Almost 2000 years ago, in 105AD, a Chinese court official named Cai Lun watched a wasp making its nest. He saw the insect chew up pieces
of bamboo, and then mix it with its own saliva to produce a pulp. The pulp was next flattened into a sheet by the wasp, by using its legs. This sheet was used to line the wasp’s nest. Cai Lun copied the wasp, and made a paste of bamboo and water. He then flattened the paste into a thin sheet, dried the sheet in the sun… and paper was invented! Paper soon replaced papyrus and parchment as the most popular writing material. The Chinese used mulberry bark and bamboo to make paper, while the Europeans preferred linen and cotton rags. Nowadays, paper is made from the wood of fast growing trees such as pines, fir and spruce. Paper mills have sprung up wherever there is a good supply of water and wood, producing paper of every colour and texture imaginable. Today, the ever increasing demand for forests into pulp to feed the paper mills. So it is very important that we do not waste paper, and also that we learn to recycle and reuse it
over 2000 inscribed seals that have been discovered in good condition. The Indus people did not engrave inscriptions on stones or place papyrus scrolls in the tombs of their dead. All we know of their writing is derived from the simple inscriptions on their seals. The inscriptions are in the form of some 400 signs. The signs are the written language of these people.These seals tell us a lot about the way the people lived, the gods and goddesses they worshipped, the animals they reared and, other interesting bits of information about their culture
people of the island of Crete developed a script known as Linear B which has ideograms, numbers and signs. The Chinese way of writing was very complex, and has over 50,000 signs! Fortunately, only a few thousand are needed for everyday life, but Chinese is still a difficult language to learn. It has changed very little during the last 4000 years, which means that modern scholars can still read the ancient texts. The Chinese characters are made up of 26 different strokes, and the Chinese place a lot of importance on the art of fine handwriting. In fact, Chinese children spend a lot of time copying characters before they can write quickly and correctly!
appeared about 3000 BC. It was easy to read this type of writing since it was easy to recognize the symbols. But it was also a little confusing, because these pictures could not always express ideas or actions fully. So, ideograms or symbols to express thoughts and actions were developed. For example, a picture of a pair of legs walking can mean ‘go’.In time, these symbols changed their shape into signs that did not look much like the real thing… but they kept their meaning. In ancient Indian civilization for example, there were over 400 signs that represented things, and names of people and places
remember everything in our heads! There would be no books from which we could learn, and we would not be able to communicate with people far way.Writing is a method of putting down information so that it can be stored, and passed on to others. No one person invented writing. It evolved gradually from the need to keep accounts or record events. Writing took many different forms over the ages, from simple picture writing to modern scripts. It was done on different types of materials too… on rocks, clay, pottery… and of course, paper.
in the world around them by spontaneously producing sounds. For example, a nursing baby produces a sound similar to ‘mmmmm’ as it drinks milk, and this sound eventually became the word ‘mama’![custom_search_and_filter]