Importance of communication for civilisation evolution

Ing. Jiří Šnajdar 2012

In the first part of our explanation is necessary to stress the dominant role of communication for civilisation evolution in individual phases.

 

•In oral phase of understanding was markedly limited the human´s memory as in information volume so in time and space interference – people were dependent on their own experience, parents´ telling and vicarious experience, which the parents got from their ancestors.

The triviality of historical memory, which changed in the third generation into an approximate, rather mythological picture of the world, restricted also the ability of projective behaviour

In the pictures of more distant time horizon of history, which miss an objective fixation, the ontogenetic experience changed into a form of magic rituals, where the ability to anticipate the rightfulness of natural cycles replaced the hope in favour of higher power (gods) – for example solstice was not a cycle, that repeats implicitly every year.

In consciousness of oral communities it was only a possibility, belief. Only the ability to fix the periodicity of time sequence in relation to nature phenomenon opened the way for formation of purposeful solidarity of farmers.

 

Time-space dimension of cognition and communication

Mediation Reliable Subjective Project of the future

impersonal mediation experience Extrapolation

Magic solidarity

Myth

Magic rituals

People of the oral culture were also limited in perception of “enlightenment” on the time axis and in description of their being in space. The world was reduced to the sphere accessible by walking from sunrise to sunset. Only the first pictograms enabled to trespass these boarders in form of tentative maps.

One of the first crucial milestones of the civilisation development was the human ability to fix immediate recognition and to reproduce it consecutively. It was not necessary to interpret the experience of individuals again and again from the beginning, recognition became the architecture of mutually connected interpretations.

 

 The writing in all its forms is a visual record of recognition by means of different defined signs (symbols, icons, indexes). The oldest writing types are pictograms or ideograms. According to last researches is the origin dated from 5th thousand B.C. Roughly one thousand years later arisen in Sumerian civilisation wedge-shaped writing and this almost parallel with written records in Egypt.

According to relation spoken language and graphic record we divide the writings into three categories :•logographic •syllabic •alphabetic

Logogram

is the unique graphical sign, that represents a word in its whole. Every graphic sign represents one word/morpheme (the smallest unit of language, that has a meaning), logographic writings require attaching of signs different formed for all morphemes/words of a language.

This burdens usage of this type of writing with necessity to know by heart big number of signs. So was very narrowed number of population able to read and write.

For example in Egypt were scribers a caste with special position. By signs recording they frequently used specific personal simplifications, which consequence was non-explicitness of record interpretation.

Some logograms use also today more effective (phonetic) sign systems : for example morphemes “1,2,…” etc. use all western languages, as they represent in each languages other phenomenon (jedna, eins, uno).

At present lives on one significant logographic writing in Chinese. Chinese logograms are used in different modification grade also in Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese and other east Asian languages.

Sylabarie

is set of graphical signs representing phonetic syllables, from which are composed morphemes (words). A graphical sign in sylabarie represents sound of a consonant, followed by sound representation of vowel. Syllabic writing is suitable for languages with relatively simple syllable structure (for example Japanese, where the number of possible syllables is not bigger than one hundred).

Alphabetic (phone) writing

 uses separate signs for individual phonemes/phones of spoken language. It is the simplest system, which goes around with few tens of signs/letters. To save number of signs is used also their combination, i.e. digraphs (foe example in Czech “ch”, in German “tsch” for the phone “č”). The other possibility is to provide the basic Latin signs with signs – diacritical (for example in Czech inverted circumflexes and long-signs over basic sign).

The first phonetic writings were already among wedge-shaped writings. Most of the wedge-shaped writings were syllabic or half-syllabic.

The developmental round-off reached the alphabetic writing in old Roman alphabet, connected with the Hellenic and Phoenician writing.

From Phoenician base come out also most of the other phonetic writings (Semitic writings - Hebrew, Arabic, Indie).

The signs are organised for individual languages into exemplary lines with settled sequence of phones, usually called according to first signs (example Czech ABC, order in Cyrillic is called Cyrillic alphabet).

Progress in writing communication we call follow in few levels .

1. Economy connection with number of graphical signs necessary for description of some phenomenon or activity

 

High number of signs in system of logographic letters

 

• worsen the economy of recording (high number of individually differentiated signs)

• extend time, necessary for adoption of sufficient number of individually differentiated signs

• reduce sphere of people that have access to writing and reading (reduce democracy of access to knowledge and cognisance)

2. Effectiveness of information transfer in relation with fixate / transport media.

 clay plates, the record was done on, were relatively heavy, which reduced volume of transported information. Besides the clay plates came under destruction easily (fall, dunk) and was difficult to do a large systematic archive from them.

• Papyrus invention from view of transfer media development meant a technological revolution. Volume of information in relation to weight of media and flexibility was in comparison with clay plates many times higher. Papyrus showed also lower inclination to accidental destruction and was significantly easier to create from individual records a systematic archive.

 • Only stabilisation of relations of significant and signifié in graphical form

with possibility of long-term fixation enabled to define clearly the law norms (Rome law became the source of law conception of Western civilisation) and to define clearly proprietary relations (records of proprietary law).

Sources :

M.L.Defleur and S.Ball-Rokeach, “Theory of mass communication”, Wikipedia