Writing and Civilization: From Ancient Worlds to Modernity

by Marc Zender

At just over 5,000 years old, writing is actually a relatively recent invention. It has become so central to the way we communicate and live, however, that it often seems as if writing has always existed.

But the question remains: Who invented writing, and why?

In these 24 fascinating lectures, you'll trace the remarkable saga of the invention and evolution of "visible speech," from its earliest origins to its future in the digital age. Your guide is an accomplished professor and epigrapher who whisks you around the globe to explore how an array of sophisticated writing systems developed, then were adopted and adapted by surrounding cultures.

Along the way, you'll visit the great early civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, Japan, and the Americas, and you'll see how deciphering ancient scripts is a little like cracking secret codes - only far more difficult.

You'll be spellbound as you hear accounts of the breathtaking moments when the decipherment of ancient scripts broke centuries of silence. And you'll marvel at fascinating objects once shrouded in mystery, including the iconic Rosetta stone.

Writing and Civilization offers the chance to not only discover the history of ancient writing systems, but also the rare opportunity to actually hear those scripts read aloud and to learn the meaning of their messages hidden in plain sight.

Please note a guidebook is included with the audiobook.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Audiobook, Language, Writing, Linguistics, Historical

13 pages, Audible Audio

First published September 27, 2013

Reviews

[Petra X · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read quite a few linguistics books recently, the most notable by Seth Lerer and John McWhorter and I had hoped for something equally erudite and entertaining about writing from this book. It wasn't to be.

The book was fairly exhaustive about how writing grew independently in at least five different cultures that had no contact with each other - for example, Mayan and Egyptian. It explained the different forms of writing from the angular cuneiform on clay tablets through to the beautiful, illuminated codices of medieval monks. There were some surprises - ancient Egyptians were a highly literate society, almost everyone could read and write. A vast dump of paper notes from the now totally disappeared city of Oxyrhynchus, preserved by the dry soil and climate, provided such ordinary gems as 'since you owe me some money please bring me some wine and cheese and also some jars to keep wine in next time you go shopping' along with tax returns, text books and accounts.

The chapters of deciphering ancient languages was quite interesting. The reason the Rosetta Stone (and it wasn't the only one, it's known there were others but they haven't been found) was so key, is that Ptolemy V ordered a decree to be written in the three most commonly used languages of the day - Egyptian hieroglyphs demotic script, and ancient Greek. Greek was the first to be deciphered, and since it was then known that the other two inscriptions said the same thing, they were fully deciphered within the next rew decades.

There are five 'pillars' to deciphering ancient scripts, the lack of any of them makes for difficulty, the lack of most of them means that there still ancient languages that have never been deciphered. The five pillars (in order of my recall!) are firstly, the type of script, what sort of signs - alphabetic or semantic for instance. The second is that there should be a lot of written material. One small engraved stone just wouldn't do it. The third is to compare the language with other similar, known ones, is it derived from a known ancestor in much the same way that spoken languages can be traced back to their family of origin - ours is Proto Indo-European. The fourth pillar is something bilingual - or in the case of the Rosetta Stone, trilingual. And the last is the identification of names or proper nouns. A name is likely to be pronounced in a similiar way in all languages, if it can be deciphered in one and then another it gives strong clues not just to decipherment but to pronounciation too.

All this was very interesting, but there was too much irrelevant detail about individual epigrammers and a lot of repetition and filler. I am actually not sure that the details were irrelevant or were exact repetitions, but that is how I experienced them. I am however sure that they were boring. And that's why it loses a star.

4 stars and worth reading but I have a feeling there has to be a course or book out there presented by someone with more of the common than perhaps academic touch.

[UniquelyMoi ~ BlithelyBookish · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full review now posted...

4 'but what if somethings happens...?' stars!

I enjoy listening to Audible's The Great Courses series of books. This one started out slow... lot's of background information... but the narrator is excellent and at the 30% mark, I was hooked!

Blurb...

At just over 5,000 years old, writing is actually a relatively recent invention. It has become so central to the way we communicate and live, however, that it often seems as if writing has always existed.

But the question remains: Who invented writing, and why?

In these 24 fascinating lectures, you'll trace the remarkable saga of the invention and evolution of "visible speech," from its earliest origins to its future in the digital age. Your guide is an accomplished professor and epigrapher who whisks you around the globe to explore how an array of sophisticated writing systems developed, then were adopted and adapted by surrounding cultures.

Along the way, you'll visit the great early civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, Japan, and the Americas, and you'll see how deciphering ancient scripts is a little like cracking secret codes - only far more difficult.

You'll be spellbound as you hear accounts of the breathtaking moments when the decipherment of ancient scripts broke centuries of silence. And you'll marvel at fascinating objects once shrouded in mystery, including the iconic Rosetta stone.

Writing and Civilization offers the chance to not only discover the history of ancient writing systems, but also the rare opportunity to actually hear those scripts read aloud and to learn the meaning of their messages hidden in plain sight.

My thoughts....

There are so many interesting facts and so much information about how languages and writing styles came and went, and I would have enjoyed this much more if there had been lecture handouts with graphs and images, but still all in all a great course/lecture.

The one thing that shocked me was learning that The Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy proposed in 2009, and now adopted by 45 of the United States, does not mandate cursive instruction. Only keyboarding is required.

So, what happens when/if there's a time, generations from now, when something happens - like a solar flare - that shuts down electrical grids and there are no keyboards to type on? How will people communicate? Also, think about what that means. Cursive is a dying art form, and someday your grand-kids will be asking you to show them what writing looks like.

[Elentarri · Rating 2 out of 5]

These 24 lectures on the origins and development of different types of writing throughout the world were entertaining, if fairly detailed, and sometimes repetitive.  Zender makes for a pretty decent lecturer and his enthusiasm for the subject is contagious.  The lectures start with identifying what writing actually is, how it developed in various regions, what it was used for, the various types of writing systems (e.g. abjad, abugida, phonetic, logosyllabic etc), then moves on to the decipherment of ancient scripts, making use of numerous examples like the Phoenician and Latin alphabets, Germanic runes, the independent invention of writing in China and its adoption and elaboration in Japan, ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, Old Persian cuneiform, Mycenaean Linear B, Mayan script, Aztec hieroglyphs, also the currently indecipherable Etruscan and Meroïtic, and invented languages like Tengwar and Hangul (the official writing system throughout Korea).  This is a very in depth collection of lessons on how ancient languages developed and are deciphered, rather than a popular history perspective on the interdependence on writing and civilization. I learned a whole lot of very interesting things, now I just have to remember them!

[Chelsea · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a well-organized audiobook from the "Great Courses" series. Zender doesn't speak in a monotone, tells a few jokes, and includes relevant references to today's society. However, I will admit that I zoned out a good bit, particular when he was talking about how specific letters in a particular language evolved over time... There was some information that seemed too specific. But in general it was an interesting listen.

[Caroline · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good lecturer. He provides great clarity in explaining technical terms and applying them to a variety of ancient and modern writing systems. Engaging and well paced.

[Cait Koffarnus · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book (a set of lectures) is very specialized, likely master’s level or above. This is not a passing lesson on writing; it is the history of the forefathers of linguistics who created the keys for deciphering written language. It goes into incredible depth, and has an astounding amount of detail.

[Magen - Inquiring Professional Dog Trainer · Rating 3 out of 5]

This course is well done and engaging. The title is a bit misleading as this is much more of a discussion on how ancient languages are deciphered than how writing and civilization interact.

[Rebecka · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply very interesting. This is really a book for anyone, no prior linguistic knowledge is necessary, and the lectures are hold in a very calm, pedagogic way. I wish I had it as an actual book though, so that I could go back and refresh my memory on many of the details mentioned, and of course, in order to be able to actually see the scripts.

[Joseph VanBuren · Rating 5 out of 5]

A detailed and informative exploration of the history of writing and its impact on human civilizations for thousands of years. This is a fascinating subject, and Marc Zender does an excellent job of presenting it in an educational and occasionally funny way. The technical aspects of deciphering ancient writing were at times a bit over my head, but overall the lectures were still easy to follow. So I would say this Great Course is perfect for both subject matter experts and laymen like me who are just curious about this thing we humans do called writing.

[Travis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very interesting and informative course. There were parts that I was familiar with before, but there was also a lot that was new. I appreciate Egyptian hieroglyphs a bit more, and also understand the decipherment of cuneiform writing much better than I did before. I also had not known that the Aztecs had a writing system (and I have coincidentally been reading a book on the Aztecs recently). On the one hand, this makes sense given the painted codices they produced (why have such technology if it only recorded pictures that vaguely suggested information), but on the other the writing is so strongly pictorial and evidently used so much abbreviation that I remain a bit skeptical and want more information than can be conveyed in a single half-hour lecture on the topic.

In some situations, I would have liked more visual examples of explanation, though this was generally a strong point of the series. Mostly an issue in the lecture on featural scripts: for example, there are no Tengwar shown, though I think this is sadly because of copyright issues, and I'm already familiar enough with the script that I could appreciate the points raised in the lecture even without visuals. I also think there are other scripts that it would have been interesting to learn about, such as Sanskrit or other South Asian scripts; I think there is a brief mention that Sanskrit also derived ultimately from the Phoenician abjad, or something related to it, but I would like to see that explored in more detail.

[David Pulliam · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am not sure why I listened to this lecture series. One really good lecture was on the future of writing. Zender is candid in his belief that the written text (the printing press) as we know it will go the way of the dodo because it has been around for a short 500 years so we shouldn't expect it to last long. He also believes that the written word will continue though it may evolve into a more ideographic form so people can read faster.

[Emily · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm sure this was more interesting if you watched the video, but listening to a lecture series that was constantly about what you could SEE in the writing and letters and cuneiform was pretty taxing after a while. Just didn't get much out of it and stopped two-thirds of the way through.

[Christine · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a top tier listen, definitely in my top five if not top three Great Courses I've consumed.
It has great structure and a compelling story frame and is full of neat factoids and revelations I've never learned before!

[Helen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an interesting lecture-plus-book Great Course! The author had a definite Canadian accent (boh-rowed), and a few sections were difficult to understand. Overall, I learned a great deal and loved the photo slides added.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

The topic drove my interest, so I stuck out the entire book, in audiobook tormat... though I also checked illustrations in the ebook version. Zender came off as a total nerd wonk, but was bearable. He totally ignored lots of other script types from SEA.

[Mimi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought it was about writing... but it's about the making of letters... Surprisingly informative.

[Joshua Dew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quality lectures. However, in audiobook format, I felt like I missed out on a lot of the written visuals that would have greatly aided my comprehension. Still enjoyable and informative.

[Kylie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was expecting a history/literary series of lectures but this is from the linguistic/epigraphic domain, nonetheless a very interesting series on the topic of writing.

[Rob Jacobs · Rating 4 out of 5]

For audio listeners. Missed out on the images.

[sch · Rating 4 out of 5]

2016 Jul. Fascinating, but overloaded with information. The accompanying booklet is more essential to the lectures than in many of the Great Courses I've listened to; unfortunately, they lack images of most of the scripts discussed by the lecturer.

He recommends John McWhorter's Great Course, "The Story of Human Language." I'll try that one, too.

[Laurel]

It took me a little over a year to finish this 12 hour lecture series. I'm fascinated by linguistics and the history of language/ writing, and I have enjoyed several other lectures on the topic in the past, but this one was a real slog for me to get through.

[Abdullah Konash · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sadly, I couldn't completely understand this material due to the lack of knowledge in the languages the book is talking about. Since this is an audio form, there was no way for me to imagine the language he was speaking about which made me disconnect from the topic and made it hard to follow.

[Sally · Rating 3 out of 5]

The lectures cover a variety of alphabets and the principles of writing and decipherment.

[Alexandria · Rating 4 out of 5]

* A note: I think this series is probably worth 5 stars in video format, but a lot of the reference material is lost in the audio version, hence the 4 stars.