History Begins with Writing

Adam Roll
Dr. Jason Farmon
DTC:375
2/18/2009
Word Count: 791

History Begins with Writing

It may be a fact that our society was once based entirely upon oral communication. However, those days have come and gone and we have ventured into a society of a textual and literate culture. With little ado, we still have to credit formal forms of oral culture for the emergence of our new advancements. As you will see, writing plays a vital role in history, education, and our everyday life.

History as we know started at the beginning of the writing system. Everything we know today and the advancements in time all go back to writing. Throughout time, events were recorded, logged and passed down. Writing was a fundamental tool used to record history and the factual events that took place. Without writing, there would be no recollections of history, just variations of stories and assumptions of what occurred. The only other options for stories to be passed on were by oral story telling or other technological ways. For one, oral story telling would be like the telephone game. It would start out the truth, but by the end, the story would be different. As far as other technological ways, years ago, there were no other forms of technology to record events, other than what had already been invented, writing or oral cumunication. For instance, Walter Ong states, “In an oral culture, to think through something in non-formulaic, non-patterned, non-mnemonic terms, even if it were possible, would be a waste of time, for such thought, once worked through, could never be recovered with any effectiveness, as it could be with the aid of writing” (69). Before the invention of writing, there were no other reliable ways of passing the stories of history along to the next generations. That just goes to show the importace placed upon a written document.

A written document carries more weight and importance than oral communication or a pictograph. For example, as Havelock say’s, “The very act of transcribing an oral composition requires an ordering. The text becomes a physical artifact that can be ’looked at, reflected upon, modified, looked at repeatedly, shown to others, etc.’” (qtd Robert K. Logan, 61). Writing can be around forever, looked at by anybody and read at anytime. An oral form of communication requires the person/speaker to be there in person. The only way to relive it is by memory, and we all know that memories do not last forever.

Writing began as an essential for various societies due to “direct consequence of the compelling demands of an expanding economy. In other words, sometime in the late 4th millennium BC, the complexity of trade 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, permanet form became essential.” (Robinson, 38) Writing, for all societies, tells us their history. They used writing as a tool to keep order in their governments, remembering facts, story telling and recording factual information such as hardships, wars and other natural disasters.

We are a society based on education. Sure, oral communication does play a part, however, we rely on written communication in an even greater proportion. Students don’t usually remember a lecture just by memory alone, they write notes. Tests aren’t usually given verbally, they are written. Without text books, web sites, written notes, journals, essays, written exams, how would the students of today learn the history of the past, or the facts of life needed in order to grow in a career based society?

In the educational system we rely greatly upon literacy and textual communication. From first grade on, we are taught to read and write with a form of writing that was adopted by the American people known as the alphabet. From there on we are held at high standards of writing and reading abilities throughout school. We are graded on our papers, punctuation and our ability to write. “ It hardly needs saying that a person who can read and write has greater opportunities for fulfillment than one who is illiterate” (Robinson, 36). Our government records everything that goes on in order to not make mistakes learned from the past.

In conclusion, writing began history. History goes way back to centuries and centuries before what we know today. There is just no record of what happened in detail. The people of that long ago barely had a way of communicating orally, let alone being able to write it down as a permanent record. Once it got to the point in time where oral communication was growing, it was destined that people would begin to look for other, more permanent forms, of communicating to the people of the future. Then, history began.
Works Cited

Logan, Robert K. “Writing and the Alphabet Effect.” Communication In History-Technology, Culture, Society. Ed. David Crowley and Paul Heyer. Boston: Pearson Education, 2007. 61-66.
Ong, Walter. “Orality, Literacy, and Modern Media.” Communication In History-Technology, Culture, Society. Ed. David Crowley and Paul Heyer. Boston:Pearson Education, 2007.66-72.
Robinson, Andrew. “The Origins of Writing.” Communication In History-Technology, Culture, Society. Ed. David Crowley and Paul Heyer. Boston:Pearson Education, 2007. 36-42.