We take it for granted that we can communicate with each other by means of the written
word or in pictures, but how did this ability originate in humans? How did we first
realise we could make marks that others would recognise as representations of things
in our world? How did we arrive at being able to draw, and write, and eventually
to leave records of our existence for others to see and understand?
Perhaps the answer lies in the present rather than the past. We might go some way
towards answering this question by drawing a parallel between the development of
children, and how they learn the significance of signs and symbols, and the development
of early human beings in general. Without delving too deeply into the psychological
aspects of human development it is interesting to note that children will learn to
draw, eventually, without being taught.
Given a stick or pencil, a child will begin scribbling with it at about the age of
one-and-a-half. At first there is possibly only the satisfaction of the action itself,
and the visual pleasure of the marks they make, that stimulates the child to continue
the actions. By about the age of three a child will be drawing clear representations
of things in his/her world.
The images are not works of art but eventually the child recognises things in them
and, importantly, recognises that he/she can consciously make shapes that will represent
things in the world around them and be recognised by others. He or she discovers,
along with speech and the many gestures we make facially and bodily, that they have
another means of communicating with the world.
It is tempting to assume that early humans started out in a similar way, but that
something in the perceptual nature of our species set us apart from others in realising
the value of this tool as a means of communication. Chimps can make marks in the
dirt with a stick but they don’t write to each other or draw each other pictures.
A SHORT HISTORY OF WRITING - Writing as Communication
