Denise Schmandt-Besserat How Writing Came About

Annotation

An ';utterly lucid, thoughtfully illustrated, and thoroughly convincing' book on the origins of the world's oldest known system of writing (American Journal of Archaeology). One of American ScientistsTop 100 Books on Science, 2001 In 1992, the University of Texas Press publishedBefore Writing, Volume I: From Counting to Cuneiform and Before Writing, Volume II: A Catalog of Near Eastern Tokens. In these two volumes, Denise Schmandt-Besserat set forth her groundbreaking theory that the cuneiform script invented in the Near East in the late fourth millennium B.C.the worlds oldest known system of writingderived from an archaic counting device. How Writing Came About draws material from both volumes of this scholarly work to present Schmandt-Besserat's theory in an abridged version for a wide public and classroom audience. Based on the analysis and interpretation of a selection of 8,000 tokens or counters from 116 sites in Iran, Iraq, the Levant, and Turkey, it documents the immediate precursor of the cuneiform script.