History of communication
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2008-07-02T10:27:32Z
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The '''history of communication''' dates back to the earliest signs of [[life]]. [[Communication]] can range from very subtle processes of exchange, to full [[conversation]]s and [[mass communication]]. [[Human]] communication was revolutionized with [[Speech communication|speech]] about 200,000 years ago. [[Symbol]]s were developed about 30,000 years ago, and [[writing]] about 7,000. On a much shorter scale, there have been major developments in the field of [[telecommunication]] in the past few centuries.
==Communication between animals==
{{details|Animal communication}}
[[Humans]] are not the only ones to master communication. Various [[animals]] are engaged in different forms of communication of their own.
Animal communication is any [[behaviour]] on the part of one animal that has an effect on the current or future behaviour of another animal. The study of animal communication ([[zoosemiotics]]) has played an important part in the development of [[ethology]], [[sociobiology]], and the study of [[animal cognition]].
Animal communication, and indeed the understanding of the animal world in general, is a rapidly growing field, and even in the 21st century so far, many prior understandings related to diverse fields such as personal symbolic [[name]] use, [[emotion in animals|animal emotions]], [[animal culture]] and [[animal learning|learning]], and even [[animal sexuality|sexual conduct]], long thought to be well understood, have been revolutionized.
==Communication between humans==
===Speech===
{{details|Speech communication}}
[[Image:ReaganBerlinWall.jpg|thumb|right|250px|[[Ronald Reagan]] speaking by the [[Berlin Wall]] (''[[Tear down this wall]]''). This is also an example of [[Transmission (telecommunications)|transmission]] of older media (speech) with new [[mass media]] ([[television]], [[Internet]]).]]
[[Evolution]] of the [[brain]] differentiated humans from animals, as among other things it allowed humans to master a very efficient form of communication - speech. A mutation of the [[FOXP2]] [[gene]], which occurred in [[homo sapiens]] about 200,000 years ago, was likely responsible for much of this change.
Speech greatly facilitated the transmission of [[information]] and [[knowledge]] to further [[generation]]s. Experiences passed on through speech became increasingly rich, and allowed humans to adapt themselves to new environments - or adapt the environments to themselves - much more quickly than was possible before; in effect, biological [[human evolution]] was overtaken by [[technological progress]] and [[sociocultural evolution]]. Speech meant easier coordination and cooperation, technological progress and development of complex, abstract [[concept]]s such as [[religion]] or [[science]]. Speech placed humans at the top of the [[food chain]], and facilitated human [[colonization]] of the entire [[planet]].
Speech, however, is not perfect. The [[human voice]] carries only so far, and [[sign language]] is also rather limited in terms of distance. Further, all such forms of communications relied on [[human memory]], another imperfect tool: memory can become corrupted or lost over time, and there is a limit to how much one can remember. With the accidental death of a '[[wise man]]' or tribal [[Elder (administrative title)|elder]], a primitive [[tribe]] could lose many generations of knowledge.
===Symbols===
{{details|Symbol}}
[[Image:Religious syms.svg|thumb|right|100px|Various [[List of religious symbols|religious symbols]].]]
The imperfection of speech, which nonetheless allowed easier dissemination of [[idea]]s and stimulated [[invention]]s, eventually resulted in the creation of new forms of communications, improving both the range at which people could communicate and the longevity of the information. All of those inventions were based on the key concept of the [[symbol]]: a conventional representation of a [[concept]].
====Cave paintings====
{{details|Cave paintings}}
The oldest known symbols created with the purpose of communication through time are the [[cave paintings]], a form of [[rock art]], dating to the [[Upper Paleolithic]]. Just as the small child first learns to draw before it masters more complex forms of communication, so homo sapiens' first attempts at passing information through time took the form of paintings. The oldest known cave painting is that of the [[Chauvet Cave]], dating to around 30,000 [[Anno Domini|BC]].<ref name="Paul Martin Lester">[[Paul Martin Lester]], ''Visual Communication with Infotrac: Images with Messages'', Thomson Wadsworth, 2005, ISBN 0-534-63720-5,
[http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0534637205&id=6oibH9roTmkC&pg=PA48&lpg=PA48&dq=oldest+Chauvet&sig=Wavi-vRU4yanySHdKiYPWO70_os Google Print: p.48]</ref> Though not well [[standardized]], those paintings contained increasing amounts of information: [[Cro-Magnon]] people may have created the first [[calendar]] as far back as 15,000 years ago.<ref>according to a claim by Michael Rappenglueck, of the University of Munich (2000) [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/975360.stm]</ref> The connection between drawing and writing is further shown by [[linguistics]]: in the [[Ancient Egypt]] and [[Ancient Greece]] the concepts and words of drawing and writing were one and the same (Egyptian: 's-sh', Greek: 'graphein').<ref name="David Diringer BBP">[[David Diringer]], ''The Book Before Printing: Ancient, Medieval and Oriental'', Courier Dover Publications, 1982, ISBN 0-486-24243-9, [http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0486242439&id=pK-t8_JNrREC&pg=PA27&lpg=PA27&dq=graphein+write+draw&sig=EpZDJin9B-Z0PWhacEZiMK_rGhs Google Print: p.27]</ref>
====Petroglyphs====
{{details|Petroglyphs}}
[[Image:Haljesta.jpg|thumb|right|150px|Petroglyphs from [[Häljesta]], Scandinavia. Nordic [[Bronze Age]].]]
The next step in the history of communications is [[petroglyph]]s, carvings into a rock surface. It took about 20,000 years for homo sapiens to move from the first cave paintings to the first petroglyphs, which are dated to around 10,000 BC.<ref name="David Diringer HotA">David Diringer, ''History of the Alphabet'', 1977; ISBN 0-905418-12-3. The petroglyphs of [[Kamyana Mohyla]] have been controversially dated to before 15,000 BC.</ref>
It is possible that the humans of that time used some other forms of communication, often for [[mnemonic]] purposes - specially arranged stones, symbols carved in wood or earth, [[quipu]]-like ropes, [[tattoo]]s, but little other than the most durable carved stones has survived to modern times and we can only speculate about their existence based on our observation of still existing 'hunter-gatherer' cultures such as those of [[Africa]] or [[Oceania]].<ref name="David Diringer HotA"/>
====Pictograms====
{{details|Pictograms}}
[[Image:Piktograf1.png|thumb|right|150px|Pictograph from 1510 telling a story of coming of [[missionaries]] to [[Hispaniola]]]]
A [[pictogram]] (pictograph) is a [[symbol]] representing a [[concept]], [[Object (philosophy)|object]], activity, place or event by [[illustration]]. Pictography is a form of [[proto-writing]] whereby [[idea]]s are transmitted through [[drawing]]. Pictographs were the next step in the evolution of communication: the most important difference between petroglyphs and pictograms is that petroglyphs are simply showing an event, but pictograms are telling a story about the event, thus they can for example be ordered in [[chronological]] order.
Pictograms were used by various ancient [[culture]]s all over the world since around 9000 BC, when tokens marked with simple pictures began to be used to label basic farm produce, and become increasingly popular around 6000-5000 BC.
They were the basis of [[Cuneiform (script)|cuneiform]][http://pandora.cii.wwu.edu/vajda/ling201/test4materials/Writing2.htm] and [[Egyptian hieroglyphs|hieroglyph]]s, and began to develop into [[logogram|logographic]] [[writing system]]s around 5000 BC.
====Ideograms====
{{details|Ideograms}}
[[Image:Our Father in heaven - Mikmaq hierogl.gif|frame|right|The beginning of the Lord's Prayer in [[Míkmaq hieroglyphic writing]]. The text reads ''Nujjinen wásóq'' – "Our father / in heaven"]]
Pictograms, in turn, evolved into ideograms, graphical symbols that represent an [[idea]]. Their ancestors, the pictograms, could represent only something resembling their form: therefore a pictogram of a circle could represent a sun, but not concepts like 'heat', 'light', 'day' or 'Great God of the Sun'. Ideograms, on the other hand, could convey more abstract concepts, so that for example an ideogram of two sticks can mean not only 'legs' but also a verb 'to walk'.
Because some ideas are universal, many different cultures developed similar ideograms. For example an eye with a tear means 'sadness' in [[Native Americans in the United States|Native American]] ideograms in [[California]], as it does for the [[Aztec]]s, the early [[Han Chinese|Chinese]] and the [[Ancient Egypt|Egyptian]]s.
Ideograms were precursors of [[logogram|logographic writing systems]] such as [[Egyptian hieroglyphs]] and [[Chinese character]]s.
Examples of ideographical proto-writing systems, thought not to contain language-specific information, include the [[Vinca script]] (see also [[Tărtăria tablets]]) and the early [[Indus script]]. In both cases there are claims of decipherment of linguistic content, without wide acceptance.
====Writing====
{{details|history of writing}}
[[Image:Sumerian 26th c Adab.jpg|thumb|250px|26th century BC [[Sumerian]] [[cuneiform script]] in [[Sumerian language]], listing gifts to the high priestess of [[Adab]] on the occasion of her election. One of the earliest examples of human [[writing]].]]
The oldest-known forms of writing were primarily [[logogram|logographic]] in nature, based on [[pictogram|pictographic]] and [[ideogram|ideographic]] elements. Most writing systems can be broadly divided into three categories: ''logographic'', ''syllabic'' and ''alphabetic'' (or ''segmental''); however, all three may be found in any given writing system in varying proportions, often making it difficult to categorise a system uniquely.
The invention of the first [[writing system]]s is roughly contemporary with the beginning of the [[Bronze Age]] in the late [[Neolithic]] of the late 4th millennium BC. The first writing system is generally believed to have been invented in pre-historic [[Sumer]] and developed by the late [[3rd millennium]] into [[Cuneiform script|cuneiform]]. [[Egyptian hieroglyphs]], and the undeciphered [[Proto-Elamite]] writing system and [[Indus script|Indus Valley script]] also date to this era, though a few scholars have questioned the [[Indus Valley Civilization|Indus Valley]] script's status as a writing system.
The original [[Sumerian]] writing system was derived from a system of [[clay]] [[token]]s used to represent [[commodities]]. By the end of the 4th millennium BC, this had evolved into a method of keeping [[accounts]], using a round-shaped [[stylus]] impressed into soft clay at different angles for recording [[number]]s. This was gradually augmented with pictographic writing using a sharp stylus to indicate what was being counted. Round-stylus and sharp-stylus writing was gradually replaced about 2700-2000 BC by writing using a wedge-shaped stylus (hence the term [[cuneiform script|cuneiform]]), at first only for [[logogram]]s, but developed to include [[phonetic]] elements by the 2800 BC. About 2600 BC cuneiform began to represent syllables of spoken [[Sumerian language]]. Finally, cuneiform writing became a general purpose writing system for [[logogram]]s, [[syllable]]s, and numbers. By the 26th century BC, this script had been adapted to another Mesopotamian language, [[Akkadian language|Akkadian]], and from there to others such as [[Hurrian language|Hurrian]], and [[Hittite language|Hittite]]. Scripts similar in appearance to this writing system include those for [[Ugaritic language|Ugaritic]] and [[Old Persian language|Old Persian]].
The [[Chinese script]] may have originated independently of the Middle Eastern scripts, around the 16th century BC (early [[Shang Dynasty]]), out of a late neolithic Chinese system of proto-writing dating back to c. 6000 BC. The pre-Columbian writing systems of the [[Americas]] (including among others [[Olmec]] and [[Maya script|Mayan]]) are also generally believed to have had independent origins, although some experts have noticed similarities between Olmec writing and Shang writing that seem to suggest that Mesoamerican writing was imported from China [http://www.viewzone.com/olmec.comments.html].
=====Alphabet=====
{{details|history of alphabet}}
[[Image:Caslon-schriftmusterblatt.jpeg|thumb|right|250px|''A Specimen'' of typeset fonts and languages, by [[William Caslon]], letter founder; from the 1728 ''[[Cyclopaedia]]''.]]
The first pure [[alphabet]]s (properly, "[[abjad]]s", mapping single symbols to single phonemes, but not necessarily each phoneme to a symbol) emerged around 2000 BC in [[Ancient Egypt]], but by then alphabetic principles had already been incorporated into [[Egyptian hieroglyph]]s for a millennium (see [[Middle Bronze Age alphabets]]).
By 2700 BC Egyptian writing had a set of some [[Egyptian hieroglyph#Uniliteral signs|22 hieroglyphs]] to represent syllables that begin with a single [[consonant]] of their language, plus a vowel (or no vowel) to be supplied by the native speaker. These glyphs were used as pronunciation guides for [[logogram]]s, to write grammatical inflections, and, later, to transcribe loan words and foreign names.
However, although seemingly alphabetic in nature, the original Egyptian uniliterals were not a system and were never used by themselves to encode Egyptian speech. In the [[Middle Bronze Age]] an apparently "alphabetic" system is thought by some to have been developed in central [[Egypt]] around 1700 BC for or by [[Semitic]] workers, but we cannot read these early writings and their exact nature remain open to interpretation.
Over the next five centuries this Semitic "alphabet" (really a [[syllabary]] like [[Phoenician writing]]) seems to have spread north. All subsequent alphabets around the world with the sole exception of Korean [[Hangul]] have either descended from it, or been inspired by one of its descendants.
==History of telecommunication==
{{details|History of telecommunication}}
The [[history of telecommunication]] - the [[Transmission (telecommunications)|transmission]] of [[Signal (electrical engineering)|signals]] over a distance for the purpose of [[communication]] - began thousands of years ago with the use of [[smoke signal]]s and [[drum (communication)|drum]]s in [[Africa]], the [[Americas]] and parts of [[Asia]]. In the 1790s the first fixed [[Semaphore line|semaphore systems]] emerged in [[Europe]] however it was not until the 1830s that [[electrical]] [[telecommunication]] systems started to appear.
{{Timeline of telecommunications}}
== See also ==
* [[Linguistics]] and [[History of linguistics]]
* [[Semiotics]]
== References ==
{{reflist}}
* {{pl icon}} Piotr Konieczny, [http://www.histmag.org/archiwalia/mag49/komunikacja-od-mowy-do-internetu.html Komunikacja: od mowy do Internetu], ''Histmag #49''
[[Category:Communication]]
[[Category:History by topic|Communication]]