Oldest text ever?

[Yoda Power]

Could anyone tell me what is the oldest text ever written?

 

[willemvanoranje]

I think it's Sumerian, or if not that Egyptian. Either way, the first writings were administrative writings, to calculate taxes, to count, to know how much there was in storage, that kind of thing.

 

[Xen]

China has a contender to the throne now I think, though it coul dbe nothing more then little pictures acrtched on a turtle shell- hard to say... but the oldest full text known would from Sumeria, and is either a religious, or inventory document

 

[Knight-Dragon]

I'd read that Russian (Soviet actually) archaelogists had dugged up some stuff in Central Asia that's even older than those in Sumeria. The problem is they're still trying to decide if they're merely symbols or represented meaning (like words). A common problem when dealing with the period when symbols became words.

 

[Hurricane]

The only two indisputable independent were by the Sumerians of Mesopotamia somewhat before 3000 B.C. and by Mexican Indians before 600 B.C. Egyptian writing (3000 B.C) and Chinese writing (1300 B.C) might also have been developed independently, but this is uncertain.

The Sumerian cuneiform was based on earlier simple systems of accounting purposes, when people used caly tokens of simple shapes to keep track of number of Sheep or amounts of Grain. The cuneiform then took the step into being an Alphabet by having agreep-upon symbols mean a certain thing, that writing should be organised into rows, that lines should be read in a constant direction (left to right, and from top to bottom).

The symbols used were simple grahics of what they symbolised, (i.e. a fish sign meaning fish) and most of the symbols were nouns for visible objects. The texts were this just lists of accounting reports; prose and religious texts came much later.

 

[willemvanoranje]

exactly, the Sumerian writing was at first without anything abstract as 'thoughts' and stuff, because it was used as administration.

 

[nebuchadnezzar]

Originally posted by XIII
I'd read that Russian (Soviet actually) archaelogists had dugged up some stuff in Central Asia that's even older than those in Sumeria. The problem is they're still trying to decide if they're merely symbols or represented meaning (like words). A common problem when dealing with the period when symbols became words.

yeah, i watched it on tv, a Turkolog claimed those writings belong to Turks, showed a picture of a golden cup, some shapes on it, one looking like cyrilian "w - like letter" - he claims that is the same letter and sound. he said those stuff were 10.000 - 7.000 yrs old..
that needs deeper investigation..

 

[Xen]

if they are, it is a HUGE coincidence... Cyrillic was developed by a byzantine monk, who used greek as his base, which was based on phoenician...

 

[Hurricane]

Doesn't sound particularly believable. Not only would it be thousands of years older than anything else known in the world, it also seems to be a rather advanced alphabet. Some other archeologists need to confirm it before I believe it.

 

[Knight-Dragon]

Originally posted by nebuchadnezzar
yeah, i watched it on tv, a Turkolog claimed those writings belong to Turks, showed a picture of a golden cup, some shapes on it, one looking like cyrilian "w - like letter" - he claims that is the same letter and sound. he said those stuff were 10.000 - 7.000 yrs old..
that needs deeper investigation..

I don't think the Turks can claim credit to these - the region in those times was settled by complete unknowns, possibly an Indo-European people. There's good evidence they're spread all the way up against the border of China.

By the time the Han broke out into Xinjiang, the last of them had already being driven westwards by the Xiong-nu earlier.

 

[Yoda Power]

So noone really knows it eh?

 

[Djingis Khan]

The script from central asia that you're talking about is from the so called Marghiana-culture, which existed in Turkmenistan from ca 3000 B.C. (and no, they weren't turkic). So the Sumerian writing from ca 4000 B.C is still older

/DK M

 

[allhailIndia]

AFAIK the first novel written is Gilgamesh by the Sumerians. The first printed book was the Diamond Sutra based on Buddha's life.

 

[amirsan]

The Sun Tzu's Art of War was written on bamboo stuff, like probably thousands of years ago (forgot the actual time). It was the first self-help book.

 

[willemvanoranje]

well that's a nice record

 

[nebuchadnezzar]

the turkolog (actually a pre-turk researcher) i mentioned is Kazim Mirsan. a Turkmen. i know a website of him but it's in Turkish..
www.geocities.com/kazimmirsan
the writings we discussed are dated to 16.000 yrs ago.. on the website, wrotes he is the one who read the ancient Etrusc language..
and there's something i know: the romans borrowed so much things from the etrusc.

 

[test_specimen]

The Etruscans existed shortly before the Romans, and I doubt that they reach back another13.500 years before them and preserved their language. It was a regional state that formed in the 7th century BC and lasted until about 400 BC, when the Romans took over. The Greeks had a heavy cultural influence on them, and influenced the Romans in that way as well.


Perhaps he means another people with a similar name.

 

[nebuchadnezzar]

no no i tried to say he (the pre-turk researcher) is the one who first deciphers the etrusc language.. (i think with pronounciation rules)