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The roots of writing lie in hopes and dreams, not in accounting | Aeon Essays

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A clay impression of a cylinder seal from Nippur, Iraq. Akkadian civilisation, 2330-2150 BCE. Photo By DEA/De Agostini/Getty by Michael Erard + BIO A clay impression of a cylinder seal from Nippur, Iraq. Akkadian civilisation, 2330-2150 BCE. Photo By DEA/De Agostini/Getty is an author, journalist and linguist. Formerly journalist in residence at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen in the Netherlands, he is the co-founder with Misty McLaughlin of the Work in Place project and his latest book is Babel No More (2012). He lives in Portland, Maine. Edited byPam Weintraub Recent scholars of the history of writing describe what was first and foremost an administrative tool. According to their ‘administrative hypothesis’, writing was invented so that early states could track people, land and economic production, and elites could sustain their power. Along the way (their argument goes) writing became flexible enough, in how it captured spoken language, to be used for poet

Recent scholars of the history of writing describe what was first and foremost an administrative tool. According to their ‘administrative hypothesis’, writing was invented so that early states could track people, land and economic production, and elites could sustain their power. Along the way (their argument goes) writing became flexible enough, in how it captured spoken language, to be used for poetry and letters and, eventually, word games such as Mad Libs and fortune cookies. The writing/state connection sailed out most recently in Against the Grain (2017) by James Scott, a political…

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