The Cultural Evolution of Written Langua

The Cultural Evolution
2 of Written Language
and Its Effects
A Darwinian Process from
Prehistory to the Modern Day
Andy Lock and Matt Gers
INTRODUCTION
Two questions have often polarized the literature devoted to the emergence of writing systems:
Can the history of writing systems be regarded as an evolutionary process? And does literacy have
consequences for human cognitive abilities? In this chapter we first consider the mosaic of prehis-
toric developments that underwrite the creation of a social “problem space” in human societies that
enable the possibility of writing. We then provide an “imaginative history” as to how this possibility
was realized. From this general overview we turn to the two questions, arguing first that many fea-
tures of this history of writing are best seen as examples of a cultural evolutionary process. Finally,
we address the cognitive question, explaining how writing has in a very real sense transformed
our cognitive abilities. This is particularly the case when one appreciates that cognitive systems
are properly seen as being constituted by brain, body, and world—writing constitutes part of an
extended human mind. Of necessity, ours is merely an overview and contributors to Goetzmann
and Rouwenhorst (2005) and to Houston (2004) provide further detailed and nuanced treatments.
THE CONTEXT OF THE ORIGINS OF WRITING

Writing lies somewhere in between “a system of human intercommunication by means of conven-
tional visible marks” (Gelb, 1963, p. 12), and “the graphic counterpart of speech” (Diringer, 1968,
p. 8). Writing systems have a time depth of around 5000 years. In order for writing to be possible,
both visual (iconic) and auditory (symbolic) systems must be in place (Robertson, 2004). The pre-
conditions for the emergence of writing thus include an appropriate cognitive suite, that is, the
abilities needed to be able to write; relevant technologies, that is, the tools, marking materials, and
surfaces on which to make marks; and social organizational structures that generate a motivation
to make durable marks, at the most basic level of representing objects or status for particular social
purposes, prior to coding speech at the most abstract level.
The abilities that underwrite reading and writing appear to have deep evolutionary roots. Apes,
particularly bonobos (e.g., Segerdahl, Fields, & Savage-Rumbaugh, 2006) who have been taught
to communicate via arbitrary symbol boards, demonstrate an ability to “read,” that is, to use icons
as symbolic markers and thus converse, albeit in basic ways, with their trainers. Monkeys show a
similar ability in assigning numerical values to arbitrary shapes so as to perform basic numerical
judgements (Diester & Nieder, 2010), and even pigeons are able to form concepts (for reviews see
11
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12 Writing: A Mosaic of New Perspectives
AU: Does Lock & Colombo, 1999; Roitblatt, 1987). Anatomical adaptations of the human upper respiratory
this mean tract towards the unique modern configuration are in place amongst early or archaic H. sapiens
200,000 to
cranial fossils, and suggest that speech was possible somewhere around 200–400k b.p. (see Lock &
400,000
years before Peters, 1999, for a review).
present? If we assume that indigenous Tasmanians, who spoke a modern form of language, possessed
PM: If their language at the time Tasmania was separated from the Australian mainland around 10,000 b.p.
so, write
(rather than somehow invented it subsequent to their isolation), then the use of modern, grammati-
“200,000–
400,000 cally organized, symbolic languages is at least that old (see also Mulvaney & Kamminga, 1999,
years b.p.” p. 339–340: “Although there are reasons to believe that Tasmanian and south-eastern mainland
languages were related to each other before the creation of Bass Strait, all that linguists are able to
say about the modern languages is that their sound system is not particularly different.”)
While there is no direct evidence for grammatical, symbolic language prior to this, the original
human colonization of Australia occurred around 70,000 b.p., when Australia was still separated
by sea from the nearest land that contemporary humans lived on by about 110 kms. Some form of
maritime technology was almost certainly involved in establishing a viable population in Australia,
and it is difficult to imagine being able to coordinate a human group to plan an expedition and build
a boat without some form of language (Davidson & Noble, 1992). Some form of language, then, at
least predates writing by a long period, and was almost certainly in place by 50,000 b.p.
The same holds for visual media. “Classical” European cave art dates back to 40,000 b.p. It
is during this early Upper Paleolithic period that the full ensemble of characteristically modern
human activities emerges: finely made tools, both of stone and “new” materials such as bone and
antler; parietal art and carving; beads and jewelry; burial; long-distance movement of goods, prob-
ably through trading between groups; composite tools such as ladders, spears, and fishing nets; and
so on. While there are scattered reports for earlier examples of “artistic” and “symbolic” works (e.g.,
Henshilwood, 2007; Mcbrearty & Brooks, 1999) point to much earlier, isolated examples of many
of these typically modern activities in the African record, it is somewhere between 50,000 and
30,000 b.p. in Europe that all of the characteristically modern behavioral suites are simultaneously
found, a period aptly termed “the creative explosion” by Pfeiffer (1982). The technological skills for
creating or recording representational visual signs were, like language, thus established well before
the two were combined into script-based media.
The historical achievement of literacy was a very rare event. Western maritime cultures obtained
first-hand global knowledge of the planet by the end of the eighteenth century. By then, very few
places, for example, the Malvinas/Falkland Islands, the Galapagos Islands, Ascension Island,
Bermuda, and the Seychelles, had been found to be uninhabited at first contact. Some of these “des-
ert” islands, such as the Pacific islands of Pitcairn, Christmas, and Norfolk, have since been shown
to have been inhabited previously in prehistoric times. Being remote did not imply being “empty” of
humans: Hawai’i, Easter Island, and New Zealand are all remote, but all were inhabited by humans
by the time of the original Western explorations. All these cultures were illiterate, but otherwise
“modern” in the sense we have just outlined. However, their socio-political structures were also less
elaborated than those of the urban cultures of the explorers. This is a prima facie indication that the
construction of writing technologies is intimately bound to changes in the forms of human socio-
cultural organization.
The emergence of the modern ensemble of activities at around 50,000–40,000 b.p. in Europe is
marked by a simultaneous reorganization of social life, thereby creating new possibilities that could
bootstrap the foundational potentialities of cognitive life. Social life prior to this transition may be
inferred to have moved away from its earlier characters towards more modern forms, but is still not
fully modern. There is some evidence for the use of fire, and perhaps cooking, as early as 700,000
b.p. at Zhoukoudian (Stringer, 1985), but there is no substantive evidence for hearths, storage pits, or
architecture. There is some evidence for true hunting, if only of smaller mammals (Binford, 1985;
Shipman & Rose, 1983), even if scavenging were still a major source of animal remains. Particular
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The Cultural Evolution of Written Language and Its Effects 13
sites appear to have been used for particular activities (e.g., de Lumley, 1975; Freeman, 1975; Keller,
1973). The picture here is complex to interpret, and the evidence is scanty. Gamble concludes his
review of this period by noting that:
It leaves an overwhelming impression of spontaneous, highly episodic behavior where stone tools were
made to do the job in hand before being dropped and their makers moving on. … What is lacking … is
any indication for such modern practices as detailed planning, widespread contracts, or elaborate social
display. There is no physical evidence of storage, raw materials all come from within a radius of 50 km,
and usually less than 5 km of the sites where they were used and any form of art, ornament, jewellery,
or decoration is entirely absent (Gamble, 1993, p. 138–9, 143).
After the transition at 50,000–40,000 b.p., the evidence indicates changes in social organization in
two directions.
First, there is an increasing spatial and temporal extension that elaborates and sustains extended
kinship networks, communication beyond face-to-face encounters, and exchange of information
beyond the here and now, the organization of logistical economic strategies, and the extension of
the time depth of adaptation to environmental fluctuations (Whallon, 1989, p. 451). The everyday
world of informed human experience became “bigger” in both space and time. In this sense, then,
natural human memory became challenged, with the consequence that human groups who could
encode, recall, utilizes, and communicate all this additional shared information more effectively
than other groups would have a marked advantage. Second, there is intensification in the organiza-
tion of the immediate social environment. Built shelters and semipermanent “villages” are found
after 40,000 b.p., not before (see, for example, Gamble, 1986).
At first sight it might seem paradoxical, but these two changes reinforce each other with respect
to the effects they can have in elaborating a linguistically mediated awareness of the world. Both
increasingly break the commonalities of shared knowledge between an individual and others: on AU: Year
changed
the one hand in the meeting of “strangers,” and on the other, in the “creation” of strangers through to match
the implicit demarcation of the “public” and “private” within the permanent society (see, for exam- references,
ple, Wilson, 1989, for a fuller discussion). Property is accumulated, and there is more to keep please
track of; property is exchanged and bartered, and equivalent values thus need to be established and confirm.
remembered.
In both instances, information becomes more valuable, and information in an oral culture is
inherently fragile, and thus difficult to retain both within an individual’s lifetime and across gen- AU: Not in
erations. Speech is transient, unmediated memory is unreliable, and here is shadowed the potential references
importance of any permanent system of retaining clues to what is known about both the natural list. 1996 in
references.
world and the socio-cultural world that is being created as it is lived. Marking the world as a way of Please
organizing activities and keeping track of them is thus a major factor in the slow shift toward writ- change year
ing. Barton and Hamilton (1999) list six activities that were precursors to the eventual construction if incorrect
of writing systems: or add this
reference to
the list.
1. Expressive and ritualistic markings of cave paintings and carvings: The interpretation of
Palaeolithic cave art is notoriously difficult, if not impossible. What we can note is that in
the classical European period of cave art (as well as Australian rock art) there is a marked
degree of realism between the image and the object it represents. It is very easy, for exam-
ple, to unmistakeably distinguish horses from bison in the Lascaux cave. Ibex, deer, mam-
moths, and so on are all clearly recognizable. Much cave art is very inaccessible in deep
caves, and would have needed an arduous expedition to both create and subsequently view.
As Bahn and Vertut (1988, p. 110) note, the flickering flame of a torch that was needed to
see them has the effect of making the animals portrayed in these locations appear to move.
Reaching the site after a long subterranean crawl through dark tunnels and then being con-
fronted with hordes of realistic, flickering images must have been a powerful experience,
Y119829_C002.indd 13 8/24/11 9:54 AM

and likely accompanied by a narrative that would leave a lasting impression. Despite the
problems of interpretation, it does seem likely that visual image and narrative were inter-
twined in these situations, presaging the story-telling ability that writing possesses.
2. Tallying: A widespread prearithmetic system of keeping track of time and objects, based
on a one-to-one correspondence between marks and items. Marshack (1972) considers that
quite early (30,000 b.p.) on, French bone artifacts may have acted as rudimentary lunar
calendars.
3. Property markings and totems: Visual signs reflect the need to identify interpersonal
relations and property. Prehistoric examples are rare, but jewelry has a deep time depth,
and is a clear way of symbolically conveying status and wealth. Flags, brands, tattoos, and
so on contain incipient properties of writing in that conventional images convey abstract
information directly.
4. Tokens: Tokens are very close to tallies and property marks, and are quite late develop-
ments (10,000 b.p.) associated with a level of political and economic organization in which
trade is well developed and surpluses need to be kept track of whilst in storage. We will
discuss these further, as they may well have been pivotal in the development of early cunei-
form systems of writing.
5. Mnemonic devices: Practically all the items listed here function as mnemonic devices, tally-
ing being an example of an externalized memory system. Some of the more complex items,
however, show a great degree of sophistication. A prime example is the Montgaudier baton
(10,000 b.p.) (Figure 2.1), an engraved antler segment from well inland in southwest France.
The baton depicts particular spring plants, notably a flower which can be identified.
In addition, in this view, a bull and cow seal are depicted, along with a male salmon with
the characteristic hooked bottom jaw it develops having begun its spawning run upstream
from the Atlantic. The salmon’s run coincides with seals congregating on beaches for their
breeding system, both occurring in spring. The baton can thus be “read” as containing the
message: “When these plants appear it is time to journey down river to the sea for good
hunting.”
6. Pictographic or purely ideographic sequences (narratives): Boone (1994) provides a num-
ber of examples from an Aztec codex showing a journey from a homeland, with travel
depicted by footprints connecting the start of the journey (on the left) to its destination (on
the right) (Figure 2.2). Similar examples were common among native North Americans,
and are still in use today in kitset construction manuals and so on.
While all these examples that predate modern systems of literacy bear a relation to reading and
writing, in that they provide frameworks for recording information and the suggestive outlines of
narrative, none of them attempt to represent speech. They can be translated into speech, but that
speech is not indicated in the text. In this sense, these early systems can be thought of as having
an existence independent of any particular language: the message of the Montgaudier baton can be
recovered by a German, Italian, French, or Chinese speaker. There thus arise two questions: First,
why might any social group go beyond these functional systems, that is, why might anyone want to
code speech? Second, how was it done?
FIGURE 2.1 The Montgaudier baton (10,000 b.p.).
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FIGURE 2.2 An Aztec codex.
We suggest the answer to the first question is quite simple: nobody set out with this intention.
Writing emerged as an unintended consequence of other recording practices. This answer is sug-
gested from two sources. On the one hand it is difficult to gain any tractable handle on why humans
living a predominantly hunter-gatherer lifestyle would ever want to write speech down. We tend
to forget that we are dealing not just with a preliterate group of cultures, but pretheoretical ones at
the same time. What use could writing have been? The other source is the record itself, which we
turn to in the next section. Basically, writing systems have a haphazard historical origin and arise
as a consequence of aiming to do other things, out of which the possibility of writing down speech
bootstrapped itself into existence, and then, as socio-cultural structures changed, found various
uses in political systems that had themselves not existed at the start of the process. Herein lies an
important point.
In hindsight, it might seem obvious that a visual system for keeping track of ideas should be
parasitic on speech. Speech, we suggest, has attained its remarkable role in human activity because
the link between sound and meaning for fluent speakers has a remarkable immediacy which comes
easily in ontogeny. An English speaker hears what another is saying quite directly. He or she hears
“sense.” This is quite different when confronted with someone speaking a different language one is
not fluent in: he or she then hears “noise.” This phenomenological equation of sound and meaning
provides a now obvious design parameter for a writing system to exploit: provide a representational
system for speech sounds, and the meaning of them will take care of itself. A representational sys-
tem that attempts to represent meaning by some other route misses out on this preexisting synergy
between sound and meaning. But, this obvious “solution” was a long time coming, and in one sense,
gives the appearance of being opaque to human access. However, the issue is also that, at the out-
set, the problem of representing precise narratives was trivial for early societies, and a nonproblem
necessarily does not motivate the creation of its solution.
The problems facing early societies were concrete rather than abstract. In these situations, visual
images are more effective, as is easily appreciated today when confronted with wanting to match a
particular shade of paint: it is far more effective to use sample color cards for selecting a match than
trying to describe exactly what shade of blue one is interested in. The principle applies in the case
of, for example, the Montgaudier baton. Preserving the image of the particular plant that indicates
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the sealing season is more effective than formulating a precise description of that plant, or any other
way of keeping track of a season. The problem of recording precision has to arise in increasingly
precise ways and contexts before any solution to it will be assayed.
AN IMAGINATIVE HISTORY OF WRITING SYSTEMS

AU: This is Recent research (Houston, 2004, and contributors therein) indicates that we must be wary of the
1980 in the grand narratives of earlier accounts of the origins of writing that see it as a gradual elaboration
references,
please cor-
down a single path from a single origin (e.g., Gelb, 1963) towards a more and more efficient “tech-
rect year as nology,” of which the alphabet is the pinnacle, and from which a wondrous transformation of the
needed or human intellect has inexorably followed. The actual situation is more complex than this.
add this to As with any system that is elaborated over time, there are local vagaries and unpredictable devel-
the list and
delete 1980
opments that spin off down trajectories that have their own momentum. The structure of a particular
reference if language, for example, may predispose it towards one way of representing it rather than another,
appropriate. with the Japanese character system being well suited to the syllabic structural characteristics of
the Japanese language, and “better” for it than an alphabetic system. Similarly, languages that use
tone to grammatical effect would tend to a representational system that marked tone more precisely
than the way English handles it with just two abstract symbols—! and?. Again, social factors play a
large role in how literacy is used, or even restricted. For example, keeping any literate system dif-
ficult to master because of the benefits that accrue to those who have the ability to learn it can be a
factor in maintaining a valuable monopoly that self-interestedly resists any motivation to make the
system “easier.” The same is true for any theory that holds alphabetic literacy to be a magic bullet
that transforms human cognitive abilities: it is more the case that any possibilities that might accrue
from literacy depend on the social practices that literacy is used for. Writing a shopping list or read-
ing a train timetable are quite different activities as compared to writing a philosophical treatise,
and they are embedded in different social practices.
That said, we believe there is merit in putting forward an “imaginary history” of the develop-
ments that led to the construction of writing systems, particularly the alphabetic one adopted by
Indo-European cultures. The merit is that it provides a broad brush picture from which some gener-
alizations are possible. We take the view here that while “just-so” stories have a shady reputation in
the evolutionary literature, the fact of the matter is that the actual course traversed in the invention
of writing is itself a just-so accomplishment. That is, what actually happened could have been quite
different, and it is important to be aware that the course that was followed was just one possible
variation on a common set of themes.
A number of important points will emerge from our imaginary history. First, the prime function
that writing has today—to graphically represent speech—was not the problem space it emerged
from. Prewriting activities and notations such as those we noted in the previous section were aimed
at countering the vagaries of unmediated human memory: to keep track of “things,” such as rough
calendrical information that is important to a way of life. Writing down speech was not the problem
that early notation systems were looking to solve, but access to this adaptive space emerged as a
result of very different intentions.
Second, this quality of the emergence of qualitatively different and new activities is an impor-
tant characteristic of the historical path towards writing speech down. Capturing speech requires a
quite sophisticated mental operation in an abstract problem space rather than a concrete one. This is
similar to the problem at the root of symbolically mediated mathematical skills: creating an abstract
notion of quantities or numbers. In fact, third, there is an intimate relation between mathematical
and writing skills, with the later emerging from the former, and the emergence of mathematical
problems creates a mind space that enables written literacy. Fourth, these problem spaces arise as
unintended consequences of social practices, problems that are co-opted in other modalities to
bootstrap solutions to previously unimagined purposes with far-reaching consequences.
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TOWARDS WRITING
Tally sticks date back to before 10,000 b.p. (Marshack, 1972). They are protonumerical, in that they
are usable without any abstract notion of number, relying on a concrete one-to-one correspondence
between mark and object. It is when economies became more important to the functional organiza-
tion of prehistoric societies that artifacts appear that can be interpreted as constituting the origins of
the mathematical and writing systems used today. Subsequently, two additional factors will need to
be mixed into our account: urbanization and institutional religion.
The basic explanatory framework has been set out by Schmandt-Besserat (1978, 1980, 1981,
1982, 1996; see also this volume, chapter ?). Schmandt-Besserat’s claim is that around 10,000 b.p. in AU: Please
the Near East people began to trade over quite long distances. In order to not be cheated by interme- update.
diaries, a man trading five cows over a long distance would put five small clay models of cows inside
containers called bullae, and then seal them up. Part of the contract was that the person delivering
the cows to their final destination would take a container with them and deliver it in its unbroken
state. On arrival, the new owner could break open the container and check that the number of items
consigned for transport had been delivered.
A trade system can get more complex once a “merchant” establishes a storehouse. People can
keep records with these bullae as to what they have in stock, who owes whom what, and so on. But,
the problem with the original system is that it is necessary to keep breaking the bullae to find out
what is inside them. The solution? Stamp impressions of the contents into the wet clay of the bul-
lae when the items are enclosed in it. Add a stamp for your name, and cover the entire surface of
the bulla with these marks to make sure that no one can make a little hole in it and take any of the
tokens out of it so as to cheat the system. Some examples of tokens are shown in Figure 2.3. There
were probably many variations that did not persist or spread. Notice how many of them are begin-
ning to be quite abstract, in that it is difficult to guess what commodities they represent. This is an
important step, for where the count stones are symbols for objects, the impressions are symbols for
symbols.
This is all a bit cumbersome, so flatten out a piece of clay and impress two-dimensional pictures
of the original models into it. Stop making the pictures realistic, by beginning to stylize them for
speed of writing, the style being dictated by the form of the impressing tool, the stylus. The result is
familiar: lots of cuneiform marks impressed into clay tablets (Figure 2.4).
One can visualize the process. At first the innovation flourished because of its convenience: anyone could
read what tokens [count stones] a bulla contained without destroying the envelope and its seal impressions.
What then happened was virtually inevitable, and the substitution of two dimensional portrayals of the
tokens for the tokens themselves would seem to have been the crucial link between the archaic recording
system and writing (Schmandt-Besserat, 1978, p. 47).
FIGURE 2.3 Sumerian bullae from 3rd millenium BC.
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FIGURE 2.4 2D cuneiform.
While this scenario is hypothetical, it gains some credence from the similarities between the
form of the three-dimensional tokens and the two-dimensional written symbols of early Sumerian
writing (see Gaur, 1984, for examples). At the same time, a coordination is set up between the writ-
ten sign, the object it represents, and the word in the language for it, such that a link is made at the
level of symbol standing for symbol : pictogram/count token : pictogram/word. Now, pictograms
are well suited to represent objects which (1) have a visible form, (2) a lasting duration, and (3) can
be reproduced in drawing. But language provides a means for communicating further aspects of
reality: (1) qualities, (2) abstract ideas and positions, (3) movements and conditions, (4) complex
facts and relations, and (5) “operative units” (prefixes, suffixes, articles, demonstratives, etc.). Thus,
a new problem situation is set up, to be dealt with only when social conditions raise the problem of
representing and conveying information that speech can already encode beyond the practical sphere
of accounting.
When this became desirable, ideographic systems reacted in general through using certain kinds
of analogy which “abstract and transfer features of the primary writing form, i.e., the ideograms”
themselves (Ehlich, 1983, p. 111):
Thus the problem solution consisted in systematically guiding the reader’s association (with a certain
degree of arbitrariness): Guiding the reader’s associating aims towards standardized identification pat-
terns which enable the reader (a) to recognize the pictogram or ideogram does not stand for what it
directly represents and (b) to choose, in an appropriate way, a related alternative (ibid, p. 112).
One solution was to combine pictograms, for example, so that “bread” plus “mouth” represents
“eating.” An alternative was to rely on analogy, such as to represent “cool” by water running from
AU: Please a pitcher, or “the south” by a lily that grows there. A further solution space that could be tried is to
review this indicate the sound of the intended word.
sentence for
sense. Do
you mean, TOWARDS REPRESENTING SPEECH
“How might
that rep- The first attempts to include sound marking made the representational system very complicated.
resent that For example, supposing one were at a point where one had a picture symbol that originally stood
which was
meant to be for “god,” but which could now mean “heaven” or “religion” as well. How might that which was
specified”? meant be specified? It is possible to rely on the context to enable the solution, but this has problems
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(discussed next). One of the first ad hoc solutions was to add a second pictogram or symbol to the
first, a symbol that suggested which idea was meant in the following way: original + gate = god;
original + hat = heaven; and original + rope = religion. Thus, the second symbol gives a clue as to
the sound needed to read between the three possibilities the reader is confronted with. This makes
reading even simple things a bit like doing a cryptic crossword in a newspaper, and is neither a very
transparent nor easily mastered system. But, it at least gives access to the idea that one could write
down the spoken language sounds that represent ideas and objects, rather than trying to represent
those things directly. The dawning of this possibility brings closer, what we now think of as writing
in the West: an encoding of speech sounds.
However, unambiguously encoding speech is not a simple task. People nowadays are so used to
reading that it often appears to them intuitively obvious that the words written as “keep,” “kool,”
and “kat” all start with the same sound, represented by the consonantal letter “k.” But, in actu-
ality, the “k” sound comes out differently when each of these words is said, because its place
of articulation in our mouths is determined before it is produced by the shape our mouths have
already assumed to pronounce the following vowel. In fact, it is only possible to think in terms of
speech having vowels and consonants because someone invented these categories, and did so after
a number of historical false starts. It is a theoretical insight of the first order, but not one without
precedent.
The first move was to represent each syllable, so that each of the following, bah, bay, beh, bee,
bih, bi, bo, boo, buh, and so on, was written differently. This might code speech effectively, but it
makes the number of symbols one needs to learn extremely large. At the same time this is also to
shy away from the problem that “speech” is only really standardized when it is written down: we all
say the “same” word quite differently because of our accents. New Zealand children are regularly
baffled, for example, as to why what sounds like “igz” is written as “eggs.” One solution to all this
is to simplify the system as much as possible. Have one symbol for all the above “b”s, and leave out
the hard words anyway, on the assumption that it will do. Nw tht cn mk fr qut dffclt tsk. But this is
just about manageable unless the writer wants to be really clear and specific in what he or she wants
to say—and why might he or she want to do that? There might not be a need to be specific in a
small-scale society that trades in high degrees of common, shared background knowledge, since the
contextual knowledge needed to guide reading is widely distributed amongst members of society. In
fact, it is only necessary to be specific in the text itself when trying to encode what everyone doesn’t
know. It would, then, be a problem in trying to work out from inherited scriptures what God actually
said one should and shouldn’t do.
In the end, through modifications introduced for the writing of Semitic languages, a full alpha-
betic system was eventually put in place by the Greeks. The alphabet relies on the making of an
abstract, theoretical distinction between consonants and vowels, a distinction that is not available in
speech as it is spoken. The skill necessary to do this was itself something that emerged, in this prob-
lem space, out of confronting possible solutions to practical socio-economic problems. Alphabetic
writing makes reading easier, in the sense that there are a reduced number of symbols to learn that
can explicitly code meaning.
Changizi and Shimojo (2005) argue that ease of reading was the primary force driving changes
in writing systems. This ease of reading meant more people could become literate, and different
available accounts of events could be inspected visually, with the written medium acting as the
memorial record, open to public scrutiny, rather than everyone having to rely on their own memory
of what someone had said or done. Not only can “history” be set straight, a task Herodotus began,
but so can the statements made in the present, as Aristotle showed in his analyses of the relations
pertaining between different statements. It has been claimed that we owe his invention of the syl-
logism and the bases of modern systems of logical inference to writing:
The kinds of analysis involved in the syllogism and in the other forms of logical procedure are clearly
dependent upon writing (Goody & Watt, 1968, p. 68).
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FROM COUNTING TO FINANCE

The long-distance trade that Schmandt-Bessaret proposes as a motivation for the bullae system to
be devised goes beyond just counting: it represents a contract between people. Contracts are codifi-
cations of obligations. Obligations can be handled face-to-face in small-scale societies by a human
memory system honed to the needs of a system of reciprocal altruism and cheater detection (e.g.,
Cosmides, 1989). With the advent of urbanization, unmediated memory is no longer sufficient. At
its height, about 5000 b.p., the walled Sumerian city of Uruk had around 10,000 inhabitants. The
economy appears to have been based on animal husbandry and agriculture, with supplementary
fishing and hunting. There were numerous specialized trades supporting these activities. A number
of problem spaces result from this form of social organization.
First, the amount of food needed to sustain such a geographically concentrated population pro-
duces a new set of logistics. Both raw (e.g., meat, fish, vegetables) and processed foods (e.g., bread)
are inherently perishable (refrigeration was way off in the Sumerian future, though preservation
through pickling and curing was certainly possible at that time). Food needed to be distributed on
a regular basis, and the potlatch system that sufficed for smaller-scale societies would clearly not
work. Some other form of redistribution was required. Second, while a system of reciprocal altru-
ism can work amongst a small-scale society in which everyone knows each other, human memory
can in no way cope with the obligations created in a “friendship group” of 10,000. Some way of
keeping track of obligations was required.
Third, in small-scale societies without a division of labor, everyone can do everything necessary
for the maintenance of social life: favors could thus be repaid in kind. But in a large-scale, differen-
tiated social organization this is not possible. Some formalized exchange system is needed. A barter
system is one solution, but this becomes complicated in a society in which food is perishable while
manufactured goods are substantial, and perishable food becomes of value only if (1) there is more
of it than meets the needs of its producer and (2) there is an artifact that enables its transport.
For example, suppose one has three cows and one dependent child. Three cows produce far more
milk than two people can consume. The surplus has no value unless either the milk can be put in a pail
and transported to somewhere that it can be exchanged (for a pail, perhaps; so how much milk, which
is perishable, would a pail maker want to “sell” or “hire” for a pail, which is permanent, given that he
can’t store milk for very long, either), or the milk can be turned into cheese, which has a longer shelf
life. Consequently, with the emergence of cities and urban life there simultaneously arise problems
involving time (perishability versus permanence), space (distribution), how the two are to be conflated
in value that can be transferred across different items, and how to keep track of all these dealings.
Fourth, once subsistence items become commodities, they constitute valuable property. This
needs to be defensible and recordable. Defense requires nonproductive groups devoted to these
tasks: a military to protect the collective wealth and accountants to reckon individual wealth. Both
these groups need to be supported. What is a soldier worth in terms of milk or fish? A potter or
pailmaker? An accountant, even? And that is before we get to lawyers, whose social institution
represents a shift from a defense of property by force to one based on codified agreement enforced
by authority. The form of social organization we are imagining here is clearly ripe for the invention
of money: an abstract symbolic reckoning of the value of individual commodities. And recall how
value is tied in with (at least) the properties of commodities (which necessarily have a temporal
component, varying with distributional technologies; the value of crayfish in New Zealand was
minimal prior to the ability to fly them to Tokyo in 24 hours from catch to market). Time, as has
been observed, is money.
Clearly, there are incredible intellectual problems involved in solving the above issues. The prac-
tical issue appears to have been solved in Uruk through using the temple as a redistributive center
that kept the records of transactions using bullae and extracted a “tax” that enabled the upkeep of
this administrative system and the administrative authority, that is, the king, as a representative
of divine authority, and the militia and lawyers who could protect the system from internal and
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FIGURE 2.5 The Warka or Uruk Vase from the temple of the Sumerian goddess Inanna in the ancient city
of Uruk, dated to 3200-3000 BC. The three tiers of carving begin with local vegetation, and then a parade of
sheep and oxen. The middle tier portrays naked priests carrying offerings. The top tier is a full scene in which
the goddess is presented with tributes.
external threats by force if necessary. How to capture this system and explain it to the city dwellers?
A proto-writing system is useful (see Figure 2.5).
But we also need to bring in a fifth emerging problem space and its solution: how to deal with
the socially constructed conflation of time and space into the symbolic representation of value as
money. Put simply, money “value” can be accumulated (to equal wealth), because symbols are not
perishable in the same way as meat, fish, and vegetables are, but substantial in the way live animals
are, especially when symbolized by weights of silver. The natural tendency for animal numbers to
grow in a pastoral society through reproduction appears to be the analogical basis for the develop-
ment of interest that could be earned on money.
For example, if one kept 20 sheep for a year, one could expect to have, say, 30 sheep at the end of
the year. If living wealth could increase, there is no reason why inanimate tokens of symbolic wealth
could not. There are linguistic clues that this expectation analogically underwrites the invention of
monetary interest (though the actual situation is far more convoluted than we are imaginatively
portraying here; see Hudson, 2000). Thus “pecuniary” is rooted in the Latin “pecus,” meaning
flock; “capital” from the Latin “caput,” a head of livestock; “interest” in Greek was “tokos,” in Latin
“faenus”; and “mas” in Sumerian. All of these are terms for young animals, calves, and birth.
Interest thus came to be charged on money, and money existed because people believed it did,
and were able to legally enforce this belief in established practice. Thus it became necessary
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to learn how to calculate interest. There exist from this period numerous cuneiform tablets
used in teaching these calculations. One example, the tablet identified as VAT 8528, asks (see
Neugebauer, 1969; also Muroi, 1990)
If I lent one mina of silver at the rate of 12 shekels (1/60 of a mina) per year, and I received in repayment,
one talent (60 minas) and 4 minas. How long did the money accumulate?
The answer is 5 years, and appears to be worked out on the basis of an understanding of powers
to the base two, a form of logarithms (Lewy, 1947; Nemet-Nejat, 1993). Here, then, is a clear exam-
ple of how social organization can create problem spaces that bring together literacy, numeracy,
and teaching devices—abstract ideas and symbolic operations—into social practices and cognitive
operations that would otherwise be impossible to either imagine or accomplish.
In our imaginary history, we see these developments as all intertwined. That is, it is within this
nexus that writing gains its impetus, and through an incremental and piecemeal process of dealing
with new problem spaces that are bootstrapped into existence, literacy and numeracy feed back into
the present to provide the means for their further development.
THE EVOLUTION OF WRITING SYSTEMS

AU: Year Having sketched a trajectory of how writing systems emerged, we can now turn to the question of
changed
to match cultural evolution. Can we regard the elaboration of writing systems to be an evolutionary process?
references, Many authors argue that human culture, at least in many instances, evolves by Darwinian natural
please selection (e.g., Cavelli-Sforza & Feldman, 1981; Boyd & Richerson, 1985; Richerson & Boyd, 2005;
confirm. Dennett, 1995; Mesoudi et al., 2006; Shennan, 2009). Those who study writing systems have argued
whether or not writing is a case in point. Some fiercely reject the idea (e.g., Barton & Hamilton, 1996;
Houston, 2004). Others have been more sympathetic (e.g., Trigger, 2004; Changizi & Shimojo, 2005;
Skelton 2008). At times debate has been ill-conceived because of confusion over what the notion of a
writing system “evolving” actually entails. There are at least three distinct theses intended when it is
suggested that writing systems evolved: First, it may merely be meant that culture changes over time.
This sort of evolution is surely trivially true. Second, it might be meant that some goal-oriented or
progressive process is at work. Third, and as it is conceived in this chapter, cultural evolution is at
least in some instances a Darwinian process. That is, culture evolves when there is descent of cul-
tural traits, with modification, modulated by a process of selection.
DARWINIAN CULTURAL EVOLUTION

It certainly appears that we can construct an explanation for the transition from the preconditions
for writing described at the beginning of this chapter, through to the emergence of writing proper,
which is driven by the fact that writing is good for our survival. Our lineage’s visual-iconic sys-
tem and auditory-symbolic system were pushed, in conjunction with available technologies, by the
evolutionary problems of coordinating individual social and economic activities in an increasingly
complex milieu. The writing systems that emerged look like mechanisms for solving these prob-
lems. Evolutionary mechanisms of this sort are known as adaptations.
However, in order to assert that some piece of culture has evolved in Darwinian fashion we either
must be able to identify cultural replicators (Dawkins, 1976; Hodgson & Knudsen, forthcoming) or
we must be able to demonstrate that the population of cultural things in question exhibits the right
sort of variation, inheritance pattern and that selective pressures are in operation. To quote Godfrey-
Smith (2009), a Darwinian population is one that exhibits, “variation in character, which leads to
differences in reproductive output (differences in how much or how quickly individuals reproduce),
and which is inherited to some extent” (p. 39). Reproductive output in cases of cultural evolution
pertains to the spread of cultural artifacts or traits, not necessarily to human reproductive success.
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In the case of writing systems this could be reproduction of characters, scribal hands, even whole
systems. The “individuals” can be pieces of material culture.
Four preliminary points are important: First, it is not necessary that all cultural features evolve
according to Darwinian principles in order that some cultural features arise through this process.
Second, Darwinian evolution of culture does not entail some linear or necessary march from sav-
agery to barbarism to civilization as described by outdated and Eurocentric arguments such as
Tylor’s (1871). Third, Darwinian cultural evolution does not mean that culture must transform
toward some goal, optimal, or ideal. Darwinian evolution does not necessitate the normative notion
of “progress.” Sterelny (2007) describes some particularly vivid examples of cultural evolution
resulting in disaster. Also, Dawkins (1976) outlines the game-theoretic mechanisms by which popu-
lations may hit on evolutionarily stable traits that lead inevitably to extinction.
Fourth, contemporary evolutionary theory has been enriched by the concept of niche construc-
tion (Odling-Smee, Laland, & Feldman, 2003). The basic idea here is that as reproducing entities
evolve, so do their environments. Thus, as an organism evolves, it changes the environment from
one in which it was absent to one in which it is present. The presence of an organism itself can
provide a possible niche, which acts as the selective environment for another organism. In this
way, once plants evolve, they provide an environment in which herbivorous animals become pos-
sible, and specify what characteristics those herbivores need to exhibit to fill those niches. What is
selected “naturally” may thus be based on random mutations in a genetically reproducing system,
but the form that is selected is by no means random. In this sense, then, we can talk about learn-
ing as a potentially evolutionary system, in which an array of novel responses to a situation might
be generated by an animal, from which useful ones are winnowed out by “natural” selection and
retained. Some cultural change likewise fits this characterization while at the same time not relying
on genetic mechanisms. It is this sense that many nowadays use the term “Darwinian evolution” as
a descriptive and explanatory framework.
We propose that writing systems have evolved from precursor systems and traits in stepwise
fashion according to general principles of variation and selection. This evolution has been of the
writing technologies themselves and this evolution is independent of, though intimately tied to, any
evolution of human agents or human psychology.
Any Darwinian account of a cultural trait must provide some description of the actual processes
that instantiate the role of the abstract Darwinian mechanisms. So an account of the mechanism
producing a supply of variation (e.g., scribe copying error, human creativity, etc.) must be coupled
with an account of the inheritance mechanism (e.g., master-apprentice teaching, hybrid learning
constrained by environmental context, rote learning of texts, etc). We can then link a general-
ized theory of selection to a specific account of the selective pressures on the technology of inter-
est (e.g., human psychological preferences, the supply of raw materials, political or social norms,
etc). Darwinian theory may then provide an ultimate explanation for the persistence of the suite of
“proximate” causes.
BUILDING THE ANCESTRAL TREE

Many features of writing systems suggest immediate parallels with evolving systems. It is estimated
that more than 10% of cuneiform texts are lexical texts, or instructions for future scribes to learn
and use the system accurately (Cooper, 2004). Genes, of course, have a host of associated cellular
copying machinery, which they need in order to be perpetuated. The fact that writing systems are
inherited in a fashion that means they are necessarily recorded in external media and are highly
conservative, which makes them good candidates for evolutionary analysis. Evolution does not nec-
essarily proceed in gradualistic or one-directional fashion. We often see step-wise bursts of rapid
change (Gould, 2002). This is apparent, too, in the history of writing (Houston, 2004, p. 6).
Trigger (2004) provides a diagram (reproduced as Figure 2.6) showing the historical relatedness
of various scripts. Inspection of these relationships immediately suggests the sort of patterning seen
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Cherokee
2000
North Indian scripts

South Indian scripts
Manchu
Kurdish
Vai
Honku1
Mongol
Khmer
Roman scripts
Aztec-mixtec
Hebrew
Ethiopic
1500
Tangut
Armenian
Cyrillic
Uyghur
Coptic
Arabic
Japanese
1000
Maya
Korean
Runic
Greek
Ogam
Sogdian
Epl-Olmec
500
West Iranian
Nabatean
Aramaic
Meroitic
Babylonian/assyrian
AC
Brahmi
BC
Zapotec
Phoenician
Chinese
Old South Arabian
500
Olmec(old)
Urartian
Ancient egyptian
Elamito
1000
Northern linear
Ugaritic
Hittito
1500
Hurrian
Proto-semitic
Akkadian
2000
Sumerian
2500
Proto-Cupeiform
Phonographic scripts
3000 Alphabet
Alphasyllabary
Consonantary
Syllabary
3500 Logophonic scripts
Logosyllabic
Logosyllabic with heavy reliance on syllabary
Logoconsonantal
Logographic
Unclassified
Semasiologographic recording
Indirect influence
FIGURE 2.6 Historical Relations between Scripts. This figure represents the origins and radiations of the
various written scripts. Note that writing originated independently in several locations. What followed was a
surge in number and variety of scripts analogous to the diversification observed when new organisms emerge
and adapt to a suite of different niches. Note in particular that the burst of alphabetic scripts appears to coin-
cide with the extinction of logosyllabic scripts, and this may hint at evidence of competition.
in biological “family trees” (or “phylogenies”) of organic relatedness. Furthermore, languages and
writing systems are intimately linked. It has been shown that human languages evolve by natural
selection and are amenable to analysis using evolutionary tools (see Gray, 2005). Writing systems
therefore seem like another ideal candidate for explanation in the same fashion. What needs to be
established is that there is in fact descent, with modification and natural selection.
Phylogenetic Systematics
Evolutionary phylogenetic systematics is a methodology developed to analyze biological lineages
and to establish evolutionary relationships. We can collect data about traits. Different traits can
then be systematically inspected and their differences categorized. For example, monkeys have
tails, humans do not; this is a trait difference. Systematic trait differences can be analyzed using
algorithmic methods to generate “family trees,” or cladograms, and scientifically test the conclu-
sions of traditional paleontological methods. Phylogenetic systematics is now becoming popular for
the analysis of cultural change over time and has been applied to such lineages as Iranian woven
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artifacts (Tehrani & Collard, 2009) and to compare the coevolution of European cutlery (Riede,
2009). It also has a significant history of use in the analysis of language (see, e.g., Gray, 2005).
When using phylogenetics we must select taxa. Taxa are groups of things taken to be units of
interest. These could be organisms, populations, or species, for example. Whether the relations
between scripts suggested by Trigger (2004) actually exist can be formally tested using this tool
from evolutionary biology.
Ensuring that a script survives necessitates teachers and apprentices (Houston 2004). Scripts are
inherited through teaching and learning and the nuances of particular scribes supply a source of
variation into the machinery of script transmission. Skelton (2008) applies phylogenetic systematics
to written language. Because evolutionary variation happens at the level of the various users of a
writing system, Skelton chooses scribal hands for his taxa in investigating the origins of Linear B.
Linear B was a writing system used to keep economic records on clay tablets on the Greek main-
land and on Crete between 1450 and 1200 BCE. Skelton notes that palaeographic techniques, in
which differences in sign form are used to judge how closely two writing traditions are related, have
been employed in discussions of the evolution of Linear B. However Skelton then adapts phylogenetic
systematics to evaluate this paleographic evidence. Taking the nuances of scribal hands as data and
applying the algorithms of phylogenetic systematics he infers the relations between scribal hands.
Overall Skelton finds that when the data are analyzed with criterion for finding the optimally
parsimonious phylogenetic tree (Figure 2.7), the tree produced is largely consistent with the histori-
cal context of Linear B. This includes lending support to the theory that two scribal hands found
at Pylos predate other materials from that site. The optimally parsimonious tree is the tree relation
Hagia triada linear A

19 Zakros linear A
Pylose 91
RCT 124-B
RCT 124-R
29 Knossos 101
36 KN V52
59 Knossos 103
57 80 Knossos 115
40 Khania 115
Knossos 117
Knossos 112a
Knossos 118
Knossos 141
30 Mycenae 51
90 52 45 Mycenae 61
11 Mycenae 57
12 22 Thebes 304
31 Thebes 305
Mycenae 52
32 13
Thebes 303
38 Pylos 26
82 Pylos 32
72 Pylos 1
79 Pylos 2
<5 82
70 Pylos 3
71 68 Kafkania pebble
49 38 Pylos 23
18 Pylos 21
90
Pylos 12
Pylos 43
Pylos 41
My Ui 2
36 Knossos 104
Knossos 111
RCT 124-S
Pylos 13
Khania linear A
Tree length = 291.80323, Cl excluding uniformative characters = 0.4794
HI excluding uniformative characters = 0.5206, retention index (RI) = 0.6462
Rescaled consistency index (RC) = 0.3190
FIGURE 2.7 The most parsimonious phylogenetic reconstruction of Linear B.
Y119829_C002.indd 25 8/24/11 9:54 AM

between different scribal hands that posits the least evolutionary changes to move from an ancestral
trait to a more recent one (i.e., novel traits are gained the least number of times).
For the most part, all taxa from a particular site group together, and branching occurs in the order of
the archaeological dates of each site … analysis supports the hypothesis that Hands 13 and 91 date to
an earlier time period than the rest of the material from Pylos (Skelton, 2008, p. 171).
The fact that phylogenetic systematic analysis agrees with the archaeological hypotheses suggests
that these two methods of investigation are arriving at similar conclusions. This is inconsistent with
claims that evolutionary analysis of writing systems is a poor way to explain these processes.
It seems that writing systems are inherited and during the process of descent they may be modi-
fied in various ways. On the one hand phylogenetic analysis assumes descent with modification, but
the quantitative strength of the fit of the most parsimonious tree can lend support to the hypothesis
of inheritance in particular cases.
SELECTION AND FITNESS

Without natural selection descent with modification is not Darwinian evolution. Selection plays a
dominant and central role in all abstract conceptions of Darwinian processes. Evolution is all about
the interaction between an individual or population and its environment. From the genes’ point of
view (a perspective on evolution famously popularized by Dawkins 1976) the selective pressures
come from the nature of rival genes, the organisms in the environment, particulars of ecology and
habitat, and the supply of particular resources. From the point of view of a writing system, selective
pressures occur due to particulars of the human visual apparatus and human psychology, the nature
of material culture, the existence of nurturing or hostile political or social contexts, and competi-
tion from rival writing systems. Even those who oppose the notion of evolution in writing systems
can’t help but use telling language in this context, “as syllabic systems interact with the structure of
the spoken language they are trying to capture they adapt themselves through a variety of devices”
(Barton & Hamilton, 1996, p. 793, emphasis added).
Natural selection is neutral as to how variation in writing systems arises. Whether by mistakes
by scribes, artistic flair, or systematic planning, if a characteristic of a writing system enhances
the likelihood that that system will be inherited, then it is retained over time. We already alluded
to the unintended consequences reinforcing writing systems in the previous section, “Building the
Ancestral Tree.” It is likely, also, that clearer pictogram combinations, for example, would tend to
persist. What we need to do is to provide a rich and detailed story of how selection has shaped writ-
ing systems over time. There are many potential selective mechanisms operating that may tend to
direct the evolution of writing systems, or favor one system over another. These include the writing
surface, how much space there is, what can be recorded, how easy it is to make the marks, the con-
text, how entrenched the system is economically or politically, the time taken to learn the system
(are there hundreds of signs or merely a handful?), how many users there are, and so on.
Also, there is the issue of the efficiency of recording and the ease of reading. “Writing systems
are under selective pressure to be easy to read and write, but there are reasons to think that the
principal pressure is for ease of reading” (Changizi & Shimojo, 2005, p. 272). This is because writ-
ten texts are often read over and over again, but only written once. Changizi and Shimojo describe
fundamental characteristics of the human visual system which they argue have been part of the
drive causing the evolution of scripts. Writing systems interact with the human visual system and
over time variations and innovations in scripts that make them easier to read will tend to persist.
Efficiency is a key feature in reading ease (and some scripts are more efficient than others). But, as
Changizi and Shimojo demonstrate, it is not true that the optimally efficient scripts are the most
readable. So scripts settle on to an evolutionary “fitness peak” (which is constrained by existing
entrenchments in the script) where efficiency aligns with nuances of human vision.
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We also see what may well be large-scale selection and extinction in writing systems. For example,
it certainly looks like the significant radiation of northern linear scripts from 500 BC to 500 AD coin-
cides with the extinction of proto-cuneiform derived logosyllabic scripts (see Figure 2.6). Whether this
was causal, and whether it was due to competition and fitness differences, is hard to confirm.
Contemporary evolutionary theory is a rich mix that respects development, the effect of con-
structed niches and contexts on evolutionary trajectories, the possibility of multiple channels of
inheritance, and many mechanisms of selection and the generation of variation. What we have is
a theoretic framework guiding us to seek explanations of the mechanisms of inheritance and the
generation of variation, with supplementary appeal to natural selection as “ultimate” explanation of
the persistence of this richness of proximate mechanisms.
AN EVOLUTIONARY “GOOD TRICK”

Descent with modification permits the inheritance and accumulation of culture. Writing systems
may be learned by subsequent generations and then altered or added to; thus, we can get “ratchet
effects” in culture and rapid accumulation of novel cultural items (Tomasello, 1999). But writing
systems also become a part of the developmental environment of subsequent generations. Children
born into a world partly constituted by accumulating and somewhat diverse writings experience
a novel developmental context in each generation. It seems likely that the very presence of some
primitive signs and writings, which arose through variation, inheritance, and natural selection, also
provided the basis for a cognitive developmental ratchet. We discuss this in the next section.
Such ratchet effects are worth remembering when trying to understand whether the origins of
writing led to dramatic social, economic, and cognitive change, or whether writing systems were
the result of such change (Barton & Hamilton, 1996, p. 808). The answer is probably both. Writing
systems arising from necessity and drive changes in the developmental context, which then drives
further elaboration of writing and social changes, thus providing heritable variation for selection to
act upon. There are important synergies between evolution and development.
It seems almost inevitable that writing systems of some sort will evolve out of the precursor
technologies and psychological traits we described in “Building the Ancestral Tree,” given a few
general principles of variation, inheritance, and the selective challenges described in the previous
section, “Selection and Fitness.” Evolutionary theory would seem to predict that some method for
keeping track of complex, adaptively important information across time and space would emerge.
Writing in this sense is an evolutionary “good trick” (Dennett, 1995).
DOES WRITING LEAD TO COGNITIVE CHANGE?

At the outset we suggested that there are two questions that often polarize the literature. We have
argued that the emergence of writing is indeed appropriately seen as a case of Darwinian evolu-
tion, and we now address the issue of whether the origins of writing signaled a cognitive change.
Human minds have clearly been evolving in parallel with the evolution of writing systems. But, it
will become clear in this section that human cognitive evolution may result from the evolution of
technologies like writing and does not always depend on genetic evolution.
Vygotsky (1962) argued that language influences the higher psychological processes. If this is
so then there seems to be “an a priori case for assuming that subsequent changes in the means and
modes of communication would affect cognitive processes in parallel ways” (Goody, 1987, p. 260).
A similar line has been taken by McLuhan (1962, 1964), and by his student Logan (1986), who
makes very strong claims for the cognitive consequences of literacy, particularly the alphabetic
system of writing. These claims need to be approached carefully. For example, multiplication is
much more easily conducted with the Arabic as opposed to the Roman system of notating numbers.
But easier doesn’t mean different: both systems enable the same underlying cognitive process—the
manipulation of symbols for arithmetic purposes. Similarly, the fact that it is much more difficult
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to organize a dictionary of Chinese characters than alphabetic words does not imply that there are
different cognitive processes involved in devising an organizational framework.
On the other hand, there do appear to be clear biases amongst occidental versus oriental cultures
in the way they approach perceptual and cognitive problems (e.g., Nisbett, 2003), and to deny there
is some contribution of the differently structured writing systems in these broad groups of people
can often appear to be motivated by political correctness rather than anything else. Is it legitimate
to regard tendencies to favor different strategies in approaching problems as indicating differences
in cognitive abilities? Terminological care is needed here.
In some cases language clearly does have an effect on human cognitive development and in
enabling us to do particular sorts of things with our minds. Piraha is the language of an indigenous
South American hunter-gatherer tribe. Speakers of Piraha (which lacks consistent number words
entirely), although able to match quantities and therefore have an appreciation of the concept of exact
quantity, are unable to remember and compare cardinalities across space and time (Frank et al.,
2008; Pica et al., 2004; Everett, 2005) and therefore lack basic arithmetic skill. It also seems that
Piraha speakers do not represent exact cardinality mentally. A parallel ongoing debate exists with
respect to writing systems. Does possession of a system of writing shape the cognition of its users?
We need to clarify what is involved here. To what degree are we interested in what writing lets
us do, and to what degree in how it transforms us? There are three different positions one could take
regarding the effects of writing on cognition:
1. There is a strong claim that the appearance of writing systems, and the associated memo-
rial record that is open to public scrutiny, began to shape the cognition of those who
learned and used them. Goody and Watt (1963) claim that there are changes in the kind of
cognition and critical examination. For example, they claim that the ability to write state-
ments down allows the emergence of syllogistic reasoning. This encourages skepticism as
a routine mode of thought. The idea is that certain cognitive logics depend upon writing.
Olson (2005) suggests that this is because literacy allows metarepresentation of language.
We are able to think about language, not just with it.
2. Those who deny that writing has cognitive effects argue that symbols are merely tools that
brains can use in order to perform tasks that they could do, in theory, internally. For exam-
ple, Masterson (1972) describes 21 different uses of “paradigm” in Kuhn’s The Structure of
Scientific Revolutions, and catalogues these. Such a task would be very difficult without lit-
eracy; indeed, it may place impossible pressures upon the functions of biological memory,
but the mental processes employed are of the same kind in each case (Halverson, 1992).
3. We will defend a somewhat intermediate claim, which is that writing and written symbols
form proper parts of distributed cognitive systems and play important constitutive roles in
our thought processes.
In defense of the cognitive differences claim in item 1, Goody and Watt (1963) employ additional
examples. Goody recalls that he could not count cowrie shells as well as Ghanaian boys who are well
practiced at this task, which is routine in their daily lives. But Goody notes that he could multiply the
numbers of shells faster. The argument is supposed to be that written times tables helped him learn
and permitted rapid recall of visually inspected charts as needed. If the example is unconvincing,
then a more illuminating claim may be the idea that it is extremely difficult for people to form the con-
cept of a negative quantity without having previously encountered a physical number line. A further
example provided by Goody (1977) is that of lists. Though lists exist in nonliterate cultures, the ability
to inspect lists and isolate items for formal taxonomic or categorical purposes seems to be encouraged
with written lists. One could argue that such categorical thinking is a new mode of thought.
However, others are sceptical and instead support claim, item 2 in the list. Halverson (1992) notes
that a cumulative intellectual tradition is indeed aided immensely by writing, but that a syllogism is
just a sequence of statements about relations that do not depend on the medium that the statements
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are presented in: “Written records … may allow us to be more accurate in certain judgments, but
sceptical attitudes hardly depend on them” (p. 309). He also argues that although lists abounded
in ancient literate civilizations for administrative purposes, they do not seem to reveal any notable
differences in kinds of cognition.
A lot of this debate hinges on what we take cognition to be. Halverson (1992) describes many
phenomena that are only possible with literacy. These include crossword puzzles, grammars, dic-
tionaries, reading maps, and shaped verse. But do any of these involve new modes of thought, or
cognitive structures other than those employed by nonliterates? Barton and Hamilton deny signifi-
cant cognitive effects of writing, and note, however do not follow up, the fact that, “problems also
arise in how we characterise thinking” (1996, p. 806). AU: Please
Barton and Hamilton assert that “strong claims that literacy per se qualitatively affects cogni- add to refer-
tive abilities are not well supported by evidence” (1996, p. 793). This might be true if one takes an ences. Or,
do you mean
approach that sees written artifacts as “cognitive aids” as Sterelny (forthcoming) does, but only if 2007?
“cognitive abilities” actually stands for “cognition.” However, provided “cognitive abilities” is what
is meant, then literacy significantly opens the door to a whole suite of possibilities. Indeed, Nickerson
(2005) concludes that, “there is no other technological advance whose effects on human history rival
those of this one” (p. 25). He catalogues a host of cognitive amplification devices ranging from vari-
ous kinds of slide rules to computers and memory aids, all of which amplify our capabilities.
Donald (1991) describes human interaction with symbolic media as plugging into, and becom-
ing part of, an external system. He argues that grouping of information into clusters, or lists, is a
peculiarly visual institution. Visual lists differ from oral ones in that visual lists free up working
memory. Once “free,” working memory and attention can be directed to other tasks. This allows
inspection and processing of the lists without sustaining them within the resource limitations of
working memory.
Donald notes that an alphabetically written word may be a phonogram, but it can also be an
ideogram, or logogram, but that even a whole paragraph or entire book can be an ideogram. We can
then manipulate ideograms to produce new content.
Each time the brain carries out an operation in concert with the external symbolic storage system, it
becomes part of a network. Its memory structure is temporarily altered; and the locus of cognitive
control changes (1991, p. 312).
The reading of writing also requires a new suite of visual scanning techniques. Furthermore,
we can break information into chapters, parts, boxes, tables, sections, or relations. We give our-
selves new perceptual objects with which to interact with in the world. Biological memory does not
easily lend itself to this. Finally, Donald notes that, with writing, iteration and recursion are truly
unlimited. What are we to make of these arguments? Are they instances of fundamentally changed
cognition?
How we identify cognition is a slippery issue. Rowlands (2009) has given considered criteria for
the cognitive. According to Rowlands a process P is cognitive if and only if
1. P involves information processing.

2. The information processing has the proper function of making available to an agent infor-
mation that was previously unavailable.
3. The information is made available as a representational state.
4. P is a process that belongs to the cognising subject.
If we assume criteria along these lines we can demonstrate how there are important ways in which
the cognitive systems of literates and nonliterates differ.
The processes of the mind involve a coordinated mesh of information both within the skull
and beyond it. Even though neural vehicles and external scripts have different properties they
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complement each other in a richly integrated fashion. We have integrated, or hybrid, thoughts. For
example, when thinking, we often gesticulate and produce overt or covert linguistic utterances.
Sometimes we write things down. These actions allow us to attend to particular aspects of thoughts
or to create new variety to stimulate further reflection. The thinking process is partly constituted by
our internal representations and external scaffolds that we embed ourselves in. Clark often cites the
example of physicist Richard Feynman (see, e.g., Clark, 2008). When told that his extensive notes
and scribblings were the record of his work, Feynman replied, “No, it’s not a record, not really. It’s
working. You have to work on paper and this is the paper, ok?” (Gleick, 1992). Feynman is point-
ing out that his thoughts are hybrid, partly constituted by internal representations and partly by his
external working.
THE EXTENDED MIND

Clark and Chalmers (1998) defend the view that the mind may sometimes extend beyond the skull.
AU: Please Specifically, that the “material vehicles” of cognition may sometimes be found in the physical
give page environment:
number
for direct The brain is an ecological control system that is essentially opportunistic and exploitative. It takes
quote. Also,
whatever is around and builds it into problem solving routines. Some couplings with external vehicles
introductory
sentence is of content are so intimate as to extend the thinking of the agent (Clark, 2004).
“Clark and
Chalmers This concept of the extended mind rests upon a parity principle. This can be formulated in several
1998,” ways but the basic sense is that a process counts as cognitive if it is the case that had that process
please rec-
oncile which occurred in the brain then one would have no hesitation in attributing cognition to it. Extended mind
is correct. (also called vehicle externalism, a label which makes sense of the vehicle/content distinction) grants
that there are two kinds of cognitive case that extend beyond the skull.
First, our dispositions to behave partly derive from external support for dispositional knowledge.
This is a claim about engineering information into our environments in order that brains may func-
tion more efficiently and accurately. Clark and Chalmers (1998) give the example of Otto and his
notebook. Otto keeps information in his notebook, such as the location of the Museum of Modern
Art. When asked how to get to the Museum of Modern Art, Otto is disposed to produce the right
directions because of the external, readily available representations in his notebook.
The second way in which cognition bleeds into the environment is perhaps more interesting.
This is the claim of active information processing loops. Performing long multiplication on paper
with written symbols exemplifies this. Although the agent only multiplies single digits, very large
numbers appear on the page as solutions. These solutions are not richly represented in the brain;
rather, it is the looping system of brain, symbols, action, and feedback that performs the calculation
in a way that is qualitatively different from the multiplications of nonliterates. Interestingly, the
Arabic numeral system has evolved to be more adapted to this task than systems such as Roman
numerals. This is not to say that one cannot perform complex calculations with Roman numerals (as
the Romans themselves clearly did) but that there are differences in the algorithms employed (see
Figure 2.8). One way we perform mental calculations is by internalizing these algorithms, which
can lead to differences in the cognitive processing of number.
When we were writing this chapter, we performed the following looping process of informa-
tion processing: We read a bunch of articles and books on relevant topics. We then typed up
notes and comments pertaining to each article or book. We also wrote some chunks of text that
consolidated some of our thoughts. We ended up with a large document of some 10,000 or 12,000
words. This was a document that could not be thought of all at once, let alone fit on the screen. We
struggled to work with it in this format. So we printed it out, and with scissors physically cut all
the bits up and arranged them by topic and ordered the topics into an argument. We then took each
new section and wrote them up on a computer again. This was extended cognition. By physically
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LVI × VI = L × V + V × V + I × V + L × I + V × I + I × I
= L+L+L+L+L+V+V+V+V+V+V+L+V+I
= CCCXXXVI
versus
56
×6
= 336
FIGURE 2.8 The different operations required for multiplication in the Roman and Arabic number systems.
manipulating the environment and responding to what we were creating, especially manipulating
objects that were “frozen thoughts,” which we could stop thinking about because they were fro-
zen in media, we greatly simplified the process. The entire system of brain, body, scissors, paper,
symbols, and so on constituted the supervenience base of the process of writing this chapter. To
test if this procedure is indeed cognitive, we can tick off the requirements for Rowlands’ mark of
the cognitive. It is (1) information processing, (2) with the proper function of making available
information that was not available, that (3) is in the form of a representational state, and (4) the
process belongs to us!
Computers helped us write this chapter, but computers and the evolution of written symbols have
the potential to continue to shape cognition. For example, animated emoticons (those little smiley
faces we put in instant messages) are becoming widespread, imbuing written language with a new
kind of affective content. Furthermore, learning to diagram the formal structure of arguments with
computer software has been shown to enhance critical thinking skills (van Gelder, 2001). There are
many further possibilities for the coevolution of writing technologies and cognition.
There are things that people can do when manipulating external vehicles of thought that are
improbably difficult for the vast majority of us when thinking internally. Although syllogistic rea-
soning may be in principle possible with verbal language, analyzing a lengthy text formally for
validity of critical thought is impossible in practice. And it is not just that the external writings are
inputs to the cognitive process, because once the manipulation of representational vehicles is seen
as part of the process of thought, then it is hard to delineate external from internal without apply-
ing a neural chauvinism over what constitutes cognition (Menary, 2007). Once people have writing
systems available to them, cognition seems to bleed into the environment as integrated systems of
information processing. This is qualitatively different from nonliterate thought.
One response to the thesis of the extended mind is to say “So what? Of course if you conceptual-
ize mind as distributed in this way then writing will have effects on mind.” But one of the things
that thinking about the extended mind does is to focus our attention on the importance of real-time
integration between brains and writing (and numerical and graphical) systems. It underlines the
important effects of writing in enhancing what we can do in the world. And it begins to pose ques-
tions about the development and influence of external media in this enhancement. These relation-
ships perhaps need to be studied more closely.
What may be important, however, is not the idea that literacy causes important large changes
in cognition, but that small influences such as enhancing the ease of formal logical thought, the
scrutiny encouraged by written records, and the complexity of argument permitted, may have,
through processes of accumulation and amplification, led humans to think about things that they
would, without the emergence of writing systems, not otherwise have thought about, or even,
more importantly, not have been able to conceive. A clear example is that early tallying does not
require any abstract concept of number, but as we suggest here, was necessary in allowing this to
be achieved.
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Even if there are no deep “cognitive” (read internal, neural) differences between literates and
nonliterates, the emergence of writing certainly provided the material for powerful strategies of
enhancing learning, memory, and education. The ability to record and reflect upon content, to criti-
cally deconstruct long and complex texts, and to easily categorise the world, providing new objects
for our attention in the form of lists, has amplified human cognitive prowess in important ways. The
effect is that of a feedback loop, so that nonliterates become progressively left behind when it comes
to what we can achieve cognitively.
The construction of writing has certainly enabled humans to perform cognitive acts that they
would otherwise have been unable to do, or even conceive of. We agree with Halverson (1992),
who argues that the preservative potential of writing is important. Writing certainly allows cultural
knowledge to accumulate and makes possible rapid advancement of knowledge. But, there is more
to the extended system than mere memory supplementation. Traveling to the moon, indeed most of
mathematics, is simply impossible without written symbols. It is not that a particular sort of writing
is required, although some systems are more suited to some tasks than others. Rather, it is the ability
to store mental content in external vehicles that can then take part in looping cognitive processes
that supercharges our thoughts. External structures begin to act as powerful cognitive scaffolds and
on occasion play proper cognitive roles in thinking. As writing systems have evolved, so too have
human minds.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
We have argued that writing emerged in our lineage out of necessity. As long-distance trade, the
storage of surpluses, and an increasingly complex social milieu arose, robust systems of informa-
tion storage and retrieval were required. These systems eventually became capable of recording
speech. The emergence of writing seems to possess several features characteristic of a Darwinian
process, and it may in fact be useful to analyse it in such terms. Finally, writing systems may be
argued to qualitatively alter human thought, given the intimate relationship that literate people have
with symbols in the world. There is a very real sense in which the cognitive systems of literates are
constituted by brains and extended representational media. As our writing systems have evolved,
so have our minds.
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The Cultural Evolution of Written Langua

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The Cultural Evolution

THE CONTEXT OF THE ORIGINS OF WRITING

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FIGURE 2.1 The Montgaudier baton (10,000 b.p.).

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FIGURE 2.2 An Aztec codex.

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AN IMAGINATIVE HISTORY OF WRITING SYSTEMS

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FIGURE 2.3 Sumerian bullae from 3rd millenium BC.

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FIGURE 2.4 2D cuneiform.

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FROM COUNTING TO FINANCE

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THE EVOLUTION OF WRITING SYSTEMS

DARWINIAN CULTURAL EVOLUTION

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BUILDING THE ANCESTRAL TREE

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North Indian scripts

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Hagia triada linear A

FIGURE 2.7 The most parsimonious phylogenetic reconstruction of Linear B.

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SELECTION AND FITNESS

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AN EVOLUTIONARY “GOOD TRICK”

DOES WRITING LEAD TO COGNITIVE CHANGE?

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1. P involves information processing.

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THE EXTENDED MIND

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