The origins of writing remain a great mystery and spark one of the great scientific debates. At what point did we move from pictographic representations of reality to abstract symbols and how did this materialize in the appearance of the first letters? A team of researchers from the University of Bologna has just provided a valuable clue by discovering the relationship between the images printed by ancient cylinder seals in Mesopotamia and some of the signs of protocuneiform writing.
In a study published this Tuesday in the journal Antiquityand led by Silvia Ferrara, A series of correlations are shown between the designs engraved on these cylinders, which date back about six thousand years, and some of the signs of protocuneiform writing that emerged in the city of Uruk, located in what is now southern Iraq. around the year 3000 BC. c.
“The conceptual leap from pre-writing symbolism to writing is a significant advance in human cognitive technologies,” explains Ferrara. “The invention of writing marks the transition between prehistory and history, and the findings of this study bridge this gap by illustrating how some late prehistoric images were incorporated into one of the first invented writing systems.”
Uruk, one of the first cities to emerge in Mesopotamia, was an immensely important center during the 4th millennium BC. C. In this region, cylindrical seals were created, generally made of stone and engraved with a series of designs that were laminated onto clay tablets, leaving a stamped impression of the design, which were used as part of an accounting system. A little later, protocuneiform writing appeared, a form of archaic writing composed of hundreds of pictographic signs, more than half of which remain undeciphered.
In search of correlations
“The close relationship between ancient seals and the invention of writing in Southwest Asia has long been recognized, but the relationship between specific seal images and sign forms has barely been explored,” Ferrara maintains. “This was our initial question: did seal imagery contribute significantly to the invention of signs in early writing in the region?”
To find an answer, researchers systematically compared cylinder designs with protocuneiform signs, looking for correlations that could reveal direct relationships in both graphic form and meaning.
“We focused on seal images that originated before the invention of writing, but continued to develop in the proto-literary period,” add Kathryn Kelley and Mattia Cartolano, both researchers at the University of Bologna and co-authors of the study. “This approach allowed us to identify a series of designs related to the transport of textiles and ceramics, which later evolved into the corresponding protocuneiform signs.”
“Our findings demonstrate that the drawings engraved on the cylinder seals are directly related to the development of protocuneiform writing in southern Iraq.”
Silvia Ferrara
— University of Bologna
That is why the authors conclude that this discovery reveals, for the first time, a direct link between the cylindrical seal system and the invention of writing, offering new perspectives to study the evolution of symbolic and writing systems. “Our findings demonstrate that the drawings engraved on the cylinder seals are directly related to the development of proto-cuneiform writing in southern Iraq,” defends Silvia Ferrara. “They also show how the meaning originally associated with these drawings was integrated into a writing system.”
Comparison with petroglyphs
Antonio Benítez Burraco, professor of linguistics and specialist in the origin of language, considers that the results are consistent with what we knew about the origin of cuneiform writing, which appears, for example, on objects used for counting and is based on representations of heads of cattle that were later engraved on clay with the meaning of ‘cow’.
It would be interesting to see what similarities exist between petroglyphs and the symbols used on seals, because they are still an evolution.
Antonio Benitez Burraco
— Professor of linguistics and specialist in the origin of language
“Certainly, these stamps are more abstract,” he tells elDiario.es. “At first glance, it would seem more logical to expect that the symbols would have been more concrete at the beginning and would have become more abstract over time. It could be argued that, for this reason, seals could be later (as a form of writing) than the more pictographic signs.” However, older abstract graphic representations exist everywhere, as is the case, in particular, with petroglyphs.
“I think it would be interesting to see what similarities exist between the petroglyphs and the symbols used on the seals, because these symbols are perhaps an evolution of petroglyphs or similar representations,” says Benítez Burraco. “These petroglyphs are of great interest, because they are very similar throughout the planet, which probably means that their motifs are perceptually/cognitively attractive to humans.”
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