Chapter 2: How the Brain Adapted Itself to Read: The First Writing Systems

The invention of writing, which occurred independently in distant parts of the word at many times, even occasionally in the modern era, must rank among mankind’s highest intellectual achievements.  Without writing, human culture as we know it today is inconceivable.

-O. Tzeng and W. Wang

               When I first began reading Maryanne Wolf’s study on how the brain learns to read, or how it doesn’t, I was shocked at how wrong my preconceived notions about reading were.  I always believed that everyone was born with the ability to read at some level.  For those students, and adults, who have difficulties reading, there was a ‘misfire’ occurring somewhere that prevented successful manipulations of text.  However, Wolf presents and explains in great detail about how the human brain is not built to read.  Over time, humans have developed systems that allowed for such connections to occur.  In Chapter two, Wolf presents the earliest known writing systems that started this process in motion.

               Maryanne Wolf explains that writing began with three breakthroughs in early cultures.  First, a new form of symbolic representation was created, more so than drawings on the wall of a cave.  An example of this was an Incan Quipu, a series of ‘talking knots’.  These knots can represent either something concrete things in the world around them such as goods to be traded, or something abstract as a number.  The second breakthrough was that these symbols can be used to communicate an idea.  The third breakthrough did not happen in all cultures, but was certainly one of the most profound human developments was sound-symbol correspondences.  Wolf describes this stunning realization that, “all words are composed of tiny individual sounds and that symbols can physically signify each of these sounds for every word…” was truly the beginning of written language in the culture of human beings.

               To revisit the first breakthrough, symbolic representation, was the first to emerge.  When a symbol is given meaning, our brain connects visual areas to both the language system and the conceptual systems in the brain.  This symbolization,” exploits and expands our capacity for specialization and our capacity for making new connections among association areas.”  As Wolf explains, these associations are what separate us from other primates.

               The earliest known use of the second breakthrough, symbols used for communicating, can be found in Sumerian cuneiform.  Cuneiform refers to the wedge-like appearance of early script that was likely etched using a nail, hence the name ‘cuneiform’, which is derived from the Latin word cuneus, or ‘nail’.  The early characters were easily recognized by the visual system, and required only a further match to a name in spoken language.  In creating such a system, the Sumerians created a logographic writing system where the symbols stood for concepts in the language rather than sounds within the words.

An example of Sumerian Cuneiform 

               At this point in the text, Wolf departs from discussing how the brain reads to discuss how the early Sumerians instructed their youth to read.  Novice readers learned lists of words based on one of several particular linguistic principles.  Some groups were meaning based, and some lists shared similar pronunciations.  Requiring the students to learn semantically and phonetically related words, helped them recall the words more efficiently, increased their vocabulary, and increased conceptual knowledge.  Thousands of years before Gee expressed his theory of explicit instruction among Discourses, the Sumerians saw the importance of providing explicit instruction in more than one aspect of writing and reading.  What I found interesting and of value in this portion of the text is that today, in the 21^st century, educators are still debating what is more important, phonics or meaning, and the Sumerians were incorporating both in their instruction thousands of years ago!

               The Sumerian writing system was so valuable an effective that fifteen peoples, including the early Persians and Hittites adopted their cuneiform, long after the language disappeared, roughly around 600 BCE.  Though influential and one of the earliest, Sumerian may not be the ‘first’.  It is heavily debated among scholars that the Egyptian Hieroglyphic Writing may have come earlier.

               Similar to the Sumerian system, the Egyptian Hieroglyphic system, over time, employed a rebus principle, where a symbol represents not its meaning by rather its sounds.  In doing so, the Egyptians essentially discovered the phoneme.  This new group of symbols would become the third cognitive breakthrough, which is discussed in greater detail in chapter 3.

               Through both systems described above, the human brain began evolving, making connections with symbols and language.  These connections have set the stage for the brain to decode, find meaning and truly read.  In the next blog entry, I will discuss chapter 3 where Wolf elaborates on the third breakthrough, sound-symbol correspondences, through alphabetic principles.

Until next time…