Bachelor of Journalism & Mass communication, Media Evolution & Trend, Ideographic symbols to syllabic symbols

1. From ideographic symbols to syllabic symbols – (the need for people to learn their use before they could be used
for communicating)
The basic meaning of civilization is the presence of cities, and
the basic meaning of history is the presence of written records.
There can be civilization without writing (the Incas),and
perhaps writing without much in the way of cities (runes), but
the creation of writing gives to the earliest historical civilizations
a role that prior urban culture (as at Jericho) could not match.
The four earliest centers of historical civilization stretch
diagonally across south Asia into Africa. They are defined by
their writing systems. The earliest is in Sumer (or Sumeria),
where we now have evidence of a long pre-history of writing.
After early pictograms, the writing system that emerged,
cuneiform, is named after the wedge shapes that were made by
reed pens on clay tablets. This was a cumbersome and messy
medium for writing but possesses the virtue form our point of
view that burned tablets can become as durable as bricks.
The Sumerians themselves did not last long, and are no longer
distinguishable as a people after the end of the III Dynasty of
Ur, around 2000 BC. Their language has no known affinities,
though the Caucasus is still home to a similarly isolated and
unique language group. A chain of ancient non-Indo-European
and non-Semitic languages — of Elam, the Kassites,the
Hurrians, and Urartu — stretched from Sumer to the Caucasus,
but too little is known of these languages, or of the early forms
of the Caucasian ones, for certain connections to be drawn.
Sumerian civilization, however, did not die, since most of its
elements, and the cuneiform writing system itself, were adapted
to writing a Semitic language, Akkadian, whose daughters,
Babylonian and Assyrian, bore the literature of subsequent
Mesopotamian civilization, even while lovingly preserving
knowledge of Sumerian. The last cuneiform text is from 75
AD, and so this is taken as marking the end of Sumerian
civilization, even if the end of the Sumerians themselves long
antedates it.
Hard on the heels of Sumer came Egypt, with evidence of
Sumerian influence, where a new writing system, hieroglyphics,
developed — now with some evidence emerging of its
antecedents in Egypt. Of the durable systems of writing,
hieroglyphics alone retained its pictographic character,though
the Egyptians developed cursive and abbreviated forms for
more practical purposes. The Egyptians also developed a more
practical medium for writing, papyrus scrolls, though these have
the drawback,from our point of view, of easily burning and
decaying. An intact Egyptian papyrus is a prize, though these are
more common in the dry climate of Egypt than similarly
volatile media would be in the damp Ganges Valley of India.
The Egyptians themselves, and their writing, were somewhat
more durable than Sumer. The last hieroglyphic inscription was
carved in 394 AD,and the last cursive (Demotic) papyrus is
from 480 AD
The Indus Valley of India is where the next civilization
emerges,again with evidence of Sumerian influence. The Indus

2. pictographic script is not well attested and remains
undeciphered. Nor, unlike hieroglyphics and cuneiform, are
there any bilingual texts to aid in decipherment. The problem is
that the Indus Valley civilization did not survive, flourishing
only from around 2800 to 1500 (or even just from 2600 to
1900). The examples of Indus writing are brief and fragmentary.
Just what happened is still mysterious. The advent of
Indo-European steppe peoples with horses and chariots
undoubtedly had the kind of effect that is also evident in the
Middle East, where small numbers of such people established
regimes in Babylonia (the Kassite Dynasty) and Mitanni, and
the technology made a foreign regime possible in Egypt. The
Indus cities, however,now seem already declining, vulnerable,
and perhaps even abandoned, perhaps because of climatic and
hydrological changes. There is little real evidence of violent
conquest, though a similar absence is also noteworthy with
respect to the Kassite regime in Babylon, the Mitanni, or the
Hyksos in Egypt. In any case,India passed into a Dark Age and
emerged contemporaneous with the beginning of Classical
civilization in Greek, circa 800 BC.
While contact between Sumeria, Egypt, and the Indus occurred
early, the fourth centre of civilization, in China, remained relatively isolated and emerged considerably later, with the
Shang Dynasty, about the time that India has passsing temporarily
out of history. Of all the early systems of writing,
Chinese Characters,the direct descendants of Shang pictographs,
are the only one still in use today. The Indian system,
of course, ended with the Indus civilization. Cuneiform and
hieroglyphics were replaced by alphabetic scripts that developed,
perhaps under Egyptian influence, in Phoenicia and Canaan.
Indian Languages
The Indian subcontinent consists of a number of separate
linguistic communities each of which share a common language
and culture. The people of India speak many languages and
dialects which are mostly varieties of about 15 principal
languages.
Some Indian languages have a long literary history—Sanskrit
literature is more than 5,000 years old and Tamil 3,000. India
also has some languages that do not have written forms. There
are 18 officially recognized languages in India (Konkani,
Manipuri and Nepali were added in 1992) and each has produced
a literature of great vitality and richness.
Though Though distinctive in parts,all stand for a homogeneous
culture that is the essence of the great Indian literature. This is
an evolution in a land of myriad dialects. The number of people speaking each language varies greatly. For example,
Hindi
has more than 250 million speakers,but relatively few people
speak Andamanese.
Although some of the languages are called “tribal” or “aboriginal”,
their populations may be larger than those that speak
some European languages. For example, Bhili and Santali, both
tribal languages, each have more than 4 million speakers. Gondi
is spoken by nearly 2 million people. India’s schools teach 58
different languages. The nation has newspapers in 87 languages,
radio programmes in 71, and films in 15.

3. The Indian languages belong to four language families: Indo-
European, Dravidian, Mon-Khmer, and Sino-Tibetan.
Indo-European and Dravidian languages are used by a large
majority of India’s population. The language families divide
roughly into geographic groups. Languages of the Indo-
European group are spoken mainly in northern and central
regions.
The languages of southern India are mainly of the Dravidian
group. Some ethnic groups in Assam and other parts of eastern
India speak languages of the Mon-Khmer group. People in the
northern Himalayan region and near the Burmese border speak
Sino-Tibetan languages.
Speakers of 54 different languages of the Indo-European
family make up about three-quarters of India’s population.
Twenty Dravidian languages are spoken by nearly a quarter of
the people. Speakers of 20 Mon-Khmer languages and 98 Sino-
Tibetan languages together make up about 2 per cent of the
population.
References-
1. Baran and Davis; Mass Communication Theory; (2000); Thomas-Wadsworth
2. Fiske; Introduction to Communication Studies; (1982)
3. Infante, Rance and Womack; Building Communication Theory, 2nd edition; (1993);
4. Berger; Media Analysis Techniques