• Invisible Cities Pdf

Ocabulary can be reinforced by using a variety of game formats. Do you know these cities? (Adapted from H.A. Dayananda, Sri Lanka, Forum, April, 1986).

. The history of writing traces the development of expressing language by letters or other marks and also the studies and descriptions of these developments. In the history of how have evolved in different human civilizations, more complete writing systems were preceded by, systems of ideographic or early mnemonic symbols. True writing, in which the content of a is encoded so that another reader can reconstruct, with a fair degree of accuracy, the exact utterance written down, is a later development. It is distinguished from proto-writing, which typically avoids encoding grammatical words and affixes, making it more difficult or impossible to reconstruct the exact meaning intended by the writer unless a great deal of context is already known in advance. One of the earliest forms of written expression is.

Limestone from with pictographic writing; may be the earliest known writing, 3500 BC. Writing numbers for the purpose of record keeping began long before the writing of language. See for how the writing of numbers began. It is generally agreed that true writing of language (not only numbers) was independently conceived and developed in at least two ancient civilizations and possibly more. The two places where it is most certain that the concept of writing was both conceived and developed independently are in ancient (in ), around 3100 BC, and in by 300 BC, because no precursors have been found to either of these in their respective regions. Several are known, the oldest being from the or of. Independent writing systems also arose in around 3100 BC and in around 1200 BC, but historians debate whether these writing systems were developed completely independently of Sumerian writing or whether either or both were inspired by Sumerian writing via a process of.

That is, it is possible that the concept of representing language by using writing, though not necessarily the specifics of how such a system worked, was passed on by traders or merchants traveling between the two regions. Are considered by many to be an independent invention because there is no evidence of contact between ancient China and the literate civilizations of the Near East, and because of the distinct differences between the Mesopotamian and Chinese approaches to and phonetic representation. Is dissimilar from Mesopotamian cuneiform, but similarities in concepts and in earliest attestation suggest that the idea of writing may have come to Egypt from Mesopotamia. In 1999, reported that the earliest Egyptian glyphs date back to 3400 BC, which 'challenge the commonly held belief that early logographs, pictographic symbols representing a specific place, object, or quantity, first evolved into more complex phonetic symbols in Mesopotamia.'

Similar debate surrounds the of the in Ancient India (2600 BC). In addition, the script is still undeciphered, and there is debate about whether the script is true writing at all or, instead, some kind of proto-writing or nonlinguistic sign system. An additional possibility is the undeciphered script of. It is debated whether this is true writing and, if it is, whether it is another case of cultural diffusion of writing.

The oldest example is from 1851, 139 years after their first contact with Europeans. One explanation is that the script was inspired by 's written annexation proclamation in 1770. Various other known cases of cultural diffusion of writing exist, where the general concept of writing was transmitted from one culture to another, but the specifics of the system were independently developed. Recent examples are the, invented by, and the system for writing the. Writing systems. Main article: are distinguished from in that one must usually understand something of the associated spoken language to comprehend the text. In contrast, symbolic systems, such as, and, often do not require prior knowledge of a spoken language.

Every human community possesses language, a feature regarded by many as an innate and defining condition of mankind (see ). However the development of writing systems, and their partial supplantation of traditional systems of communication, have been sporadic, uneven, and slow. Once established, writing systems on the whole change more slowly than their spoken counterparts and often preserve features and expressions that no longer exist in the spoken language. The greatest benefit of writing is that it provides the tool by which society can record information consistently and in greater detail, something that could not be achieved as well previously by spoken word.

Invisible Cities Pdf

Writing allows societies to transmit information and to share knowledge. Recorded history.

Scholars make a reasonable distinction between and of early writing but have disagreed concerning when prehistory becomes history and when proto-writing became 'true writing.' The definition is largely subjective. Writing, in its most general terms, is a method of recording information and is composed of, which may in turn be composed of. The emergence of writing in a given area is usually followed by several centuries of fragmentary inscriptions.

Historians mark the 'historicity' of a culture by the presence of coherent texts in the culture's writing system(s). The invention of writing was not a one-time event but was a gradual process initiated by the appearance of, possibly first for cultic purposes. Giochi per psx ita iso 9000. Developmental stages.

This section does not any. Unsourced material may be challenged and. (November 2015) A conventional 'proto-writing to true writing' system follows a general series of developmental stages:. Picture writing system: glyphs (simplified pictures) directly represent objects and concepts. In connection with this, the following substages may be distinguished:.

Mnemonic: glyphs primarily as a reminder. Pictographic: glyphs directly represent an object or a concept such as (A) chronological, (B) notices, (C) communications, (D) totems, titles, and names, (E) religious, (F) customs, (G) historical, and (H) biographical.

Ideographic: graphemes are abstract symbols that directly represent an idea or concept. Transitional system: graphemes refer not only to the object or idea that it represents but to its name as well. Phonetic system: graphemes refer to sounds or spoken symbols, and the form of the grapheme is not related to its meanings. This resolves itself into the following substages:. Verbal: grapheme represents a whole word. Syllabic: grapheme represents a syllable. Alphabetic: grapheme represents an elementary sound.

The best known picture writing system of or early symbols are:., carved on in, c. 6600 BC. , c.

5300 BC. Early, c. 3100 BC In the Old World, true writing systems developed from writing in the. The archaic (pre-) writing and the are generally considered the earliest true writing systems, both emerging out of their ancestral proto-literate symbol systems from 3400–3100 BC, with earliest coherent texts from about. Literature and writing Literature and writing, though obviously connected, are not synonymous. The very first writings from ancient by any reasonable definition do not constitute literature.

The same is true of some of the early and the thousands of ancient Chinese government records. The begins with the history of writing. Scholars have disagreed concerning when written record-keeping became more like than anything else, but 'literature' can have several meanings. The term could be applied broadly to mean any symbolic record from images and sculptures to letters. The oldest surviving literary texts date from a full millennium after the invention of writing to the late 3rd millennium BC. The earliest literary authors known by name are (who wrote in ) and (who wrote in ), dating to around the and centuries BC, respectively.

In the early literate societies, as much as 600 years passed from the first inscriptions to the first coherent textual sources: i.e., from around 3100 to 2600 BC. Locations and timeframes Proto-writing. Example of the, writing-like markings found on, dated around 6000 BC.

The first of the were not a sudden invention. Rather, they were a development based on earlier traditions of systems that cannot be classified as proper writing but have many of the characteristics of writing. These systems may be described as 'proto-writing.'

They used or early symbols to convey information, but it probably directly contained no. These systems emerged in the early period, as early as the evidenced by the in China. In 2003, shells were found in 24 Neolithic graves excavated at, province, northern China, with from the 7th millennium BC. According to some archaeologists, the carved on the shells had similarities to the late 2nd millennium BC. Others have dismissed this claim as insufficiently substantiated, claiming that simple geometric designs, such as those found on the Jiahu shells, cannot be linked to early writing. The show an evolution of simple symbols, beginning in the 7th millennium BC, gradually increasing in complexity throughout the 6th millennium and culminating in the of c.

5300 BC with their rows of symbols carefully aligned, evoking the impression of a text. The of the late 6th millennium is similar. The scripts of the (Egyptian, Sumerian proto-Cuneiform, and Cretan) seamlessly emerge from such symbol systems so that it is difficult to say at what exact time writing developed from proto-writing. Further, very little is known about the symbols' meanings.

Even after the Neolithic, several cultures went through an intermediate stage of proto-writing before they used proper writing. The ' from the 7th and 8th centuries AD, mentioned by a few medieval authors, may have been such a system. The of the (15th century AD), sometimes called 'talking knots,' may have been of a similar nature. Another example is the pictographs invented by before the development of the (c. Bronze Age writing. Further information: Writing emerged in many different cultures in the. Examples are the writing of the, Egyptian, Chinese logographs, and the of Mesoamerica.

The likely developed independently of the Middle Eastern scripts around 1600 BC. The (including and ) are also generally believed to have had independent origins. It is thought that the first true alphabetic writing was developed around 2000 BC for workers in the Sinai by giving mostly Egyptian glyphs Semitic values (see and ). The writing system of Ethiopia is considered Semitic.

It is likely to be of semi-independent origin, having roots in the Meroitic Sudanese ideogram system. Most other alphabets in the world today either descended from this one innovation, many via the, or were directly inspired by its design. In Italy, about 500 years passed from the early to (750 to 250 BC), and in the case of the, the corresponding time span is again similar, from the first inscriptions to early texts like the (c. AD 200 to 750).

Cuneiform script. Main article: The original Sumerian writing system derives from a used to represent commodities. By the end of the, this had evolved into a method of keeping accounts, using a round-shaped stylus impressed into soft clay at different angles for recording numbers.

This was gradually augmented with writing by using a sharp stylus to indicate what was being counted. Round-stylus and sharp-stylus writing were gradually replaced around 2700–2500 BC by writing using a wedge-shaped stylus (hence the term ), at first only for, but developed to include phonetic elements by the 29th century BC. About 2600 BC, cuneiform began to represent syllables of the. Finally, cuneiform writing became a general purpose writing system for logograms, syllables, and numbers.

From the 26th century BC, this script was adapted to the, and from there to others, such as and. Scripts similar in appearance to this writing system include those for and. Egyptian hieroglyphs. Main article: Writing was very important in maintaining the Egyptian empire, and literacy was concentrated among an educated elite of scribes. Only people from certain backgrounds were allowed to train as scribes, in the service of temple, royal (pharaonic), and military authorities. Believes that most scholars hold that Egyptian hieroglyphs 'came into existence a little after, and. Probably were invented under the influence of the latter.'

This view, however, is strongly contested by other scholars. Dreyer's findings at Tomb UJ at in clearly show place names written in hieroglyphs (up to four in number) recognizable as signs, which persisted and were employed during later periods and which are written and read phonetically.

The tomb is dated to c. 3250 BC and demonstrates that such writing (on bone and ivory labels) is a more advanced form of writing than was evident in Sumer at that date. It is argued, therefore, that the Egyptian writing system, which is in any case very different from the Mesopotamian, could not have been the result of influence from a less-developed system existing at that date in Sumer. Elamite script. Sequence of ten Indus signs discovered near the northern gate of the Indus site The, which dates back to the early phase of around 3000 BC in ancient north western and what is now, has not yet been deciphered. It is unclear whether it should be considered an example of proto-writing or whether it is actual writing of the logographic-syllabic type of the other Bronze Age writing systems. Recognises the style of writing as, where 'this stability suggests a precarious maturity.'

Early Semitic alphabets. Main article: The first pure (properly, ', mapping single symbols to single phonemes, but not necessarily each phoneme to a symbol) emerged around 1800 BC in, as a representation of language developed by workers in Egypt, but by then alphabetic principles had a slight possibility of being inculcated into for upwards of a millennium. These early abjads remained of marginal importance for several centuries, and it is only towards the end of the Bronze Age that the splits into the (c. 1400 BC) Byblos syllabary and the (c. The Proto-Canaanite was probably somehow influenced by the undeciphered and, in turn, inspired the (c. Anatolian hieroglyphs.

Main articles: and The earliest confirmed evidence of the Chinese script yet discovered is the body of inscriptions on oracle bones from the late Shang dynasty (c. 1200–1050 BC). From the, most of this writing has survived on bones or bronze implements ( ). Markings on turtle shells, or, have been carbon-dated to around 1500 BC. Historians have found that the type of medium chosen depended on the subject of the writing.

There have recently been discoveries of tortoise-shell carvings dating back to c. 6000 BC, like, but whether or not the carvings are complex enough to qualify as writing is under debate. At in the, 3,172 cliff carvings dating to 6000–5000 BC have been discovered, featuring 8,453 individual characters, such as the sun, moon, stars, gods, and scenes of hunting or grazing.

These pictographs are reputed to be similar to the earliest characters confirmed to be written Chinese. If it is deemed to be a written language, writing in China will predate Mesopotamian cuneiform, long acknowledged as the first appearance of writing, by some 2,000 years; however it is more likely that the inscriptions are rather a form of, similar to the contemporary European. Cretan and Greek scripts. Main articles:, and Cretan hieroglyphs are found on artifacts of (early-to-mid-2nd millennium BC, MM I to MM III, overlapping with Linear A from MM IIA at the earliest).

Linear B, the writing system of the, has been deciphered while Linear A has yet to be deciphered. The sequence and the geographical spread of the three overlapping, but distinct, writing systems can be summarized as follows (note that the beginning date refers to first attestations, the assumed origins of all scripts lie further back in the past): Writing system Geographical area Time span c. 1625−1500 BC (, ), and c.

18th century−1450 BC Crete , and mainland (, ) c. 1375−1200 BC Mesoamerica. Main article: A stone slab with 3,000-year-old writing, the, was discovered in the Mexican state of Veracruz, and is an example of the oldest script in the Western Hemisphere, preceding the oldest writing dated to about 500 BC. Of several scripts in, the one that appears to have been best developed, and has been fully deciphered, is the. The earliest inscriptions which are identifiably Maya date to the 3rd century BC, and writing was in continuous use until shortly after the arrival of the Spanish conquistadores in the 16th century AD. Maya writing used logograms complemented by a set of syllabic glyphs: a combination somewhat similar to modern Japanese writing. Iron Age writing.

Writing near,. The beginning of the writing with the. The is simply the Proto-Canaanite alphabet as it was continued into the (conventionally taken from a cut-off date of 1050 BC).

This alphabet gave rise to the and alphabets. These in turn led to the writing systems used throughout regions ranging from Western Asia to Africa and Europe. For its part the Greek alphabet introduced for the first time explicit symbols for vowel sounds. The Greek and Latin alphabets in the early centuries of the Common Era gave rise to several European scripts such as the and the and alphabets while the Aramaic alphabet evolved into the, and abjads and the gave rise to the. The of is believed by some scholars to have derived from the Aramaic alphabet as well. Writing in the Greco-Roman civilizations.

Early Greek alphabet on pottery in the The started when the Greeks borrowed the Phoenician alphabet and adapted it to their own language. The letters of the Greek alphabet are more or less the same as those of the Phoenician alphabet, and in modern times both alphabets are arranged in the same order. The adapter(s) of the Phoenician system added three letters to the end of the series, called the 'supplementals'. Several varieties of the Greek alphabet developed. One, known as, was used west of and in. The other variation, known as, was used in present-day and by the Athenians, and eventually the rest of the world that spoke Greek adopted this variation.

After first writing right to left, like the Phoenicians, the Greeks eventually chose to write from left to right. Greek is in turn the source for all the modern scripts of Europe. The most widespread descendent of Greek is the, named for the, a central Italian people who came to dominate Europe with the rise of Rome. The Romans learned writing in about the 5th century BC from the, who used one of a number of Italic scripts derived from the western Greeks.

Due to the cultural dominance of the Roman state, the other Italic scripts have not survived in any great quantity, and the Etruscan language is mostly lost. Writing during the Middle Ages With the collapse of the authority in Western Europe, the literary development became largely confined to the and the. Latin, never one of the primary literary languages, rapidly declined in importance (except within the Church of Rome).

The primary literary languages were and, though other languages such as and were important too. The rise of in the 7th century led to the rapid rise of as a major literary language in the region. Arabic and Persian quickly began to overshadow Greek's role as a language of scholarship.

Was adopted as the primary script of the Persian language and the. This script also heavily influenced the development of the scripts of Greek, the, and other languages.

The Arabic language also served to spread the throughout Europe. By the beginning of the second millennium the city of in modern Spain, had become one of the foremost intellectual centers of the world and contained the world's largest library at the time. Its position as a crossroads between the Islamic and Western Christian worlds helped fuel intellectual development and written communication between both cultures. Renaissance and the modern era By the 14th century a rebirth, or, had emerged in Western Europe, leading to a temporary revival of the importance of Greek, and a slow revival of Latin as a significant literary language. A similar though smaller emergence occurred in Eastern Europe, especially in Russia. At the same time Arabic and Persian began a slow decline in importance as the ended. The revival of literary development in Western Europe led to many innovations in the Latin alphabet and the diversification of the alphabet to codify the phonologies of the various languages.

The nature of writing has been constantly evolving, particularly due to the development of new technologies over the centuries. The, the, the and the are all technological developments which have altered what is written, and the medium through which the written word is produced. Particularly with the advent of digital technologies, namely the computer and the mobile phone, characters can be formed by the press of a button, rather than making a physical motion with the hand.

The nature of the written word has recently evolved to include an informal, colloquial written style, in which an everyday conversation can occur through writing rather than speaking. Written communication can also be delivered with minimal time delay (, ), and in some cases, with an imperceptible time delay. Writing is a preservable means of communication. Some people regard the growth of as the first step towards a. Writing materials. Main article: There is no very definite statement as to the material which was in most common use for the purposes of writing at the start of the early writing systems.

In all ages it has been customary to engrave on stone or metal, or other durable material, with the view of securing the permanency of the record; and accordingly, in the very commencement of the national history of Israel, it is read of the two tables of the law written in stone, and of a subsequent writing of the law on stone. In the latter case there is this peculiarity, that plaster (, lime or gypsum) was used along with stone, a combination of materials which is illustrated by comparison of the practice of the Egyptian engravers, who, having first carefully smoothed the stone, filled up the faulty places with gypsum or cement, in order to obtain a perfectly uniform surface on which to execute their engravings. Metals, such as stamped, are mentioned as a material of writing; they include lead, brass, and gold. To the engraving of gems there is reference also, such as with seals or signets. The common materials of writing were the tablet and the roll, the former probably having a Chaldean origin, the latter an Egyptian. The tablets of the Chaldeans are among the most remarkable of their remains. There are small pieces of clay, somewhat rudely shaped into a form resembling a pillow, and thickly inscribed with cuneiform characters.

Similar use has been seen in hollow cylinders, or prisms of six or eight sides, formed of fine terra cotta, sometimes glazed, on which the characters were traced with a small stylus, in some specimens so minutely as to be capable of decipherment only with the aid of a magnifying-glass. In Egypt the principal writing material was of quite a different sort. Wooden tablets are found pictured on the monuments; but the material which was in common use, even from very ancient times, was the.

This reed, found chiefly in Lower Egypt, had various economic means for writing, the pith was taken out, and divided by a pointed instrument into the thin pieces of which it is composed; it was then flattened by pressure, and the strips glued together, other strips being placed at right angles to them, so that a roll of any length might be manufactured. Writing seems to have become more widespread with the invention of papyrus in Egypt. That this material was in use in Egypt from a very early period is evidenced by still existing papyrus of the earliest Theban dynasties. As the papyrus, being in great demand, and exported to all parts of the world, became very costly, other materials were often used instead of it, among which is mentioned leather, a few leather mills of an early period having been found in the tombs., using sheepskins left after the wool was removed for cloth, was sometimes cheaper than papyrus, which had to be imported outside Egypt. With the invention of, the cost of writing material began a steady decline. See also Main, General, (, ), Other, , Citations.

In the 1990s, postmodernist theory put 'space' and geography at the center of debates about new trends in the arts. Turning to cities, urban planning, and architecture for inspiration, Fredric Jameson, David Harvey, Edward Soja, and others argued that the distinctive features of postmodern culture could be described and assessed most effectively by understanding the geographic conditions of late capitalism. In recent years, scholars of modernism have responded, using urban space to help redefine the parameters of modernist studies. Though motivated by different political and methodological objectives than their postmodernist forerunners, the books under review here all use geography as a starting point for reconsidering the value of work on modernism.

It is not surprising that scholars have returned to the crossroads of geography and modernism for inspiration, nor is it altogether unexpected that urban space should provide the material and theoretical context within which innovative studies of early twentieth-century culture End Page 747 might be conducted. After all, several scholarly generations have passed since many of the most important discussions on the subject were written: Raymond Williams's The Country and the City, Marshall Berman's All that Is Solid Melts into Air, Stephen Kern's The Culture of Time and Space, 1880–1918, and Michel de Certeau's The Practice of Everyday Life were all published between 1973 and 1984. A reconsideration of modernism's geographies is long overdue.

What surprises, I think, is the extent to which the books under review here are preoccupied with defining modernism itself, collectively attempting to explain what is distinctive about the moment and movement. Why, these texts ask, were modernists obsessed with urban life, and how did the space of the city contribute to a specifically modernist imagination? In the past, scholars interested in modernism and the city have struggled to combine the impulse to historicize representations of urban space with a sufficiently engaging account of the movement's penchant for formal experimentation. Arguing that radically new urban conditions inspired, supported, or determined innovation in the literary, graphic, and plastic arts can be a tricky proposition. Reading modernism's obsession with novelty as a cultural reaction to the shift from rural-agricultural to urban-industrial models of economic production has its pitfalls. Industrialization, large cities, and sprawling imperial metropolises were not inventions of the late-nineteenth century. The proliferation of technological instruments that facilitated the circulation of goods, people, and information with ever-increasing velocity—locomotives, steam ships, automobiles, and telecommunications networks—strikes me as a more plausible explanation of changes in perceptions of urban space.

Andrew Thacker, in his excellent recent book Moving through Modernity—which unfortunately falls beyond the scope of this review—provides a persuasive account of the way in which speed transformed our relationship with the environment. Yet trains, steamships, and telegraphy, which made many observers feel the world was shrinking rapidly, were also in place well before 1900. It seems modernism's insatiable thirst for newness is both a provocation and an irritant for scholars with a geographic predisposition.

Robert Alter addresses this problem by both expanding the temporal boundaries of modernism and resisting the trend of reading literary works as the cultural precipitates of specific historical conditions, such as the rise of large cities. In Imagined Cities, he traces the origin of modernist fiction's more exaggerated technical innovations back to the works of Gustave Flaubert and Charles Dickens. Flaubert's great Parisian novel, L'education sentimentale, is significant because it departs from the 'magisterial certitude' that marks the narrative endeavors of fellow nineteenth-century novelists.

Modernism's subjective crises take shape in. If you would like to authenticate using a different subscribed institution that supports Shibboleth authentication or have your own login and password to Project MUSE, click 'Authenticate'. You are not currently authenticated.

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