136k views
15 votes
Why is it difficult to study early human societies

User Ajeh
by
4.5k points

1 Answer

8 votes

Answer:

Before the advent of writing, historians had fewer and less detailed resources to work with

Step-by-step explanation:

Writing is a system of graphic representation of a language, by means of signs drawn or engraved on a medium. In this sense, writing is a specifically human graphic way of conserving and transmitting information.

The hieroglyphic writings are the oldest of the scriptures proper (for example, the cuneiform writing was first hieroglyphic until certain hieroglyphs were attributed a phonetic value) and are observed as a transition between pictograms and ideograms. Hieroglyphic writing was abandoned in the Hellenizing period of Egypt. At present, Chinese and Japanese writing preserve some logograms combined with signs whose interpretation is purely phonetic. Most of the writings of the world are purely graphemic, so the roman scriptures (based on the Latin alphabet), Arabic (based on the Arabic alphabet), Cyrillic (based on the Greek alphabet), Hebrew (based on the Hebrew alphabet) , Hellenic (based on the Greek alphabet), Indian (generally based on the Devanāgarī) and to a much lesser extent the Armenian, Ethiopian alphabetic (abugidas based on ghez or ge'ez), Korean, Georgian, Burmese, Coptic, etc. . The Glagolitic alphabets and the runic alphabet that preceded the Gothic script as well as the Pahlavi and Zend used in today disappeared languages.

User Balboa
by
5.3k points