Is the Ability to Write the Defining Aspect of Civilization?

Is the Ability to Write the Defining Aspect of Civilization?

Toady five billion people can read and write. That is about eighty five percent of the world's population. If it was not for the creation of writing by the early people we would still be living like them. Sumerians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and the Chinese people all invented some type of unique writing form. Writing is a defining part in many civilizations histories.

Early hominids like Australopithecus and Homo Erectus could communicate verbally and thrived for some time, only they had no written language. The lives of these early hominids are in the period of prehistory. Prehistory is the time before writing was created. After the prehistory hominids died off there was no written record of what their lives were like. Everything that historians know about these hominids came from careful study that is based upon assumption.

As Homo Sapiens grew in technology, they produced better lives for themselves. Villages of five hundred or less enlarged into cities of thousands. With cities came division of labor, which gave everyone a different job to do. Social differences erupted when ownership of land and material goods could be accumulated. This is how cities first formed strong centralized forms of government. Laws could be set in place to keep order inside the cities. For example, in Egypt where Hieroglyphics where used as their writing form, they also had a complex system of government in place, with the use of pharaohs. Pharaohs had immense power and many responsibilities including ruling the land, people, and religion of Egypt. The Egyptian people looked highly up to the pharaohs, for they worshipped them like a god. If the Egyptians had not invented Hieroglyphics, their civilization would not have been nearly as successful.

Before writing people used the method of oral story telling. The Aborigine people of Australia relied on storytelling to pass down history from generation to generation. The only problem with oral story telling is that stories told this way can easily become distorted throughout the years. Which means information can be susceptible to being added or lost, making the stories false. With a written language word is word and cannot be changed.

Without the invention of writing we do not know one hundred percent how the early people of prehistory lived, there would not be any organized forms of government,