Ap World History Writing Research

“You cannot open a book without learning something.” This quote by Confucius means that writing is very powerful in education and teaching a lesson. Writing is important to history because it can be used to educate people, keep record of history and it led to many more important inventions in history.

A First reason that writing is an important part of history is because it is used to educate people and allowed for faster communication. One Quote that is an example of how writing has impacted history is, “The Samaritans first created writing for long distance communication and trade” (1). In order for the Samaritans to communicate with the people they traded with, they wrote down what they had and costs. A website with information on cuneiform

The quote, “When ancient Mesopotamians started settling down onto farms surrounding the first cities, life became a bit more complicated. Agriculture required expertise and detailed record keeping, two elements that led directly to the invention of writing, historians say” (2), shows the importance of writing to recording history. Also, it passed on information from ancestors that could help prevent past mistakes. With this development in writing laws could be made, which allowed for a government to be formed to rule over the civilization. Another quote says, “Writing gradually evolved with the increasingly complex society that started to develop with agriculture” (4). In order to keep up with all the evolving economies, agriculture and civilizations, writing was created but first as drawings of symbols and later evolved into pictures of sounds. By writing down what was used for farming and trade it helped keep the civilization growing, because it carries a reliable record of the human race from generation to generation. “The first examples of writing were pictograms used by temple officials to keep track of the inflows and outflows of the city's grain and animal stores” (2). Through being able to track and record supplies and the amount of grain, civilizations could figure out what season benefited the crop the most and continue to farm with

Some of the inventions inspired from the first forms of writing are paper, ink, writing utensils and the printing press. The invention of the printing press created a mass productions of books, like the bible, which allowed people to read and analyze their religion for themselves. In a document comparing the printing press from yesterday and today it says “A skilled compositor could assemble 2,000 characters or letters in an hour” (3). Now a days this is slow compared to how fast computers can print, but back then if there were multiple copies of a book that meant someone hand wrote every word. Another document states “The complex tokens used to denote manufactured goods were drawn on the clay tablets with a blunt reed called a stylus” (7). The invention of the stylus later evolved into the pencil and pen. The stylus was used to write in parchment or papyrus which was a paper like material invented by the Ancient Egyptians, made from woven papyrus plants. Though it could be made differently like the document History of Case Paper states, “Further north, parchment or vellum, made of processed sheepskin or calfskin, replaced papyrus”