Editing Literacy (section)

===Origins===
Script is thought to have developed independently at least five times in human history: in [[Mesopotamia]], [[Egypt]], the [[Indus civilization]], lowland [[Mesoamerica]], and [[China]].<ref name="Chrisomalis-2009">{{Cite book |last=Chrisomalis |first=Stephen |title=The Cambridge Handbook of Literacy |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=2009 |editor-last=Olsen |editor-first=D. |pages=59–74 |chapter=The Origins and Coevolution of Literacy and Numeracy |editor-last2=Torrance |editor-first2=N.}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Writing Systems |url=http://hkotek.com/teaching/intro2015/week5-writing-systems.pdf |access-date=5 August 2018}}</ref>

[[File:Bill of sale Louvre AO3765.jpg|thumb|upright=1.2|Bill of sale of a male slave and a building in [[Shuruppak]], [[Sumer]]ian tablet, {{circa|2600 BCE}}]]

Between 3500 BCE and 3000 BCE, in southern Mesopotamia, the ancient Sumerians [[History of writing|invented writing]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Harari |first=Yuval Noah |title=Sapiens |year=2014 |publisher=Penguin Random House |isbn=978-0-771-03851-8 |page=137}}</ref> During this era, literacy was "a largely functional matter, propelled by the need to manage the new quantities of information and the new type of governance created by trade and large scale production".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Easton |first=P. |title=Sustaining Literacy in Africa: Developing a Literate Environment |publisher=UNESCO Press |location=Paris |pages=46–56 |chapter=History and spread of literacy}}</ref> Early writing systems first emerged as a recording system in which people used tokens with impressed markings to manage trade and agricultural production.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Schmandt-Besserat |first=D. |year=1978 |title=The earliest precursor of writing |journal=[[Scientific American]] |volume=238 |issue=6 |pages=38–47 |bibcode=1978SciAm.238f..50S |doi=10.1038/scientificamerican0678-50 |s2cid=121339828}}</ref> The token system served as a precursor to early [[cuneiform]] writing once people began recording information on clay tablets. [[Proto-Cuneiform]] texts exhibit not only numerical signs but also [[ideograms]] depicting objects being counted.<ref name="Chrisomalis-2009" /> Though the traditional view had been that cuneiform literacy was restricted to a class of scribes, [[assyriologists]] including Claus Wilcke and Dominique Charpin have argued that functional literacy was somewhat widespread by the [[First Babylonian dynasty|Old Babylonian]] period.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Charpin |first=Dominique |title=Writing, Law, and Kingship in Old Babylonian Mesopotamia |date=2010-11-15 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |isbn=978-0-226-10159-0 |pages=7–24}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Veldhuis |first=Niek |url=https://melc.berkeley.edu/Web_Veldhuis/articles/Veldhuis_OHCC.pdf |title=The Oxford Handbook of Cuneiform Culture |chapter=Levels of Literacy |year=2011 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-191-74359-7 |pages=68–73 |access-date=17 December 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211217084942/https://melc.berkeley.edu/Web_Veldhuis/articles/Veldhuis_OHCC.pdf |archive-date=17 December 2021 |url-status=dead}}</ref> Nonetheless, professional scribes became central to law, finances, accounting, government, administration, medicine, magic, divination, literature, and prayers.<ref>{{Cite book |title=The Oxford Handbook of Cuneiform Culture |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2011 |editor-last=Radner |editor-first=K. |editor-last2=Robson |editor-first2=E.}}</ref>

[[Egyptian hieroglyphs]] emerged between 3300 BCE and 3100 BCE; the iconography emphasized power among royals and other elites. The Egyptian hieroglyphic writing system was the first notation system to have [[phonetic]] values; these symbols are called [[Phonogram (linguistics)|phonograms]].<ref name=":0">{{Cite web |title=The Evolution of Writing |first=Denise|last=Schmandt-Besserat |url=https://sites.utexas.edu/dsb/tokens/the-evolution-of-writing/ |access-date=2023-12-21}}</ref>

Writing in lowland Mesoamerica was first used by the [[Olmec]] and [[Zapotec civilization|Zapotec]] civilizations in 900–400 BCE. These civilizations used [[glyph]]ic writing and bar-and-dot numerical notation systems for purposes related to royal iconography and calendar systems.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Pohl |first1=Mary E. D. |last2=Pope |first2=Kevin O. |last3=von Nagy |first3=Christopher |date=2002-12-06 |title=Olmec Origins of Mesoamerican Writing |url=https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1078474 |journal=Science |volume=298 |issue=5600 |pages=1984–1987 |doi=10.1126/science.1078474 |pmid=12471256 |bibcode=2002Sci...298.1984P |s2cid=19494498 |issn=0036-8075|url-access=subscription}}</ref>

The earliest written notations in China date back to the [[Shang dynasty]] in 1200 BCE. These systematic notations, inscribed on bones, recorded sacrifices made, tributes received, and animals hunted, which were activities of the elite. These oracle-bone inscriptions were the early ancestors of modern Chinese script and contained [[logosyllabic]] script and numerals. By the time of the consolidation of the Chinese Empire during the [[Qin dynasty|Qin]] and [[Han dynasty|Han]] dynasties ({{circa|200 BCE|lk=no}}), written documents were central to the formation and policing of a hierarchical bureaucratic governance structure reinforced through law. Within this legal order, written records kept track of and controlled citizen movements, created records of misdeeds, and documented the actions and judgments of government officials.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Barbieri-Low |first1=A. |title=Law, state, and society in early Imperial China: Study and translation of the legal texts from Zhangjiashan Tomb no. 247. |last2=Yates |first2=R. |publisher=Brill |year=2015 |location=Leiden}}</ref>

[[Indus script]] is largely pictorial and has not yet been deciphered; as such, it is unknown whether it includes abstract signs. It is thought that they wrote from right to left and that the script is [[logographic]]. Because it has not been deciphered, linguists disagree on whether it is a complete and independent writing system; however, it is generally thought to be an independent writing system that emerged in the [[Harappa]] culture.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Farmer |first1=Steve |last2=Sproat |first2=Richard |last3=Witzel |first3=Michael |year=2004 |title=The Collapse of the Indus-Script Thesis: The Myth of a Literate Harappan Civilization |url=https://hasp.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/journals/ejvs/article/view/620 |journal=Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies |volume=11 |issue=2 |pages=19–57 |doi=10.11588/ejvs.2004.2.620 |s2cid=16097805 |issn=1084-7561}}</ref>

Existing evidence suggests that most early acts of literacy were, in some areas (such as Egypt), closely tied to power and chiefly used for management practices, and probably less than 1% of the population was literate, as it was confined to a very small group.{{cn|date=May 2024}} Scholarship by others, such as Dominique Charpin and a project from the [[European Union]], however, suggest that this was not the case in all ancient societies: both Charpin and the EU's emerging scholarship suggest that writing and literacy were far more widespread in Mesopotamia than scholars previously thought.<ref>{{Citation |title=Reading and Writing in Mesopotamia |url=https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226101590.003.0002 |work=Writing, Law, and Kingship in Old Babylonian Mesopotamia |year=2010 |pages=7–24 |access-date=2023-12-21 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |doi=10.7208/chicago/9780226101590.003.0002 |isbn=978-0-226-10158-3}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |title=Literacy in the Old Babylonian City of Nippur |url=https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/841928 |access-date=2023-12-21 |website=CORDIS |publisher=European Commission |doi=10.3030/841928}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |title=Review of: Writing, Law, and Kingship in Old Babylonian Mesopotamia (translated by Jane Marie Todd) |url=https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2011/2011.06.55/ |journal=Bryn Mawr Classical Review |issn=1055-7660}}</ref>