GRAPHIC DESIGN
LEVEL ONE
Cave paintings at Lascaux (virtual tour)
Notice how items are not to any particular scale or sequence in recording their experiences, typical of prehistory's artistic documentarians.
Cave paintings at Lascaux (virtual tour) Notice how items are not to any particular scale or sequence in recording their experiences, typical of prehistory's artistic documentarians.
Wedge-shaped Cuneiform Formed by pressing reeds into wet clay and allowing them to dry in the sun. (essentially ceramic bisqueware) What's written in cuneiform? Most of what is written on these stone tablets are practical things, the few letters that have been found were of a more practical and less personal nature. No one was writing about their thoughts and feelings on a clay tablet. There are many court documents and tax documents.
This one is the Tyszkiewicz Seal. Likely depicts a sacrifice. Has image on sides for rolling and on bottom for stamping. Because it allows images to be reproduced, the cylinder seal can be considered the precursor to printing.
Cave paintings at Lascaux (virtual tour) Notice how items are not to any particular scale or sequence in recording their experiences, typical of prehistory's artistic documentarians.
The Invention of Writing
Here is a handy time-line with pictures to help us understand how this all came to pass.
Everything in bold indicates that there are photos with captions on the left for your viewing.
15,000 - 10,000 BC — Cave paintings at Lascaux
3600 BC — Blau Monument combines images and early writing
3500 BC — Sumerians settle in Mesopotamia
3200 BC — Menes, the First Pharaoh, unites Egypt
3100 BC — Early Sumerian pictographic scripts on clay tablets
3100 BC — King Zet's ivory tablet, early Egyptian pictographic writing
2900 BC — Early cylinder seals
2750 BC — Formal land-sale documents written in cuneiform
2600 BC — Early surviving papyrus manuscripts
2500 BC — Wedge-shaped cumeiform
2345 BC — Pyramid texts in the tomb of Unas
1830 - 1880 BC — Law Code of Hammurabi
1739 BC — Scarab of Ikhnaton and Nefertiti
1500 BC — Hieratic Scripts
1420 BC — Papyrus of Ani
1300 BC — Early Book of the Dead Papyrus Scrolls
1100 BC — Iron widely used for weapons and tools
600 BC — Nebuchandnezzar builds the Tower of Babel
400 BC — Demotic Script
332 - 330 BC — Alexander the Great conquers Egypt
197 BC — Rosetta Stone