Monday, December 3, 2007
The first ‘book' in world may have been 5,500-year-old clay tablet found at Harappa
We saw earlier in this series that the idea of the zero, and the decimal system of numbers, originated in India. What about writing?
It was believed until recently that writing originated in Egypt and Babylon.
Wrong.
A piece of pottery dug from an early stratum of Harappa, one of the two of the world's earliest cities (the other is Mohenjodaro) in the Indus Valley in present day Pakistan, has markings that are clearly not haphazard scratches, not bird's feet or impression of twigs, but were purposely by intelligent humans to signify something.
It is 5,500 years old, and the first preserved record of communication.
The discovery of this specimen of writing was reported by Richard Meadow of Harvard University and Jonathan Mark Kenoyer of the University of Wisconsin Madison.
Meadow, who is the director of the Harappa Archaeological Research Project (HARP), told BBC in a report broadcast in 1999 that the Harappan inscriptions found may predate all other known writing. The BBC report caused a flutter in archeological dovecotes.
An Australian scholar and poet, Peter Knobel, waxed so far as to rhetorically ask: "Maybe the world's first book is a piece of pottery?"
Untril 1998, it was commonly accepted that the oldest writing might have come from Egypt.
Clay tablets containing primitive words were uncovered in southern Egypt at the tomb of a king named Scorpion.
They were carbon-dated to 3300-3200 B.C.. This is about the same time, or slightly earlier than the primitive writing developed by the Sumerians of the Mesopotamian civilization in around 3,100 B.C., Meadow told BBC News Online in the report which upset the chronology of writing accepted by scholars around the world since archeologists traveling with Napoleon Bonaparte in Egypt discovered the Rosetta Stone.
To read the complete article click here..
To read the complete e-paper click here: www.newsindia-times.com
Image and article source: News India Times
Article taken from the issue: 7 Dec, 2007
Labels: clay tablet, egypt, harappa, Harvard University, Mesopotamian civilization, Napoleon Bonaparte, Rosetta Stone, University of Wisconsin Madison
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