From Bones to Press

Nikolos van Leer                     HR: Wikipedia, www.ancient.eu

With the creation of the internet, a tool which allows people from all over the world to have instant access to billions of documents, technological advancement across the globe has skyrocketed. Before the internet, however, we had to rely on other means to share information with each other. Writing and printing are, perhaps, the most important developments for any growing society. As they develop further, most other aspects of a society will advance at exponentially faster rates. China is a prime example of how the advancement of a writing system is correlated with the advancement of a society as a whole.

China’s written language uses a logogram system. It evolved from a practice called “divination”. Divination was used by the rich and powerful as a means to predict the future or seek holy guidance. Diviners would take a question from someone, carve that person’s name, the current date and their question into a bone. They would then heat the bone using a hot poker or fire. Cracks would begin to appear on the surface of the bone. The diviners would then interpret the cracks on the bone as some kind of holy message. The markings that the diviners used on these oracle bones, would eventually come to be known as the first writing system of China. It was a primitive pictogram system called the Jiaguwen system. As time went on, the system evolved.

As more complex symbols were added to the system, it evolved into a new system called Dazhuan. They added more symbols to the writing system, but they all still represented objects and not concepts. Thus, it was still a pictogram system and not yet a logogram system. While this system was in use, reading and writing were still being inscribed into bronze and, most likely, wood. They had not yet developed any effective method of quick copying or paper. Because of this, it was expensive and time-consuming to write anything. The high cost of writing limited writing to religious and governmental purposes. Literacy was still a skill for the upper class.

Then, the system started to evolve from a pictogram system into a logogram system. Eventually, it became the Xiaozhuan system that we see today. Xiaozhuan came into existence sometime around 700 BCE. Symbols in Xiaozhuan no longer represented objects. Now they represent concepts, allowing for more detailed and efficient writing. Although, one might think that symbols representing concepts would be more complicated than symbols representing objects. However, it actually made the language so much easier that they were eventually able to start teaching it to children. Xiaozhuan also sparked Chinese interest in developing new printing technologies. Around 200 BCE, they started to make ink stamps out of wooden blocks, and would press them onto cloth and around 80 CE, they switched to paper. The problem with the wooden block printing was that they could not be adjusted. Once a block was inscribed with something, it could not be changed to anything else. Thus, a new block had to be made for each new document that they wanted to print. Around 1040 CE, they graduated to the movable type system. This system had interchangeable tiles for each character that printers would need, so that the press could be modified for each document. It was a simple design, which allowed for more common use. Printing became cheaper, which allowed more people to get their research or philosophy out into public circulation and allowed it to spread further. This allowed more people to see it and respond, which allowed for more collaboration between the Chinese people which led to an acceleration in technological, scientific and philosophical advances.

China’s writing system had a fairly simple evolution. The Jiaguwen system got the ball rolling for writing in China. The Dazhuan system took the first step towards improving the system. The Xiaozhuan system is the final product of the years of evolution of China’s writing and with this system, the technology of printing (and by extension, society as a whole) advanced in China. With the advancement of writing came the advancement of printing and common literacy. With the advancement of common literacy and printing, China’s people were able to more quickly and effectively spread ideas and collaborate with each other which lead to more and more advancements coming along. With today’s internet, we may start to take printing for granted, but we should always keep in mind that historical advancements in printing allowed us, as a species, to advance ourselves to the point where we are now.