The purpose of the paper is to attempt to put a different perspective on the emergence of effective writing systems in the ancient Near East, and to argue that writing arose from other, non-language based systems of symbolic representation.
There is a tendency to make a sharp distinction between a period of literacy and earlier periods of illiteracy, whereas, from the perspective of those living in these periods, there would have been only a very gradual cline over many centuries. Also, we may tend to view the development of writing teleologically, that is from the standpoint of knowing that phonetic signs would supplant the earliest, logographic signs, and that ultimately alphabetic phonetic systems would win the day. Rather, we should start from the recognition that complex and relatively large-scale societies developed over several millennia very satisfactorily without any of the sign systems that we call writing, and that the early, logographic writing system remained in use for several centuries before scribes began to develop signs to represent syllabic sounds. We should not think that people were slower or more stupid than we are. So we can only conclude that the sign-systems that preceded writing were quite satisfactory in their particular cultural and social contexts, and that logographic writing, which we think extraordinarily restrictive, served its purposes (not ours) equally adequately for some hundreds of years.
If we think of writing - representing words and speech through graphical signs - as an invention, it may be helpful to remark that inventions usually combine existing techniques in new ways. They rarely spring out of a vacuum. People had had language in the form in which all modern humans use language for several tens of thousands of years. In the millennia preceding the beginnings of writing, people had use graphical signs. A little over five thousand years ago, various groups in south-west Asia and Egypt tried putting those two facilities together, representing words and numbers through graphical signs.
The best estimates of linguists and others is that Homo sapiens had evolved a full, modern language faculty by about 50,000 years ago. Speech requires physical characteristics unique to anatomically modern humans, but more importantly language requires a mind capable of symbolic representation. The neuro-scientist Terence Deacon (1997) calls modern humans "the symbolic species", and talks of the "co-evolution of language and the human brain". He is one of a number of scientists who believe that the development of language, culture and symbolic representation have interacted with the evolution of the human brain and its cognitive capacities. Deacon also emphasises the importance of the idea of symbolic reference that under-pins language. The important feature of symbolic reference, unlike simpler forms of iconic or indexical reference, is that the logical relations between symbols (words) become the framework within which we comprehend the world of which we talk. In other words, symbols (e.g. words) take their meaning in relation to one another, and the whole (e.g. a sentence) is much more than simply the sum of its parts.
Steven Mithen (1996) in his pioneering book on "the prehistory of the mind" makes a case for the capacity of the minds of Homo sapiens to operate with what he calls "cognitive fluidity" by the upper palaeolithic period, around 40,000 years ago. He believes that cave paintings, three-dimensional figurines and other things show that they were able to make symbolic references in terms other than language. The psychologist Merlin Donald (1991, 2001), however, places the effective use of what he calls "external symbolic storage" only in the development of conventional writing starting in the late fourth millennium BC in south-west Asia and Egypt. In company with Colin Renfrew (1998, 2001), I take a position that is somewhere in between.
Donald (1991) talks of visuo-symbolic representation, on which external symbolic storage depends, beginning to develop in the upper palaeolithic period in terms of "pictographic" representation. This mode of visuo-symbolic representation develops into "ideographic" representation with the emergence of proto-cuneiform script in the late fourth millennium BC. "Phonetic" visuo-symbolic representation follows in the third millennium BC.
I would follow Donald with the origins of visuo-symbolic representation in the upper palaeolithic, but would then argue that what we see in recently excavated early neolithic sites (such as Qermez Dere in N Iraq, Nevali Çori, Göbekli, Çayönü in SE Anatolia, Jerf el Ahmar, Djaadé, Tell Qaramel in Syria, or Kfar ha-Horesh in Israel) represents a significantly different mode of visuo-symbolic representation.
Deacon re-introduces us to the analysis of signs and reference by the American philosopher Charles Peirce. Following Saussure, words are often still described as the arbitrary signifiers that represent the signified. In Peirce's terms, that is indexical reference, but modern language consists of a system of symbolic reference in which the words and statements gain their meaning through their complex inter-relationships with one another by means of rules of grammar, syntax and layers of meaning. The organization that is evident in the layout of villages, the complex use of architecture, the existence of communal buildings full of symbolism and signs of ritual practices, the use of burials and human body parts, and the modelling of human representations in the early neolithic of south-west Asia seem to me to be evidence of complex webs of symbolic meanings.
We may conclude, I believe, that later neolithic and chalcolithic societies produce a very different kind of archaeology because, in part, they were developing more elaborate, more expressive, non-verbal signification systems. It is easy to suggest that the system of tokens, and the use of both stamp and cylinder seals are such non-verbal systems of symbolic reference. But perhaps the elaborately painted pottery of the later neolithic and early chalcolithic societies constitute further examples. If we begin to doubt that non-verbal systems of symbolic reference could effectively embody meanings, we only need to recall that the Inca state was huge and very complex, and operated entirely satisfactorily without a conventional writing system, using only qipu a system of knotted string signs not directly related to words and language.
However, we are actually at a disadvantage when we turn to study these pre-literate periods. Following the idea of gene-culture co-evolution, minds and culture have evolved in interaction with each other. It therefore follows that our minds may are evolving to take advantage of written language. And their minds, in pre-literate cultures, operated differently from ours, since they were adapted to, and reliant upon, systems of non-verbal signification. In short, we are handicapped by our dependency on literacy, and we will find difficulty in "reading" their cultural symbolism - even in believing that their non-verbal systems of signification could be "meaningful" and effective. That, then, is the challenge.
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