Artifactual Communication

Paper Summary:

This paper briefly discusses the origins of artifactual communication in Mesopotamia about 10,000 years ago. It explains how researchers believe that this form of Mesopotamian communication eventually evolved into the alphabet and how the artifactual media were used to communicate a message. Also noted are the different types of artifactual communications that have been used over time and which are still in use.

From the Paper:

"The Persian Gulf nation of Iraq may be widely known today for war, for oil, and for Sadaam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction. But very few people likely know that in fact, Iraq played a pivotal historical role in the development of non-verbal, or artifactual, methods of communication. About 10,000 years before the 2003 U.S. attack on Hussein's regime, the very first human-made artifactual communication system was created in what was then Mesopotamia and today is Iraq. According to the University of Texas Professor of Art & History, Denise Schmandt-Besserat, the Mesopotamian people developed a system of clay tokens "used for accounting purposes" around 8,000 B.C. These clay tokens were utilized for about 5,000 years, and though they had little to do with speech, it is believed the original alphabet evolved from the tokens."

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