Ancient technologies and education - Part IV
May 7, 2010
By 3800 BCE the Sumerians had supplanted the Ubaidians and Semites in southern Mesopotamia. The Sumerians were the first to start using the alloy bronze, which allowed them the development of much better instruments than the ones that had been possible before. The discovery of how to mould bronze soon spread all over the rest of the Middle East. They built better canals for irrigating crops and for transporting crops by boat to village centers. They improved their roads, over which their donkeys trod, some of their donkeys pulling wheeled carts. And the Sumerians grew in number, the increase in population the key element in creating what we call civilization -- a word derived from an ancient word for city Thanks to different discoveries and studies now it is possible to trace the long process of the invention of the Sumerian writing: prehistoric Mesopotamian men were using clay tokens 5000 years prior to any writing system had developed, apparently to count agricultural and manufactured goods. To solve the problem of too many token lying around and to keep them securely together, as time passed they developed a system of hollow clay containers which they then sealed up. Years later the Mesopotamians began marking the outside of these containers impressing pictures on their surface with a stylus, solving also the problem of what and how many clays were inside the containers. This technology evolved and they stopped using clay tokens altogether, replacing them by simply impressing the symbol of the clay tokens on wet clay surfaces. In addition to symbols derived from clay tokens, they also implemented a counting system so they did not have to make one impression for every one token, they created groups. Examples of this early system represents some of the earliest texts found in the Sumerian cities of Uruk and Jamdat Nasr around 3300 BCE, such as the one below. Somewhere between 4500 and 4000 BCE, Sumerians developed the beginnings of a written language. Finally, Cuneiform (latin for "wedge-shaped") was invented in Mesopotamia by the Sumerians around 2600 BCE. They used this language to send written messages, document their history, legends, mathematics, astronomy, and other pursuits. Sumerian writing is the oldest full-fledged writing that archaeologists have discovered. The development of written language ranks high among important events in the history of humanity. It is a turning point in the technological development of human society. It simply provided a way of extending human memory by imprinting information into media less fickle than the human brain. Obviously this new technology had its outstanding influence in &#&elementary education&#& as well as in &#&high education&#&. |