Man and his records

Front matter

FT MEADE GenCol1

.1

UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME

Contents

How People First Learned to Write 11

Why do people write? How many letters are there in our alphabet? What did the alphabet do for us? From where does our alphabet come?

Why did early man draw pictures? What did he draw pictures of? With what did they draw?

Chapter I

W HAT a strange world this would be if nobody knew how to write! For then we should have nothing to read. We could not have any books, because men had to learn how to write before they could learn how to print. There would be no newspapers to tell us what is happening every day all over the world. We could not even exchange letters with our friends. We could not know anything except what we heard with our own ears. It would be hard for people to earn their living, because there would be no books to tell them how to do all sorts of things. People would have to live almost like animals.

We are so used to reading and writing, and to seeing newspapers, magazines, and books

Why do people write?

Why does writing seem wonderful to savages?

everywhere we go, that we can hardly realize that there once was a time when nobody could read or write. Even today, in out-of-the-way parts of the world, there are some tribes of peo¬ ple that are like that. When they first meet people who can read and write, they are so surprised and puzzled that they think such people must be magicians.

A man named John Williams, who lived among the tribes in the South Sea Islands many years ago, tells us a story that shows what a wonderful thing writing seems to people who never heard of it before. One day he was building a little house in another part of the island where he lived. He found that he had forgotten one of his tools. So he took a bit of black charcoal and a smooth, thin piece of white wood. With the charcoal he wrote on the wood a message to his wife, asking her to give this tool to the man who delivered the message. Then he handed the piece of wood to one of the natives of the island and told him where to take it. The native ran all the way, holding the piece of wood tightly clasped in his hand.

When he arrived at the white man’s house, he gave the piece of wood to Mrs. Williams. After looking at it a moment, she went and found the tool, which she gave to the man to take back to her husband. This man was never so surprised before in his life. He thought that the piece of wood could talk, although it did not have any mouth. He was sure that there must be wonderful magic in such a piece of wood. So he tied it to a piece of string, and ever afterwards he wore it around his neck. He thought it would bring him good luck.

Another story, very much like this one, is told by people who lived in Africa. A native was given a letter to deliver to a certain white man many miles away. It was a hot day, the messenger was lazy, and he decided to take a nap while he was on his way. So he picked out a nice shady spot by the roadside where

How many letters are in our alphabet?

How did the first people write?

he could lie down and sleep. But first he took care to hide the letter under a big stone. He was afraid that the letter would see what he was doing and tell all about it to the man to whom he was carrying it, and that then he might be punished for being so lazy.

Writing seems very easy to us, because we have an alphabet of twenty-six letters, and by putting those few letters together in different ways we can write any word we want to, and nobody will mistake that word for any other word. So when we speak of something that is very easy, we say it is as easy as A, B, C.

But people did not learn to make an alphabet until thousands of years after they had been trying to write in more cumbersome ways, mostly by means of pictures. Even today there are millions of people in China who manage to write without an alphabet. A real alphabet was invented only once, nearly four thousand years ago, and all the alphabets in the world today that are used for ordinary writing have

HOW PEOPLE FIRST BEGAN TO WRITE IS come down from that earliest alphabet. And the invention of that first alphabet was almost an accident, as we shall see later on.

Such a simple thing—and almost an accident! Yet if the alphabet had not been invented the history of the world after that would have been quite different. For the alphabet made the people of Europe go forward much faster, in mastering the earth, than they would have gone without it. Countries whose people had no alphabet did not go ahead nearly so fast as the countries that had an alphabet. If Europe had never had an alphabet, we may be very sure that America would not have been discovered by Columbus, and that we would not have so many things to make life worth while today.

Another thing that is very interesting is that this alphabet, which all of us use every day, and by means of which millions of copies of books and newspapers are constantly being printed, has come down to us, almost as it is now, from the Romans, who lived about 2,000

What did the alphabet do for us?

From where does our alphabet come?

Did other ancient peoples have alphabets?

years ago. It is hard to think of anything else we use in our daily lives that goes back with so very little change to the days of ancient Rome. If Julius Caesar, a great Roman who lived be¬ fore the time of Christ, could come back to life today and pick up an American newspaper, he would know nearly every one of the letters in the headlines on the front page. Even more ancient peoples than the Romans would find many of the letters of our alphabet very much like certain letters in their alphabets. For our alphabet had its beginning among a people known as the Phoenicians. They were famous traders and merchants who lived in a country on the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea.

The alphabet, although it is so simple and easy to write, is really one of the most won¬ derful things in the world. We seldom stop to think of all the things that we can do with the alphabet. With those twenty-six little letters we can write any word that ever was spoken in any language in the world—and millions upon millions more. There are so many different ways you can arrange those letters that if you kept writing them down all your life you would not reach the end.

Now we want to see how it happened, thou¬ sands of years ago, that people invented this wonderful thing we call an alphabet. The word alphabet, by the way, simply means A, B. The names of these two letters in the ancient Greek language were Alpha and Beta. Put these two names together, cut off the last letter; then we have the word alphabet.

To find out how we got the alphabet, we must first go back many thousands of years to the time when men were just beginning to make life safer and more comfortable.

But how did anyone ever think of trying to write for the first time? In the beginning, when no man could write, no one could teach writing to anybody else. No one had ever even heard of such a thing as writing.

Well, back in the days when men lived in

With twenty-six letters we can write any word

Which Gree\ letters spell “alphabet?”

Why did early man draw pictures?

caves and wore the skins of wild animals for clothing, there were three things that men could do; three things which no other creature had ever thought of doing. First, they could build fires; second, they could make tools; and, third, they could draw pictures. They really did not need to draw pictures, although they did need to build fires and to make tools. But they liked to draw pictures, just as little children today do. It is a sort of instinct, something a person ddes because he wants to, and not just because he has been told to do that thing. It is a part of the instinct of imitation; that is, to copy things in the world about us. Animals such as monkeys like to imitate acts that they see being done, but no animal can draw pic¬ tures of acts or things.

If we go into very old caves in France and Spain we find painted on the walls, pictures of the animals that the men who lived there many thousands of years ago, in the time known as the Stone Age, used to hunt. There are pictures of bison, deer, mammoths (great animals much like elephants), and other animals, as lifelike as if someone had just painted them.

We also find scratched on pieces of bone, little engravings of various animals and of the men who hunted them.

In Australia and in South Africa to this day there are tribes of people who live much the same kind of lives as did those men of the Stone Age in Europe. These people, too, like to paint pictures on the rocks, although they can¬ not read or write or do hardly anything else that civilized people can do.

Why did these people who lived in caves, What did people so many thousands of years ago, want to draw draw P‘ ctures °f ? pictures of the animals they hunted? As we have seen, they made pictures by instinct; that is, they simply wished to do so. Perhaps it was because someone in the tribe liked to draw, or because they liked such pictures on the walls of their caves. Or again, perhaps one day one of the hunters had killed a great animal which

Did the pictures

mean anything?

was a little larger than any they had ever brought into the cave before. Then it would only be natural that they would want to keep the memory of such an animal and of such an event. So someone would draw a picture of the animal on the wall of the cave.

Perhaps some day the tribe would hold a big hunt. Maybe they found a herd of mam¬ moths or of bison, and the men had to fight with their clubs, their bows and arrows, and their axes as they never fought before. Some of the men perhaps had narrow escapes from being killed when the angry animals rushed at them. But the mammoths or the bison finally were all killed, and the men with their wives and children had a big feast, with much shout¬ ing and singing. It was one of the most famous events in the history of the tribe—a day that everybody wanted to remember.

But how could they keep the story of the great hunt always in their memories when they had so many other things to remember?

Some of the men had narrow escapes from being filled by wild animals

They must have something to remind them of that famous day. A picture of the hunt would do just that. So the man in the tribe who could draw the best would be asked to make a pic¬ ture of the great hunt, perhaps on the smooth side of a stone cliff. He might have other men helping him on the job. They would mix some paint out of colored clay, or make a rude crayon out of a piece of charcoal. Then they would sketch the picture on the rock.

So they now had a picture that would prob¬ ably last for many years. It was a story with¬ out words, that would always remind the tribe of that glorious day when they hunted the great herd of mammoths or of bison. When the people of the tribe looked at that picture, it would be almost as if they were reading in a book what happened on that day. In the same way, when we look at a famous painting today, like the one showing George Washing¬ ton crossing the Delaware River, we feel that the painting is telling us a story.

They would mix some paint out of colored clay, or draw with charcoal

With what did they draw?

Did the early men \eep other records?

But pictures were not the only things that early men depended upon to keep their mem¬ ories fresh. There was another way they had of refreshing their memories. They used this more in the way that we use numbers. It was a kind of arithmetic. They might want to remember how many men had been killed in a certain battle, or how many animals had been slain in a great hunt, or how many furs the tribe had on hand for trading. They could keep records like this by tying the right num¬ ber of knots in a piece of string, or by making the right number of notches in a piece of wood or nicks in a stone. Sometimes nowadays a person will tie a knot in a handkerchief or fasten a piece of string around his finger to remind him to do something.

But making records in that way was not a step on the road to real writing. The trouble was that it was so easy to forget what the knots or the notches or the nicks really meant, after a long time had passed. In fact, nobody except the man who made them might ever know what they meant. But usually everybody could see what a picture meant, even a long time after.

So for thousands of years men kept drawing What drawbacks pictures to remind them of important things that they wanted to remember, or that they wanted their children and grandchildren to know about. Now as long as the pictures were very simple ones, it was easy to see what they meant. But when people began to get more civilized, it was not so easy to put into pictures everything that they wanted to remember.

They wanted to remember thoughts as well as things. There was a great chance they might make a mistake when they tried to put thoughts into pictures. Then, too, even the most care¬ fully drawn picture might tell one story to one man and another story to another man.

In fact, it was sometimes very hard to draw a picture of some actual person or thing so that everybody would know what was meant.

Take, for instance, the word enemy . Now

How did the American Indians write?

Were their

methods

successful?

an enemy is usually a man, but a certain kind of man. And, of course, it was quite a prob¬ lem to draw a picture that would stand for a thought or an idea, such as “eating.”

Let us see how such problems were solved. The American Indians used to do a lot of writ¬ ing by means of pictures. When an Indian drew a picture of an arrow, it meant an enemy, because an enemy was a person who shot an arrow at you. When he drew a picture of a piece of corn-cake in a man’s mouth, that meant eating. So these particular drawings were not just pictures. They stood for some¬ thing else than the actual things of which they were pictures. They were idea-signs. Of course, everybody had to agree that those pic¬ tures should be read in just that way. That was how people first began to learn to read.

But there was still no way of drawing some¬ thing that would stand for just a sound. How in the world could a picture be made to mean a certain sound? And yet, there were some

The American Indians wrote in a picture language on their tepees and wigwams

Do two different words ever have the same sound?

Was the game of rebus valuable to us?

words that it was very hard to write, even by means of the pictures that we call idea-signs. Among these would be words like I and you, soft, hard, loud, good, bad, and so on.

Now it happens in all languages that two different words will have the same sound. In English we have eye and I, yew and you, and many others.

Did you ever play the game of rebus? In that game we make a picture of a certain thing stand for the sound of another word. We can write / by drawing a picture of a per¬ son’s eye. We can even write a whole sentence, like / see you, by means of three pictures: an eye, a large body of water, and a yew tree.

We think of that sort of thing as a kind of joke, and that is probably how this scheme first began to be used by people who were trying to find a better way to write. But it was a very important step on the road that led to the invention of the alphabet; that is, certain signs which stood only for sounds, the same sign meaning the same sound—a consonant or a vowel—when used in all sorts of different words. First, a certain sign would stand for the sound of a whole word or a part of a word, called a syllable, but finally it came to stand for just the first sound in a word, such as b in box. Then that sign could be used in spelling any other word that began with b or that had b anywhere in it, and there would be other signs for the other sounds.

So we see there were four steps leading up to the alphabet. First, there was a picture of a thing itself, such as a horse or an elephant. Second, there was a picture that stood for some¬ thing else, such as an arrow for an enemy. Third, there was a sign that stood for the sound of a whole word, which might be a very long word, or for a part of a word, called a syllable. Fourth, there was a sign that stood for just a single sound, like d, l, r, a, or u . If you had enough of the signs of this last kind, you could write any word you wanted to, very

How many steps led to our present alphabet?

Why was not the alphabet invented sooner?

quickly and easily, and everybody could read it quickly and easily, and would know from the sound just what word it was.

After the first three steps were taken, it would seem to us as if people would just naturally take the fourth step without any waiting, and throw away picture writing altogether. How much easier and pleasanter it would be to use just these little sound-signs, called letters.

But, strange as it may seem, some of the greatest peoples in ancient times, though they came close to using an alphabet, never could free themselves altogether from the old pic¬ ture writing. They had become so used to writing by means of picture-signs, idea-signs, and sound-signs, all mixed up together, that they could not forget the habit and begin using an alphabet instead. So they went on writing in that way until long after the alphabet had been worked out by a people who were looking for a quick and easy way of writing.

Chapter II THE WRITING OF THE AMERICAN INDIANS

W RITING by means of pictures has been tried by almost all peoples and in all parts of the world at one time or another. Peo¬ ple living thousands of miles away from each other, in different parts of the earth, have tried to write that way. The American Indians were very skillful in this kind of writing. We can still see many of their picture writings on large rocks in various parts of the country.

On a large surface of rock along the shores of Lake Superior there is a very famous Indian picture. It tells the story of a journey across the lake by a party of Indians led by a chief named The Wolf. The chief is shown by a picture of him, riding on a horse. Then there are five canoes, and the number of men in each

How many nations tried to write by drawing pictures?

How did the Indians use nature signs?

canoe—there are fifty-one men in all—is shown by a line of little straight marks on each canoe. There was another chief in the party, a friend of The Wolf. He was named The Kingfisher. The kingfisher is a kind of bird, and this chief is represented by a picture of that bird.

The number of days that the journey took is made plain by the drawing of three arches and three disks under them. That means that the sun crossed the sky three times while the men were on their journey. Then there is a picture of a turtle, a land animal. This means that the party landed safely at the end of the journey. The story is told, you see, partly by actual pictures of things, such as the canoes, and partly by idea-signs, like the turtle, which does not mean a turtle but means land.

Many of the Indian tribes had a curious sort of picture writing, in which the pictures were not drawn or painted but were worked out in shell beads fastened on a belt. These wampum belts, as they were called, were made of bark,

ST he story was told in drawings

WRITING OF THE AMERICAN INDIANS 31 hemp, or strips of deerskin sewn together with sinews or hemp fibers. On these belts the In¬ dians stitched beads of shell in various patterns so as to make pictures or designs. There were black beads, dark purple beads, and white beads. The white beads were the ordinary wampum, while the dark beads were worth twice as much.

Wampum belts were used as records of im¬ portant events. A certain wampum belt might tell about a treaty between one tribe and an¬ other, or between the Indians and the white men. A wampum belt might even be a record of the boundaries of a piece of land, or it might be a claim to ownership of the thing pictured.

Then, too, wampum belts were used very frequently as money, like our bank-notes and dollar bills, which also have pictures and de¬ signs on them. Wampum was known as shell money. A great deal of this sort of money was used in trading among the Indians as well as between the Indians and the white people.

There are very few of these wampum -n

Wampum belts were used as records of important events

How were wampum belts used?

Where is a famous wampum belt today?

left now. But sometimes you can see one of them in a museum. In the city of Philadelphia there is kept a very famous wampum belt. It is so interesting that we must look at it and find out what it has to tell us. It was given by the Iroquois Indians to the good Quaker, William Penn, who founded the colony of Pennsylvania, which is now one of our great states. This wampum belt was meant as a record of the friendship between the Indians and William Penn. On this belt there are eighteen strings of white wampum. In the center there are pictures, made of dark beads, of two men with their hands clasped. One is an Indian and the other is a white man. We know which is the white man, because he wears a hat; the Indians did not wear hats. Then there are three slant¬ ing bands across the belt. They represent the rafters of the Indians’ “long house,” the cen¬ ter of tribal life, and they mean the league of Iroquois tribes.

By means of their pictures and idea-signs the

WRITING OF THE AMERICAN INDIANS 33

Indians could write letters to each other. They used strips of birch-bark for paper.

Another use that the Indians had for writing was to make a record of their songs. They did this by drawing on a piece of birch-bark a series of pictures which would remind the singer of the things mentioned in the song, the pictures being arranged in the right order.

Besides this picture writing, the Indians also knew how to keep accounts by tying knots in cords and cutting notches in sticks. In that way they could keep track of the number of days a party spent in traveling, and make rec¬ ords of how much one person owed another.

The Peruvian Indians in South America also used knotted cords a great deal. Such a cord was called a quipu. There was a main cord; on this main cord there were fastened, at certain distances apart, thinner cords of dif¬ ferent colors, knotted in all sorts of ways. Each color stood for something different. For instance, red meant soldiers, yellow meant gold,

How was cord used to \eep records?

• 34

Were they satisfactory?

Who were the Mayas?

white meant silver, and green meant corn. A single knot stood for io, two single knots stood for 20, a double knot stood for ioo, and two double knots stood for 200.

The Peruvians actually used these quipus for ordinary writing. The government de¬ pended upon them for recording the laws and for sending messages from one part of the Inca Empire to another. The story of a man’s life would be recorded on a quipu, and when he died, the quipu would be buried with him. But it was very hard for most people to read the meaning of a quipu. Quipus were useful for keeping account of sums, but they were a very poor way of trying to write. It was necessary to have a special class of men, trained for the job, to make the important quipus and to tell what they meant after they were made.

In Central America and in Mexico there lived two other Indian peoples who had gone a long way toward civilization. They were the Mayas and the Aztecs. They had a very fine system

WRITING OF THE AMERICAN INDIANS 35'

of picture writing. They had actually reached the point, like the Egyptians and some other peoples of the Old World, where they had signs standing for sounds. They came very close to inventing an alphabet. But they never did so.

These people used to write in bright colors with a feather pencil. They had a sort of paper made from the leaves of the maguey , plant. They used this paper for common writ- • ing. But for more important records they used cleaned and polished skins. They also carved inscriptions on the walls of their temples. Only ruins are left of their temples, and most of their books were destroyed by the Spaniards.

But there are some Aztec-Maya T>ooks still left. They tell us about such things as the history of the people, their religion, and the bringing up of children. They are written partly in picture-signs, partly in idea-signs, and partly in sound-signs. The sound-signs stand for parts of words, which we call syllables.

They carved in¬ scriptions on the walls of their temples

How did they write?

Chapter III Did the Chinese invent a way to write?

THE CHINESE WAY OF WRITING HINA is a large country and a very old country. Hundreds of millions of people live there. Many centuries ago they invented a kind of writing. It is one they still use, for the Chinese people were cut off from the rest of the world for a very long time, and besides, they like to do things just as their forefathers did. When they finally learned about the alphabet from other people, they were so used to writing in the old way that they could not change.

Probably the very first way that the Chinese had of keeping records was by means of knotted cords like those used by the Peruvians. They also made notches in wooden or bamboo sticks, and they made nicks in stones. But they soon went on to picture writing.

At first, they made real pictures of such things

Did the Chinese invent a way to write?

THE CHINESE WAY OF WRITING as the sun, a fish, a horse, and a man. But the Chinese were becoming a very civilized people and they had many books to write. So they had to make the pictures more quickly, and then the pictures did not look so much like the real things. A little circle with a dot in it meant the sun; three sharp points meant mountains; a round hole meant the mouth; a stem with five branches meant the hand.

In order to make signs for things that could not be shown by a single picture, two pictures would be joined together. The sun and the moon together meant bright; two hands, joined, meant friendship; a woman under a roof meant peace; an eye and water meant tears. In the same way, an ear between two doors meant the verb to listen .

But even this arrangement did not make it possible to write every word so that its mean¬ ing would be perfectly clear. It happens that in the Chinese language the same word may mean many different things. You tell which