Greetings Economists, Hi Charles, lets take a look at cuneiform a little bit more closely in terms of origins of writing. In this area which is Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and Iran now, and where the descendants of Akkaidian cuneiform language arose, a sequence of actions happened. About 8 to 10 thousand years ago people settled the area in a temperate zone region which defined the sort of climate and animal life they developed. These people domesticated a variety of animals like sheep and goats which could be penned up. Most peoples around the world independently developed these precursors to writing, surface images like the cave paintings in Europe. Counting tools like pebbles for sheep, notches on a stick, knots in a rope, etc.
Let's just give a sort of high view of both these precursors. I make pictures, and I can tell you about the thought process. I can look at a painting and I can see in my brain my doing something to the surface. For example making a piece darker or lighter, wider or narrower, etc. These feel like an action on the whole of a surface. What I mean is this brain work does not feel like counting work because the pieces are always part of the whole rather than distinctly different objects. Counting work means I can distinguish various objects that aren't attached to the surface (landscape) and I can move them around independent of each other sort of like moving things around on the desk top of a real desk or on a computer surface display. Both sorts of brain work because they were directly tied to the world did not have to represent language brainwork which meant they did not require the precursors or foundations to produce brainwork in the sense language did. Most mammals can do these sorts of brain work also, though the mammals don't make images they can 'think' about altering images in the same sort of sense we 'paint'. If we say utilize pebbles as counting tools for accounting for a herd of animals in something like this concept, one pebble one animal, the whole herd is the hand that holds all the pebbles. One can see how 'digits' arise, and containers or classifications arose as brainwork concepts. Which inclines us to name those activities, and to make a parallel between the abstractness of a number and an animal occur to us readily, and with some experience the naming of the various stages of counting allows us an insight about naming the brainwork of language. A goat because it is an animate object has some characteristics like counting brainwork, i.e. a surface that does things independent of the whole landscape. Hence counting words sequentially seemed like a possible path to follow to capture the 'properties' of language. This suggests why some class elements tried to use language as a property rather than a communal shared work. The Pharaoh owned the labor of priests/scribes who produced the property of written language. Some history, the cuneiform languages were; Sumerian, Akkadian, Elamite, Hurrian, Urartian, Hittite. Sargon I, the first Assyrain king in 2300 bc spoke Accadian. North of current Bagdad Iraq would be the center of that language. Akkadian declined about 600 bc to be replaced by Aramaic. This bridges to Arabic which arose at 600 ad. Language reflects the body. When naming words (I mean the internal representations that words stood for), a connection to the minds 'words' is lost because we can't see the 'words' in the mind. We know something is there. We know writing in sequence captures a lot of language. Embodying language takes away the mystery of what words do. Embodiment does not imply though that DNA control things. As the above little story implies language required cultural precursors like herd animals for accounting purposes, experience with making pictures, and counting techniques representations. thanks, Doyle Saylor
