Prehistory Communication

One of the areas of great interest to archaeologists involves how human beings learned to write, and there are numerous examples of early writing that are only partially translated or not translated at all, thus making the job of assessing these languages and their level of sophistication all the more difficult. It is evident from the number of languages and scripts in existence that communication is a major human endeavor, an effort undertaken by societies all over the world, and script is one means of communicating both within a culture and between the culture and the gods, posterity, or whatever other entity it is believed will read what is left behind. Communication is identified as the exchange of information and messages, and messages can be delivered in a number of different ways. Alexander Marshack and Denise Schmandt-Besserat offer differing perspectives on the matter of how ancient peoples may have communicated with one another. Each has reassessed traditional archaeological materials in terms of the possibility that they might be communication media, but they take different approaches to their task and draw somewhat differing conclusions.

Marshack states at the outset that prehistory is mute because we do not have a record of the languages, the myths, or the lore of the ancient peoples who existed for tens of thousands of years before farming and the development of early agricultural civilizations. Yet, we do know that these human beings made images and kept

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ent of writing and arithmetic, was keeping a record of some process or series of events and was structuring it in a manner that he could "read" (Marshack, 15). Marshack tries himself to find arithmetical patterns in these carvings and believes he finds twists and turns corresponding to the changing phases of the moon: There is no proof, of course, that it was a lunar notation, but clearly it was some form of notation. There is no evidence of arithmetic counting in the sequence, but many primitive people without a knowledge of arithmetic notice the changing periods of the moon and sun and stars (Marshack, 16). In spite of what Marshack says, it is not clear that some type of notation is involved. He makes a good case for it based on his observations, but his reasoning is highly speculative. Marshack finds that images and symbols may be markers of periodic or continuous cultural processes, of rites, and of repetitive myths and stories. Marshack says that notations of any sort were apparently means of recording the passage of time in terms of culturally significant events. Images such as the Vogelherd horse and the serpentine Blanchard image occurred separately as distinct symbol systems. Late in the Ice Age, more complex ac

Category: History - P