Writing and Civilization: From Ancient Worlds to Modernity

At just over 5,000 years old, writing is actually a relatively recent invention. It has become so central to the way we communicate and live, however, that it often seems as if writing has always existed. But the question remains: Who invented writing, and why? In these 24 fascinating lectures, you'll trace the remarkable saga of the invention and evolution of "visible speech," from its earliest origins to its future in the digital age. Your guide is an accomplished professor and epigrapher who whisks you around the globe to explore how an array of sophisticated writing systems developed, then were adopted and adapted by surrounding cultures. Along the way, you'll visit the great early civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, Japan, and the Americas, and you'll see how deciphering ancient scripts is a little like cracking secret codes - only far more difficult. You'll be spellbound as you hear accounts of the breathtaking moments when the decipherment of ancient scripts broke centuries of silence. And you'll marvel at fascinating objects once shrouded in mystery, including the iconic Rosetta stone. Writing and Civilization offers the chance to not only discover the history of ancient writing systems, but also the rare opportunity to actually hear those scripts read aloud and to learn the meaning of their messages hidden in plain sight.

All Lectures:
1. What Is Writing?
2. The Origins and Development of Writing
3. Where Did Our Alphabet Come From?
4. The Fuþark-A Germanic Alphabet
5. Chinese-A Logosyllabic Script
6. Japanese-The World's Most Complex Script
7. What Is Decipherment?
8. The Five Pillars of Decipherment
9. Epigraphic Illustration
10. The History of Language
11. Proper Nouns and Cultural Context
12. Bilinguals, Biscripts, and Other Constraints
13. Egyptian-The First Great Decipherment
14. What Do Egyptian Hieroglyphs Say?
15. Old Persian-Cuneiform Deciphered
16. What Does Cuneiform Say?
17. Mycenaean Linear B-An Aegean Syllabary
18. Mayan Glyphs-A New World Logosyllabary
19. What Do the Mayan Glyphs Say?
20. Aztec Hieroglyphs-A Recent Decipherment
21. Etruscan and Meroïtic-Undeciphered Scripts
22. Han'gul, Tengwar, and Other Featural Scripts
23. Medium and Message
24. The Future of Writing