Excellent review of Prehistory Decoded at Cosmic Tusk
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The Origin of Writing, part 3 The general view is that writing began almost simultaneously in Egypt and Sumer around 3000 BC. As far as I know, scholars think it began first in Sumer, and transferred to Egypt shortly after. A popular theory, due to Schmandt-Besserat, is that writing evolved out of symbols used to record trade in the 4th millennium BC in Mesopotamia. I'll try to show here that this is only part of the story - writing also developed from astronomical notation. A great resource is the book 'Visible Language' by Chris Woods from the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. It describes the transition to writing in both Mesopotamia and Egypt with copious illustrations of relevant artefacts. Rather than copying its images, you can obtain a pdf freely here . It focuses on the symbols used in each place just before writing appears in the historical record, around, 3500 to 3000 BC. Since writing emerges as a 'logographic' script initially,
What happened to the builders of Gobekli Tepe? Genetic correspondence between ancient and modern populations of the Near East and North Africa, from Schuenemann et al., Nature Comms. 2017. Gobekli Tepe was gradually abandoned between around 9,000 to 8,000 BC, right at the beginning of the Neolithic revolution. Presumably, other, newer cultural centres gained from Gobekli Tepe's loss. But where did its people go? In earlier posts I highlighted the connections between symbolism at Gobekli Tepe and Ancient Egypt. It appears almost as though the Ancient Egyptians are the most direct descendants of the people who constructed Gobekli Tepe. Is this where they went? Clearly, we have the similarity in megalithic architecture. And Ancient Egypt is not so far from southern Anatolia. The fertile banks of the Nile would probably have been very inviting compared to the hard hills of southern Turkey. I have already outlined the correspondence between the animal symbols at Gobekli
The Origin of Writing, Part 2 Left: Pillar 2 at Gobekli Tepe (image courtesy of Alistair Coombs), Middle: an Ancient Egyptian cartouche (image from Wikipedia), Right: stone plaquette found at Gobekli Tepe (image courtesy of Alistair Coombs) True writing appears almost simultaneously in Ancient Sumeria and Ancient Egypt shortly before 3000 BC. But various forms of proto writing are known from around 6000 BC. Proto writing is a set of symbols used to convey a limited type of information, whereas true writing can convey any meaning - it is essentially speech made visual. Klauss Schmidt, who discovered Gobekli Tepe, thought its pillars, especially on their narrow faces, exhibited a very early form of proto-writing. He thought their pictures told stories. He also suggested the Uraeus (snake) symbol of Ancient Egypt might have derived from the snake symbols at Gobekli Tepe. I suspect he was right. The orthodox view of writing popular among archaeologists , proposed by Schmandt-Be
The origin of Life Growth and fissioning (reproduction) of SALR clusters as the concentration of SALR particles is slowly increased. Okay, this is off-topic, but I thought I'd share the other research highlight of my career. Most biological molecules, like amino acids and nucleobases (the building blocks of proteins and DNA/RNA respectively), are 'SALR'. This means they are attracted to each-other at short range (the short-range attraction, or SA, part), but because they are typically also charged in solution, they repel each other at much larger separations (the long-range repulsion, or LR, part). I have been researching the behaviour of SALR particles in solution for the last 6 years or so. Last year, I discovered [1] that in a solution of SALR particles in which the concentration is slowly increased, the SALR clusters that form will gradually grow and then split, or fission. The above set of snapshots from a 3-D simulation shows this happening many times in suc
The origin of writing Necklace on Pillar 18 at Gobekli Tepe (courtesy of Alistair Coombs) The origin of writing has long fascinated scholars for obvious reasons. The dominant theory presently is that writing began in Mesopotamia, around 3200 BC, probably in the city of Uruk, thought to be the largest urban area ever built up to that time. Writing begins in Egypt soon after, it is generally thought, although given that archaeologists have only scratched the surface of the Earth, all claims of 'prior art' must be treated with extreme caution. Nevertheless, Schmandt-Besserat's theory of writing's origin in Mesopotamia has gained considerable traction. Partly, it is so popular, I think, because it nicely confirms a bias in modern scholarship towards Marxism, i.e. that everything can be explained by the relationship between power and trade. You see, Schmandt-Besserat's theory proposes that writing grew out of trading systems involving tokens and clay tablet