世界上最古老的書寫系統可能起源於神秘、未破解的符號 (2/2)

Recently Yahoo News on-line picked up the following:

World’s oldest writing system may have its origins in mysterious, undeciphered symbols (2/2)

Ashley Strickland, CNN

Thu, November 7, 2024 at 12:26 a.m. GMT+8·7 min read

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Establishing an ancient link

Such similar depictions in seals and proto-cuneiform signs indicate a close relationship between the two, said Eckart Frahm, the John M. Musser Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Yale University. Frahm was not involved in the study.

“The article does this for the first time, establishing persuasively that a number of (proto-cuneiform) signs have iconographically close parallels in the image repertoire of the seals,” Frahm said. “Even more ambitiously, the authors seek to show, through a contextual analysis, that clusters of images on seals can be found in similar configurations on inscribed clay tablets.”

It’s apparent that ancient Mesopotamians used the seals alongside writing for thousands of years, so one form of documentation wasn’t just naturally replaced by the other.

The team is now eager to investigate what kinds of products were carried within the vessels in nets, and why the imagery endured over such a large geographic area for so many centuries — and why the exchanges were important enough to be documented on clay tablets.

Previously, researchers thought that plain tokens contributed to the system for numerals used in proto-cuneiform signs, while complex tokens bearing incisions and other markings were the basis for the nonnumerical signs, but that turned out not to be the case, said Dr. J. Cale Johnson, professor of the history of knowledge in the ancient world at Freie Universität Berlin. Johnson was not involved in the new study.

“This gap in the origin story — where do the nonnumerical proto-cuneiform signs come from — was left unresolved,” Johnson said. “Although people have often said that the images of the nonnumerical sign must be coming from seal (glyphs) or some other kind of representation, there has been very little work to concretely identify precursors. But this paper is an important step in identifying those concrete precursors.”

Deciphering unknown symbols

The more researchers uncover about ancient cities such as Uruk and the connections between the iconography ancient civilizations used, the more they may be able to decipher the hundreds of unknown proto-cuneiform pictographs, the study authors said.

“In view of the stylized and often abstract nature of many proto-cuneiform signs — a strong contrast with the much more picture-like Egyptian hieroglyphs — a full consensus on what these signs represent and where they originated will probably never be reached, but that does not mean one shouldn’t try to explore the issue,” Frahm said.

Writing seems like a necessary technology that would naturally develop over time, but it was only invented independently — without knowledge of the existence of writing — a few times in world history, Ferrara said.

“So, it has long been a question of interest what social and technological conditions encouraged the conceptual, cognitive leaps that resulted in written language,” Ferrara said. “While the jury is still out on how much language coding the earliest phase of cuneiform actually has, importantly, it led to ‘true’ writing within a few centuries, so the invention of proto-cuneiform is a watershed.”

Understanding that motifs from seals are directly related to the pictographs that would eventually lay the foundation for the first writing system shows how meaning was transferred from motifs to script, the study authors said.

“The conceptual leap from pre-writing symbolism to writing is a significant development in human cognitive technologies,” Ferrara said. “The invention of writing marks the transition between prehistory and history, and the findings of this study bridge this divide by illustrating how some late prehistoric images were incorporated into one of the earliest invented writing systems.”

Translation

世界上最古老的書寫系統可能起源於神秘、未破解的符號 (2/2)

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建立古老的聯繫

耶魯大學近東語言與文明教授 Eckart Frahm 表示，在印章中和原始楔形文字中的類似表達方式表明兩者之間存在密切關係。Frahm沒有參與這項研究。

Frahm說： “這篇研究報告首次做到了這一點，即令人信服地證明許多（原始楔形文字）符號與印章的圖像庫具有密切的相似。” “更雄心勃勃的是，作者試圖通過上下文分析來表明，印章上的圖像簇可以在銘刻的粘土板上找到類似的結構。”

顯然，古代美索不達米亞人在書寫的同時使用印章已有數千年的歷史，因此一種形式的記錄並不會自然地被另一種形式所取代。

該團隊現在急於調查網中的容器內攜帶了哪些類型的產品，以及為什麼這些圖像在如此闊大的地理區域內持續了幾個世紀 - 以及為什麼這些交易如此重要以至於需要記錄在泥板上。

柏林自由大學(Freie Universität Berlin)古代世界知識史的教授J. Cale Johnson 表示，此前研究人員認為簡單的標記對於原始楔形文字符號中使用的數字系統有幫助，而帶有切口和其他標記的複雜符號是非數字符號的基礎，但事實並非如此。Johnson沒有參與這項新研究。

Johnson說: 「故事起源這一個空白 - 即非數字的原始楔形文字符號是從何而來 - 尚未被拆解」; 「儘管人們經常說非數字符號的圖像一定來自印章（字形）或其他某種表示形式，但紮實地去識別有先驅性的工作卻很少見到。但這篇論文是識別那些非數字的實際前身的重要一步」。

破解未知符號

研究的作者說，研究人員對Uruk等古代城市以及古代文明所使用的圖像之間的聯繫了解得越多，就越能破解數百種未知的原始楔形文字。

Frahm說: 「鑑於許多原始楔形文字符號是被簡化並變得抽象 - 與更具圖片性的埃及象形文字形成鮮明對比 - 關於這些符號代表的含義及其起源可能永遠不會達成完全共識，但並不意味著人們不應該嘗試探索這個問題」。

Ferrara說，書寫似乎是一種隨著時間的推移而自然發展的必要技術，但在世界歷史上，它只是在沒有現成書寫的情況下, 幾次被獨立地發明。

Ferrara說： “因此，長期以來人們感興趣的一個問題是，什麼樣的社會和技術條件促進了概念和認知的飛躍，從而產生了書面語言;” “雖然對於楔形文字最早階段實際上有多少語言符号尚無定論，但重要的是，它在幾個世紀內導致了 ‘真正’的書寫，因此原始楔形文字的發明是一個分水嶺。”

研究作者說，了解出印章的圖案與象形文字直接相關最終將為第一個書寫系統奠定基礎，這表明意思是如何從圖案轉移到文字的。

Ferrara說: 「從有文字前的符號飛躍到寫字的概念, 是人類認知技術的重大發展」; 「文字的發明標誌著從史前到有歷史之間的過渡，這項研究的結果駁通這鴻溝, 它說明一些晚期史前圖像是如何被納入最早發明的書寫系統之一」。

So, while people have often said that the images of the nonnumerical sign must be coming from seal (glyphs) or some other kind of representation, there has been very little work to concretely identify precursors. Indeed, different culture has developed different writing systems, they may have different paths to achieve that goal. For example, in Asia the Chinese have developed their own writing system which is totally different from those invented in Europe.