FROM NOTCHES TO ALPHABET: TRACING THE EVOLUTION AND DEVELOPMENT OF SCRIPTS FROM ANCIENT TO MODERN WORLD

Abstract

Human association that is societies necessitate communication and language is the elemental means of human communication. In primitive times, communication was generally done through oral means restricted by space and time. Writing surpassed these limitations, allowing man to raise civilization. Writing began at first in the form of noticeable signs or pictures understandable to men. And now it has emerged in various ways: in science it is a scholarly tool, in literature it is a cultural channel and in art it is a form in itself. This preliminary investigation of history of writing is intended to provide background knowledge on the evolution of text as an art element. The present research aspires to investigate the evolution and advancement of scripts from ancient times to the emergence of alphabets. It provides the genesis, forms, objectives and sequential changes of the world’s major scripts. In the first section, what constitutes ‘complete writing’ has been defined with the assistance of scholarly theories. A brief insight of pictography and logography as prewriting has also been observed. Further in the second section the advancements in pictorial writing to phonetic writing is outlined. The third section traces the stories of Indian scripts and their development over the centuries. The study is based on qualitative research method acquiring data from museums, secondary sources and documentations. The research thus is an attempt to explore the value and objectivity of text used as a visual communication element. Eventually the study provides visualization of scripts in the form of notches, tallies, pictographs, graphic symbols and complete alphabets.