

Writing and Civilization: From Ancient Worlds to Modernity
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Episodes
S1 E1 - What Is Writing?
September 26, 201331minIt has been said that writing exists only in a civilization and a civilization cannot exist without writing, but is that accurate? Consider the validity of this statement and examine several of the critical functions that writing has served during the past 5,000 years. Also, get an introduction to pictography and its limitations.Free trial of The Great Courses Signature Collection or buyS1 E2 - The Origins and Development of Writing
May 31, 202031minNow that you understand the significance of writing, explore three popular beliefs or myths about where writing comes from and how it developed. Investigate the theories of monogenesis versus polygenesis - whether writing was only invented once or independently in locations around the world - and the reasons writing systems are resistant to change.Free trial of The Great Courses Signature Collection or buyS1 E3 - Where Did Our Alphabet Come From?
May 31, 202029minMost alphabets in use today are derived from one script developed over 4,000 years ago. What accounts for the vast popularity of the Roman or Latin alphabet? Go back to ancient Egypt as you investigate the origin of our alphabet and the contributions made to it by the Canaanites.Free trial of The Great Courses Signature Collection or buyS1 E4 - The Fuþark--A Germanic Alphabet
May 31, 202030minRunes are often mistakenly thought to be a semimagical system of signs used for divination and ritual, but nothing could be further from the truth. Look at the real history of the Runic alphabet - also known as the Fuþark - as a case study for why writing systems rise and fall.Free trial of The Great Courses Signature Collection or buyS1 E5 - Chinese--A Logosyllabic Script
May 31, 202029minIn continuous use for almost 3,400 years, the Chinese script and its derivatives are used by more than 1.5 billon people around the world. Examine popular myths about Chinese writing as you discover the earliest origins and evolutions of Chinese characters (known as Hanzi), and differentiate between the five sign groups found in Chinese.Free trial of The Great Courses Signature Collection or buyS1 E6 - Japanese--The World's Most Complex Script
May 31, 202030minBorrowed and adapted from the Chinese, Japanese writing is the most complicated script ever devised, yet it's used by more than 100 million people daily. Investigate how and why Japanese writing took on the complex form it has today, why attempts to simplify it have had little success, and why it's unlikely the system will ever be abandoned.Free trial of The Great Courses Signature Collection or buyS1 E7 - What Is Decipherment?
May 31, 202029minThe earliest writing systems are known to us only through the efforts of archaeological decipherment. But how can archaeologists be certain that the knowledge is accurate? Learn a bit of history on cryptography and the differences between decipherers and code-breakers as you examine the theory and methodology of decipherment, as well as the evidence it considers.Free trial of The Great Courses Signature Collection or buyS1 E8 - The Five Pillars of Decipherment
May 31, 202030minFirst, get an introduction to the five preconditions or "pillars" necessary for decipherment to be possible, paying particular attention to the first pillar, known as script type. Then turn to the typology of the three main categories of signs found across the world - logograms, phonograms, and semantic signs - and consider how these signs are combined in different writing systems.Free trial of The Great Courses Signature Collection or buyS1 E9 - Epigraphic Illustration
May 31, 202028minAs you turn to the second pillar of decipherment - the body of texts available for study - consider how epigraphers find a broad, accurate, and readily accessible corpus to examine. Walk through methods for recording inscriptions, and contrast early and modern illustrations of the Classic Maya site of Palenque in Chiapas, Mexico, to see the evolution of epigraphic illustration.Free trial of The Great Courses Signature Collection or buyS1 E10 - The History of Language
May 31, 202031minInvestigate the importance of language, the third pillar of decipherment, by starting with the story of the decipherment of ancient Sumerian, the language of ancient Mesopotamia. Learn how scholars known as philologists or historical linguists use the comparative method of linguistic reconstruction to compare related languages and reconstruct their shared ancestor.Free trial of The Great Courses Signature Collection or buyS1 E11 - Proper Nouns and Cultural Context
May 31, 202030minAs you consider the fourth pillar of decipherment, cultural context, see how most epigraphers' efforts begin with the recognition of proper nouns. Then meet the ancient Greek historian Herodotus, and learn how he became the source of much of our information for the cultural context of Old World writing systems.Free trial of The Great Courses Signature Collection or buyS1 E12 - Bilinguals, Biscripts, and Other Constraints
May 31, 202029minNapoleon's expedition to Egypt is most celebrated for its discovery of the Rosetta stone, which contains ancient Greek writing, Egyptian hieroglyphs, and demotic script. Consider this icon of decipherment as the first and most famous example of a biscript, and discover just how common such artifacts are around the world.Free trial of The Great Courses Signature Collection or buyS1 E13 - Egyptian--The First Great Decipherment
May 31, 202030minBefore Jean-Francois Champollion deciphered hieroglyphic writing in 1822, no one had been able to read a word of Egyptian. Why were Egyptian history and its ancient language and writing system forgotten? How did early attempts at decipherment go astray? Get the answers here as you learn what clues led Champollion to success.Free trial of The Great Courses Signature Collection or buyS1 E14 - What Do Egyptian Hieroglyphs Say?
May 31, 202030minJoin Professor Zender as he reads hieroglyphs that Champollion's efforts helped to recover from oblivion, and see how you too can learn to decipher this blend of phonetic signs, logograms, and semantic signs. Also, consider the interaction of Egyptian writing and culture, including how the practice of damnatio memoriae was used to strike names from official records.Free trial of The Great Courses Signature Collection or buyS1 E15 - Old Persian--Cuneiform Deciphered
May 31, 202031minMeet Georg Grotefend, a German high school teacher who made an incomparable contribution to the study of ancient writing and civilization. As you investigate the methods he used to decipher Old Persian cuneiform in the Achaemenid texts of Persepolis, delve into a bit of history on this culture's language and the foundation that was already established for the decipherment.Free trial of The Great Courses Signature Collection or buyS1 E16 - What Does Cuneiform Say?
May 31, 202032minSee how scholars revealed a lost world of language and literature when they expanded upon Grotefend's breakthroughs by relating Old Persian to the ancient cuneiform scripts that preceded it. Next, trace the development of writing through 3,500 years of Mesopotamian history, and consider what ancient texts such as The Epic of Gilgamesh can teach us about ancient cultures of this region.Free trial of The Great Courses Signature Collection or buyS1 E17 - Mycenaean Linear B--An Aegean Syllabary
May 31, 202032minHow did the decipherment of Linear B change perceptions of ancient Aegean civilization? Why are epigraphers still perplexed by many Linear B spellings? Wade into the discovery, decipherment, and contents of this intriguing ancient writing system - Europe's earliest attempt at writing - and measure it against what you've learned about decipherment of Egyptian and cuneiform scripts.Free trial of The Great Courses Signature Collection or buyS1 E18 - Mayan Glyphs--A New World Logosyllabary
May 31, 202030minInvestigate whether the features of Old World scripts such as Chinese and Japanese, Egyptian hieroglyphs, cuneiform, and Linear B apply to the unrelated scripts of the New World. Focus specifically on Yuri Knorosov's decipherment of Mayan hieroglyphic writing and how living in Cold War Russia both helped and hindered his work.Free trial of The Great Courses Signature Collection or buyS1 E19 - What Do the Mayan Glyphs Say?
May 31, 202030minHow can the strikingly similar structural features of the Mayan and ancient Egyptian writing systems be explained? Continue your exploration of how Mayan writing works through a comparison with Egyptian hieroglyphs. Then find out what scholars have learned about ancient Maya civilization from decipherment, and examine a series of fascinating - and even humorous - inscriptions.Free trial of The Great Courses Signature Collection or buyS1 E20 - Aztec Hieroglyphs--A Recent Decipherment
May 31, 202031minComplex views of Aztec civilization are too often replaced with a one-note narrative that focuses only on the practice of human sacrifice. Look more closely at the system Aztecs invented to write their Nahuatl language, which is still spoken by more than one million modern Mexicans in the form of about a dozen regional dialects.Free trial of The Great Courses Signature Collection or buyS1 E21 - Etruscan and Meroïtic--Undeciphered Scripts
May 31, 202031minDespite decades of effort by many qualified epigraphers, there are still dozens of undeciphered scripts. Turn to the failures of decipherment and the lessons that can be drawn from them by focusing on the attempted decipherment of two scripts - Etruscan and Meroïtic - which recorded languages with no known relatives or descendants.Free trial of The Great Courses Signature Collection or buyS1 E22 - Han'gul, Tengwar, and Other Featural Scripts
May 31, 202031minMove from writing systems that developed over time to scripts that were deliberately designed by an individual or group, often for use as a universal system. See how these "featural" writing systems betray their intentional design through an examination of examples including Korean Han'gul, Lodwick's Universall Alphabet, and J. R. R. Tolkien's Tengwar and Certar.Free trial of The Great Courses Signature Collection or buyS1 E23 - Medium and Message
May 31, 202031minWhether on papyrus, bamboo, clay, stone, or wood, writing shows an important relationship between medium and message. Explore the influence media have had on writing's shape, direction, and use by delving into the origins of terms used for writing implements, the process for making papyrus, the phasing out of scrolls by codices, and more.Free trial of The Great Courses Signature Collection or buyS1 E24 - The Future of Writing
May 31, 202033minWill typing replace handwriting? Will e-books make printed books obsolete? Will speech-to-text software replace our need to physically write at all? Join Professor Zender as he speculates about the future of writing based on past developments, from the invention of movable type to new signs and spelling conventions inspired by the QWERTY keyboard.Free trial of The Great Courses Signature Collection or buy
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