods, sign legal contracts, and standardize the lists and letters sent to distant officers-so some people realize that if a letter can describe military orders, it can also describe sweet words. In schools that specialize in teaching these characters, people will standardize the labels of articles and pass these contents on from generation to generation, so these characters will penetrate into the elite.

To some extent, we who can write and read owe our country a thank you. The profound history of your poems, contracts and epitaphs may be found in the scribbled pictures on the cave walls or in the list of royal ancestors. Although some of them are oracles, the development of "unlimited" characters ultimately comes from the needs and privileges of the government.

As a non-fiction writer, I deeply like that the root of writing comes from the description of concrete things and reality. As a text analyst, I deeply love that Mesopotamian marks are gradually transformed into soil after being printed on soft external walls-perhaps the marks wrapped in soil make people feel that the text is both external and internal. Now we can easily communicate the meaning in a given text (in English or other languages), depending on the text. As a poet, I want to stand on the side of the powerless and give the authorities new uses for the purpose of using words. As a linguist, I realize the importance of writing invention. Our brains don't deliberately promote the invention of this layer. However, with the evolution of human beings, these words have also evolved into what they are today. As a supporter of writing, I know that its profound history will not be erased.