Name: 書き言葉の起源 (貨幣の言語: 2/16) (Origins of Written Language (Language of Coins: 2/16))
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T04:32:24.000Z
Duration: 7 min 20 s
Description: VoiceTubeの動画で発音を聞きながら英語表現を覚えよう！学べる英語：

Imagine Alice traveled back over 50,000 years

which went unchanged for thousands of years.

There was a sudden explosion of diverse cultural artifacts,

including instruments for making music, new tools,

They began to communicate using language.

So, Alice begins her search by looking for water.

She knows that human and animal populations

tend to migrate towards and along rivers,

Eventually, she comes across an interesting marking --

This marking contains very little information.

Simply that he was here, and could possibly return.

although his culture has not yet developed

the ability to read or write  in [its] native language.

At the time, the universal written language was art.

So she finds natural materials around her,

to paint him a picture, in case he returns.

about the direction she is traveling in the future.

to create pictorial representations of their reality.

found preserved deep inside Chauvet cave, in France.

Similar renderings are found in the caves of Spain as well.

A common theme among these ancient paintings

[is] animal forms, as well as the human hand --

perhaps as a signature, a story, or a ritual calling.

When Bob returns to the waterfall, he finds her painting,

though he finds a sign that she was here before.

which is half-way up the river, towards the setting sun.

He has little time to paint the picture, as night is approaching.

Therefore, he needs a fast way to visualise his message.

So he decides to use simplified pictures to represent them.

which resembles [a river's] natural form --

known as a 'pictogram' -- which is a drawing

that resembles the physical object it represents.

Pictograms are an important step in the evolution of writing.

Here is a ceremonial slate palette, found in Egypt,

of abstract concepts -- such as 'calm,' 'old,' 'dangerous' --

For this, he draws a line with a box over the middle.

or a conceptual picture of an abstract idea.

on an ancient Chinese bronze inscription.

he decides on a picture of the setting sun.

in terms of their meaning -- to create a message.

He leaves this in hope of Alice finding it.

Some of the earliest artifacts of this symbolic merging

are found in ancient Mesopotamia -- now modern Iraq --

of many of the world's earliest civilizations.

Here we find clay accounting tablets, which are some of

the oldest written documents ever found --

The rectangular tablets record the payments in cattle,

shipments of cattle to shepherds for fattening,

Notice that, instead of drawing a picture of ten sheep,

and another symbol representing 'sheep' or 'donkey,'