| Among all the revolutionary creations of man, writing ranks as the supreme intellectual achievement. It was not invented just once but perhaps as many as six separate times, in places as distant from one another as China and Central America. Each effort began with simple pictures and plain strokes or dots-adequate for recording objects and numbers, but abstract formulations such as "I shall," "Please Grant," and "Go quickly," called for something flexible enough to record speech itself. A form of writing that began to mirror the workings of the human mind and heart first came into being late in the fourth millenium B.C. in Mesopotamia. |
