[Xmca-l] Re: Laws of evolution and laws of history

[Peter Smagorinsky]

I've written about the Oriental Institute exhibition and web-text as follows (Smagorinsky, P. (2011). Vygotsky and literacy research: A methodological framework. Boston: Sense.):

Writing as Tool and Sign
People have been communicating through symbol systems for quite a long time. The abilities to speak and use language (distinctions made by anthropologists to refer separately to the ability to form sounds audibly and the development of a systematic organization of sounds and symbols into a patterned scheme of communication) have characterized both humans and their antecedent primates since early in their evolutionary development (Fitch, 2000) as a way to produce auditory symbols that represent objects, ideas, actions, and other nonlinguistic referents. Researchers dispute the point at which humans began using language, with estimates ranging from 10,000-100,000 years ago, depending on the evidence consulted (e.g., Atkinson, 2011; Gray & Atkinson, 2003).
	The first written symbol system was numeric and preceded linguistic symbol systems by about four millennia. In about 7500 BCE, members of the early Meso-potamian society began impressing numeric symbols in clay to represent their so-cial and commercial transactions (Schmandt-Besserat, 2011). Before the appear-ance of the cuneiform and hieroglyphic linguistic texts that first appeared between 3500 and 3200 BCE, Mesopotamian and Egyptian people used primitive stamp and cylinder seals, i.e., round stones that people used to make impressions in clay. Each seal was specific to an individual or social group to "brand" their belongings as distinctively their property; the seal thus marked an object as residing within a particular individual or group's archival record. Mesopotamians also used clay "envelopes" prior to the emergence of a formal script. These devices consisted of hollow balls with small tokens sealed inside that served a contractual role, provid-ing a form of record-keeping that led to the recording of numbers on clay, which itself was the immediate precursor for their cuneiform  script (Woods, 2010a).
	Subsequently, all known writing systems originated from four independently developed scripts, a relatively new finding that revises previous theories that saw writing originating in the Eastern Mediterranean region and gradually spreading from there (Woods, 2010a). The most recent data regarding writing's origins-a date that is subject to continual revision as archeology produces new sources of evidence-indicate that the Egypt and Mesopotamia were indeed the first societies to develop writing systems, each created separately and without one another's influence. Independent of these developments, and toward different cultural ends using unique symbol systems, Chinese (1200 BCE) and Mesoamerican (1200-600 BCE) systems followed to produce the prototypes for the remainder of the world to follow. 
	Unlike today's writing, the Mesopotamian pictographic text, like all early forms of writing, was used exclusively to maintain economic records of transactions among those of high status. The curators of the exhibition at the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute that documents this historical record (detailed in Woods, 2010a) report that about 90% of texts recovered from Mesopotamia were administrative documents that became necessary during a population expansion in Uruk in about 3500 BCE. This growth produced a more complex social and trading civilization that required a bureaucracy for its organization of goods and how they were distributed across the stratified society's inhabitants. 
	Determining what counted as writing and what served as a precursor requires some key distinctions. The contributors to Woods' (2010a) edited volume 
define writing as a one-to-one correspondence between text and speech. When Egyptian hieroglyphics were invented, the creators used the rebus principle-in the English alphabet, for example, drawing an eye shape to signify the I sound-as well as pictograms to represent specific objects. . . . The Egyptians eventually moved to full representation, "sound by sound and word by word," so that when one person reads a text, it sounds the same as when another reads it. Ancient cave paintings, by contrast, do not count as writing-different people viewing a cave painting may use different words to tell its story. (Kott, 2011, n. p.)
	Kott (2011) further reports that to Woods (2010b), the written scripts' use of characters and grammar represents the boundary between prehistory and history because it enabled people to document the present and past and thus provide a record of the evolution of their society. Serving this historical and contemporary purpose, writing reveals each culture's social organization and cultural thrust: its teleological ends and the primary tool, a written script, through which its commerce is archived and thus used as the template for new transactions. 
 	The field of comparative human cognition (Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition, 1978) emphasizes the manner in which tool-mediated thinking serves and in turn helps to reproduce a culture's goals and practices and channel them toward its sense of optimal developmental outcome. The use of writing in Indo-European cultures as a bureaucratic means of record-keeping for goods, labor, and production suggests much about this area as the origin of capitalist societies. In contrast, in China and in Mesoamerica, scripts most likely developed for religious purposes: 
In China, the social component is clearly in evidence as witnessed by the emergent Shang state (ca. 1200 BC[E]), but writing is first attested primarily within the context of divination-for the purpose of recording royal divina-tions performed at the Shang court. Written on turtle shells and ox scapulas, these inscriptions recorded the answers to queries that were put to the gods [see Shaughnessy, 2010]. The Mesoamerican case is even more nebulous. The earliest writing in the Americas-the undeciphered Zapotec and Isthmi-an scripts and the first Maya writing-is essentially commemorative with a considerable theological component, many of the glyphs having a basis in long-established iconographic traditions and a calendrical system of great cultural significance. . . . Further, in the better-understood Maya case, the ad-vent of sociopolitical complexity, as witnessed by monumental architecture and increased social stratification, predates the first texts by several centuries. . . . These are contexts that may suggest religious and cultural motivations for writing, rather than administrative or economic necessities [see Palka, 2010]. (Woods, 2010b, p. 17)
	If these scripts are indicative of their societies' sense of telos and the use of writing to mediate development toward that end, they reveal profoundly different understandings of the purpose of life on earth and how to live it socially and cul-turally. In this chapter I move to a more modern-day conception of the role of writing in society, emphasizing its tool function and embedding writing practice in broader cultural processes so as to understand its role in current educational prac-tice and in the abundant settings in which writing plays a role outside school.

-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-l-bounces+smago=uga.edu@mailman.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-l-bounces+smago=uga.edu@mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of Peg Griffin
Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2015 11:07 PM
To: 'eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity'
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Laws of evolution and laws of history

About writing origins, Henry: There's some accessible and reliable info through that U of Chicago Oriental Institute museum web-site I mentioned.
You can download the catalog for free - over 200 pages of good essays and illustrations.
http://oi.uchicago.edu/sites/oi.uchicago.edu/files/uploads/shared/docs/oimp3
2.pdf
The first chapter has a good discussion about writing and other early graphic representations from art and administrative functions.  It has a reasonable bibliography.  Subsequent specialized chapters also carry good documentation.  It's certainly a good start if you want to follow this up.

Peg Griffin, Ph. D.
Washington, DC 20003

-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu
[mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of HENRY SHONERD
Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2015 7:18 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Laws of evolution and laws of history

Yes, thank you, Helen
I have a couple of questions:
1)The movie Cave of Forgotten Dreams focuses on cave drawings of Southern France that date back 32,000 years. Writing may date back only about 5 thousand years, but I understand that writing systems begin with pictographs, like in the caves of southern France. Is that relevant to this thread?
2) Does oral history count as history?
Henry





I have a question 
> On Jan 14, 2015, at 2:30 PM, Peg Griffin <Peg.Griffin@att.net> wrote:
> 
> Thanks, Helena!  It is lovely.  A while ago I had skimmed it but 
> misplaced ways to get to it for deep reading and use of it.
> Besides just liking this sort of thing, I've had some luck getting 
> teacher ed students to see contemporary cultural and language 
> diversity a little differently when they get a chance to see history 
> they might have missed out on in their prior education.
> Peg
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu
> [mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of Helena Worthen
> Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2015 2:06 PM
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Cc: 'Mikhail Munipov'
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Laws of evolution and laws of history
> 
> And there's this:
> 
> https://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/201102/roads.of.arabia.htm
> 
> This is a gorgeous exhibit, if it comes near you. For the text about 
> writing
> 2000-1500 BCE, scroll about half way down. The exhibit has stones, set 
> side by side, with different ancient scripts.
> 
> Helena Worthen
> helenaworthen@gmail.com
> 
> On Jan 13, 2015, at 7:16 PM, Peg Griffin wrote:
> 
>> Here's a little side track:  There's a web trace of a 2010 
>> well-curated
> museum exhibit on writing from the U of Chicago Oriental Institute.
>> http://oi.uchicago.edu/museum/special/writing/
>> 
>> And here are a few little outtakes:
>> 		"four instances and places in human history when writing was
> invented from scratch - in Mesopotamia, Egypt, China and Mesoamerica - 
> without previous exposure to or knowledge of writing. It appears 
> likely that all other writing systems evolved from the four systems we 
> have in our exhibition."
>> 		"the earliest cuneiform tablets from Mesopotamia (today's
> Iraq), dating to about 3200 BC,"
>> 		" early Egyptian writing that includes tags and labels from
> the tombs of the first kings (about 3320 BC) as well as hieroglyphic 
> writing and other scripts from the Nile Valley."
>> 		" Chinese writing, which emerged about 1200 BC, will be
> shown on oracle bones"
>> 		" Mayan hieroglyphs from the 7th century AD will show how
> early Mesoamericans wrote."
>> 		" Long believed to have been invented in Phoenicia in about
> 1000 BC, the earliest alphabetic texts are now those found in the Sinai.
> This earliest alphabet was derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs as early 
> as
> 1800 BC, well over five hundred years earlier than had been known."
>> There are some lovely little animations about the development of 
>> cuneiform
> and one animation about a hieroglyph changing and eventually 
> appropriated for a Greek letter.
>> 
>> I love this little site and fear the day I try to open it and find U 
>> of Chicago has abandoned it. Peg
>> 
>> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: xmca-l-bounces+peg.griffin=att.net@mailman.ucsd.edu
>> [mailto:xmca-l-bounces+peg.griffin=att.net@mailman.ucsd.edu] On 
>> Behalf Of Andy Blunden
>> Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2015 9:24 PM
>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>> Cc: Mikhail Munipov
>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Laws of evolution and laws of history
>> 
>> Actually, I think that "the more that human beings become removed 
>> from
> animals in the narrower sense of the word, the more they make their 
> own history consciously" is near as dammit what you are looking for.
>> 
>> Engels of course lacked good information. Even in his day Vygotsky 
>> had
> poor information. In "Ape, Primitive Man and Child", "primitive" is 
> taken to mean "non-literate", as it was for Luria in his Central Asian 
> expedition, and a great deal of emphasis is put on the origins and 
> development of *writing*. But writing only appears in Egypt c. 2,000 
> BCE I think, in any case, in evolutionary time scales 5 minutes ago.
> The development of writing is nothing to do with evolution of the species.
>> Vygotsky defines primitive man as follows:
>> 
>>   "This term is commonly used, admittedly as a conventional label, to
>>   designate certain peoples of the uncivilized world, situated at the
>>   lower levels of cultural development. It is not entirely right to
>>   call these peoples primitive, as a greater or lesser degree of
>>   civilization can unquestionably be observed in all of them. All of
>>   them have already emerged from the prehistoric phase of human
>>   existence. Some of them have very ancient traditions. Some of them
>>   have been influenced by remote and powerful cultures, while the
>>   cultural development of others has become degraded.
>>   "/Primitive man, in the true sense of the term, does not exist
>>   anywhere at the present time, /and the human type, as represented
>>   among these primeval peoples, can only be called "relatively
>>   primitive." Primitiveness in this sense is a lower level, and the
>>   starting point for the historical development of human behaviour.
>>   Material for the psychology of primitive man is provided by data
>>   concerning prehistoric man, the peoples situated at the lower levels
>>   of cultural development and the comparative psychology of peoples of
>>   different cultures."(Preface, 1930, Italics in the original)
>> 
>> And from the start, this chapter is framed as "cultural development" 
>> as
> distinct from "evolutionary development." Chapter 1 on primates 
> focuses on the limited use of tools possible for apes, with the 
> implication that the cultural development around the emergence of 
> labour, i.e., the production of tools, was part of evolutionary 
> development, prior and leading up to the formation of homo sapiens 
> sapiens. There is no chapter covering the period between 2 million 
> years ago and say `00,000 years ago, where cultural and biological
formation are interacting.
>> 
>> According to Engels and others including Dewey, speech emerges
> simultaneously with tools. Dewey makes the point that a tool is not a 
> tool until its use is institutionalised, linking social, symbolic and 
> tool-using activity together.
>> 
>> Andy
>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>> -
>> --
>> *Andy Blunden*
>> http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
>> 
>> 
>> mike cole wrote:
>>> So perhaps its just my bad memory, Andy. the issues remain central. 
>>> THANKS for the appropriate links!
>>> mike
>>> 
>>> On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 4:51 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net 
>>> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
>>> 
>>>   There can only be two sources of this idea: Engels' "Part Played
>>>   by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man" (1876)
>>> 
> http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1876/part-played-labour/ind
> ex.htm
>>>   and the Introduction to "Dialectics of Nature" (1883)
>>>   http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/don/ch01.htm
>>> 
>>>   In the latter work, after explaining how freeing the hands by
>>>   adopting an erect gait, led to the use of tools, meaning labour,
>>>   and this led to the expansion of the brain, language and sundry
>>>   other changes, and thus eventualy the emergence of human beings as
>>>   a species. Then he says:
>>> 
>>>      "With men we enter /history/."
>>> 
>>>   In the earlier document, he says: "Labour begins with the making
>>>   of tools" which Engels claims happened before the formation of
>>>   modern homo sapiens, contributing to that formation rather than
>>>   being a product of the formation of modern humans, and he narrates
>>>   a story which continues from this point up to socialist revolution
>>>   as if it were one continuous story, blurring over the distinction
>>>   between evolution of the species and historical development of
>>>   culture.
>>>   The nerest we come to your quote is: "the more that human beings
>>>   become removed from animals in the narrower sense of the word, the
>>>   more they make their own history consciously." The "narrower
>>>   sense" I presume means biological differentiation. So this could
>>>   count for what you are looking for, Mike.
>>> 
>>>   Andy
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --
>>>   *Andy Blunden*
>>>   http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
>>>   <http://home.pacific.net.au/%7Eandy/>
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>>   mike cole wrote:
>>> 
>>>       Dear Colleagues--
>>> 
>>>       I seem to recall reading an idea, that I recall being
>>>       attributed to Engels,
>>>       that (rooughly) "more and more the laws of evolution are being
>>>       replaced by
>>>       the laws of history."
>>> 
>>>       Can anyone enlighten me either as to the source of this
>>>       "quotation" or as
>>>       to the source of my own confusion in this regard?
>>> 
>>>       mike
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> --
>>> It is the dilemma of psychology to deal with a natural science as an 
>>> object that creates history. Ernst Boesch.
>>> 
>>> 
> 
>