Writing and Civilization: From Ancient Worlds to Modernity

It is said that writing exists only in a civilization and a civilization cannot exist without writing; probing the validity of this statement; the critical functions that writing serves during the past 5,000 years; an introduction to pictography.

Three beliefs or myths about where writing comes from and how it develops; the theories of monogenesis versus polygenesis; whether writing is only invented once or independently in locations around the world; writing systems are resistant to change.

Most alphabets in use today are derived from one script developed over 4,000 years ago; what accounts for the vast popularity of the Roman or Latin alphabet; in ancient Egypt, probing the origin of the alphabet; the contributions by the Canaanites.

Runes are often mistakenly thought to be a semi-magical system of signs used for divination and ritual; nothing could be further from the truth; the real history of the Runic alphabet, also known as the Futhark; why writing systems rise and fall.

The Chinese script and its derivatives are used by more than 1.5 billion people around the world; popular myths about Chinese writing as one discovers the earliest evolutions of Chinese characters; the five sign groups found in Chinese.

Japanese writing is a highly complicated script; it is used by more than 100 million people daily; how and why Japanese writing takes on the complex form it has today; attempts to simplify it have had little success; not one to be abandoned.