Language is the most important development in human history, distinguishing humans from other species through an advanced capacity for symbolic communication and abstraction. While languages evolve over time, becoming influenced by other languages and developments like printing, the earliest forms of writing like Sumerian cuneiform began as pictographs inscribed on clay tablets over 5,000 years ago to keep records, with other early scripts including Egyptian hieroglyphics and ancient Chinese characters.

1. Language and Writing From Orality to Literacy

2. Language humans are distinguished as a species by their advanced capacity to use language language is the means for connecting the internal world of the organism to the external world of natural and social phenomena

4. Language is the most important development in the history of humankind. Other animals have forms of communication. Higher order mammals even display signs of symbolic communication. No other species has the advanced capacity for language and the ability to utilize abstraction to convey internal consciousness, natural phenomena and time.

7. Languages are not static--they evolve over time Old English - Largely Germanic Middle English - Fusion with French Elizabethan English - Development of Print, Empire Modern English -Still evolving, but with a standardization of grammar and vocabulary

8. History of Writing Approximately 5000 years old Earliest example is Cuneiform

9. Cuneiform Created by the Sumerians in Mesopotamia Likely began as pictographs that became abstracted into symbols Drawn on Clay tablets with a stylus Used for keeping records

12. Egyptian Hieroglyphics

13. Indus Valley Seal

14. Ancient Chinese Script