Ancient technologies and education - Part V
May 7, 2010
Cuneiform was difficult to learn. To master it children (boys) in Sumerian society usually went to obtain &?&elementary education&#& to a temple school where they also studied arithmetic American Sumerologist S. N. Kramer says that the Sumerian school was known as the Edubba, which translation to Sumerian language means "tablet house." It was first established for the purpose of training the necessary scribes to satisfy the economic and administrative needs of the land, primarily, of course, those of the temple and palace, this was what we would call its original "professional" goal. This continued to be the major aim of the Sumerian school throughout its existence. However, in the course of its growth and development, and particularly as a result of the ever widening curriculum, it came to be the center of culture and learning in Sumer. Once a writing system is in place, the amount of knowledge that can be accumulated is no longer limited by the size of the memory of the human brain. It becomes virtually unlimited. The transmission of knowledge from one generation to the next also becomes a lot easier and less time consuming. It was demonstrated that in the same way that the Neolithic revolution in agriculture pushed society forward through the use of tools and farming, writing altered the economic, social, and political sectors of ancient civilizations. It allowed people to record history in permanent, written form. This technology has created the infrastructure for lasting, accurately transmitted memories and thus for the diffusion and growth of knowledge. The invention of writing was the dawn of the information revolution. Among other million of advantages this great technological advance allowed news and ideas to be carried to distant places without having to rely on a messenger's memory. It was a dramatic advance. Although an appreciation of the roots of civilization requires consideration to humanity's prehistory, ancient human history begins with the invention, independently at several sites on Earth, of writing. As we have seen, writing is a skill that follows the art of expressing words by letters or other marks and complete writing systems were preceded by proto-writing, systems of ideographic and/or early mnemonic symbol. However, experts consider that "true writing", or phonetic writing, records were developed independently in four different civilizations in the world, namely Sumer, Egypt, China, and Mesoamerica. Like all the inventions human's minds had developed, writing emerged as a "new technology" because there was a need for it. |