> The celebrated notched bone is just that: a bone with groups of notches on
> it, dated sometime between 8,000 & 30,000BC, found by Lake Ishango. Beyond
> that, it is speculation. Does anyone know of a good scholarly publication,
> giving details of the latest state of play? [Details of this have been
> corrected following the information in the quotation from Claudia
> Zaslavsky, and I think that her remarks illustrate what I meant when I
> wrote that "Beyond that, it is speculation".]
David Rotman, quoting Roy Harris, as quoted by Antreas, 22.11.98, gave
another good example of the kind of thing I was referring to:
> Harris speculates about counting by scoring:
>
> What is relevant for our present purposes is the fact that
> counting is associated in many cultures with primitive forms
> of recording which have a graphically isomorphic basis...The
> iconic origin of such recording systems is hardly open to
> doubt: the notch or stroke corresponds to the human finger...In
> short, the rows of strokes are graphically isomorphic with
> just that subpart of the recorder's oral language which
> comprises the corresponding words used for counting. It
> makes no difference whether we 'read' the sign pictorially as
> standing for so many fingers held up, or scriptorially as
> standing for a certain numeral. (137)
>...
2. My comment that:
> It looks like the best documented instance of what seems to be a general
> trend, that written systems first evolve for the purpose of accounting and
> legal contracts, and it is only later that the writers start using it in
> other contexts.
needs to be refined in the light of the posting by Val Dusek dated 11/21/98:
> According to Chang (Yale UP 1970s), Chinese writing systems began, unlike
> Mesopotamian, from recording family names and genealogies.
I should perhaps have written something like:
... written systems first evolve for the purposes of accounting, listings
of all kinds, and legal contracts and it is only later that the writers
start using them in the form of continuous text ...
David Fowler