World History and Cultures Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

World History and Cultures - Essay ExampleWriting is one of the most important inventions mankind has devised throughout score as without it, history isnt possible. Oral traditions commit long been lauded as having certain significance in carrying forward the ideologies of a given group of people, but, as can be simply proven among even small groups, oral history is not intended to be nor can it be entirely accurate. The story changes with the teller and the facts convey blurred with myth. In addition, it can only be preserved for as long as there are people nearly interested in learning the stories and lore enough to be able to pass it down to the next generation, and a next generation interested in sitting around to hear it. The concept of the written word offers a similar mixture of truth and lies, but offers a means of preserving the history and traditions of a people.The earliest writing, the Sumarian cunei condition, is believed to have developed as a necessary means of kee ping business accounts. Some time in the late fourth millennium BC, the complexity of mess and administration in the early cities of Mesopotamia reached a point at which it outstripped the power of memory of the governing elite. To record transactions in a dependable, permanent form became essential (Robinson, 1995, p. 11). However, many scholars do not consider these early forms of pictographs true writing. Writing only started when an organized system of signs or symbols was created that could be used to intelligibly record and fix all that the writer was thinking, feeling, and qualified of expressing (Ouaknin,1999, p. 18). This definition seems too broad, though, as many poets and writers will attest that there simply arent acquirable words to express all that they are thinking, feeling and capable of expressing. This form of pictorial record-keeping did seem to have a relatively standard format among merchants and was capable of conveying at least some of the ideas of the wr iters. It can also be