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THE ANCIENT WORLD A CHAPTERS History of Graphic 1–4 Design Cave Images Invention of Writing Alphabets Paper Relief Printing Illuminated Manuscripts Paleolithic Age is a prehistoric period distinguished by the development of the most primitive stone tools and covers roughly 95% of human technological prehistory. It extends from the earliest known use of stone tools,, 2.6 million years ago, to the end of the Pleistocene Period. The climate consisted of a set of glacial and interglacial periods. During the Paleolithic period, humans grouped together in small bands, and subsisted by gathering plants and fishing, hunting or scavenging wild animals. The Paleolithic is characterized by the use of knapped stone tools, although at the time humans also used wood and bone tools. Other organic commodities were adapted for use as tools, including leather and vegetable fibers. During the end of the Paleolithic, specifically the Middle and or Upper Paleolithic, humans began to produce the earliest works of art and engage in religious and spiritual behavior such as burial and ritual. Paleolithic Stone Lamp Entrance to the cave 1-01 Lascaux, c. 15,000 –10,000 B.C. 1-01 Over 600 images 1-01 Lascaux, c. 15,000 –10,000 B.C. 1-01 Lascaux, c. 15,000 –10,000 B.C. • Cuneiform script is one of the earliest known systems of writing, distinguished by its wedge-shaped marks on clay tablets, made by means of a blunt reed for a stylus. The name cuneiform means “wedge shaped”, from the Latin cuneus “wedge” and forma “shape,” and came into English from Old French cunéiforme. 1-05 • Cuneiform writing began in Sumer in the late 4th millennium B.C.E. (the Uruk IV period) as a system of pictographs. In the 3rd millennium, the pictorial representations became simplified and more abstract as the number of characters in use grew smaller, from about 1,000 in the Early Bronze Age to about 400 in the Late Bronze Age. • The meaning of AD is Anno Domini or Year of our Lord referring to the year of Christ’s birth. The meaning of BC is Before Christ. CE is a recent term. It refers to Common Era and is used in place of A.D. the dates are the same i.e., 2009 AD is 2009 CE. BCE means Before Common Era. For example 400 BC is 400 BCE. 1-05 Sumerian Ziggurat Cuneiform 1-05 Wedge-shaped Writing Wrting school or Edubba (tablet house) • Petroglyphs—”rock art” images created by removing part of a rock surface by incising, picking, carving, or abrading. • Pictograph—If the word is used to describe a type of “rock art” it refers to painted images. Aa a symbol for a word or phrase, pictographs were used as the earliest known form of writing, examples having been discovered in Egypt and Mesopotamia from before 3000 BC. • Ideographs—abstract ssymbols to reesent ideas or concepts Sumerian symbols for “star” (which also meant “heaven” or “god”), “head,” and “water” evolved from pictographs to ideographs 3100 B.C. evolved into the early cuneiform writing by 2500 B.C. 1-06 1-05 Early Sumerian pictographic tablet, c. 3100 B.C. Cuneiform Cuneiform Stele bearing the Code of Hammurabi, between 1792 and 1750 B.C. 1-11 Detail of the Code of Hammurabi, c. 1800 B.C. • • • • One half of the code deals with matters of contract Other provisions set terms of transition A third of the code adddresses household issues Many remaining deal with issues related to military service 0 • Zero was invented independently by the Babylonians, Mayans and Indians (although some researchers say the Indian number system was influenced by the Babylonians). • The Babylonians got their number system from the Sumerians, the first people in the world to develop a counting system. • Ancient Egyptian numerals were base 10. They used hieroglyphs for the digits and were not positional. By 1740 BC, the Egyptians had a symbol for zero in accounting texts. The symbol nfr, meaning beautiful, was also used to indicate the base level in drawings of tombs and pyramids and distances were measured relative to the base line as being above or below this line. Cylinder Seals Cylinder Seal Hittite 1650–1200 BCE 1-19 A rebus is an allusional device that uses pictures to represent words or parts of words. Rosetta Stone Egyptian hieroglyphs middle portion Demotic script and the lowest Ancient Greek cartouches The magical power of words extended to the written word. Written words conveyed the full force of a spell. == Papyrus Plant 1-24A Tools of the scribe, drawstring sack for dried ink cakes, and a reed brush holder The hieroglyph for scribe