Early Civilization and Literacy in Europe

by Harald Haarmann (Editor)

Preface; Introduction; 1. Iconography, symbolism and writing at the dawn of civilization – Old Europe from the seventh to the fourth millennia B.C.; 2. The organizing principles of Old European writing – Motivated and arbitrary symbols and their affinity with the mythical symbolism; 3. Writing from Old Europe to ancient Crete – A case of cultural continuity; 4. Literacy in ancient Crete – On the social functions of linear and hieroglyphic writing; 5. The Cretan legacy in the Writing systems in the multilingual society of ancient Cyprus; 6. The spread of European writing beyond ancient Cyprus – The influence of Aegean and Cypriot literacy in Asia Minor and the Near East; 7. On the three ways of writing the oldest literary language in the Greek; 8. The impact of Aegean culture on the western periphery – The case of the Lipari script and the role of Etruscan writing in Italy; Giving profile to a new paradigm for research into antiquity; Bibli

207 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1995

About the author

Harald Haarmann (born 1946) is a German linguist and cultural scientist who lives and works in Finland. Haarmann studied general linguistics, various philological disciplines and prehistory at the universities of Hamburg, Bonn, Coimbra and Bangor.
Haarmann is the author of more than 40 books in German, English, Spanish, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and nearly 200 articles and essays in ten languages.