ABSTRACT
The invention of writing is perhaps the most significant event in the history of human affairs. According to Coulmas (1989), writing developed in prehistoric times out of systems for keeping records of economic transactions and other events and has made possible the complex social and economic organization of cities as well as history, science, and technology of all kinds. As it has gradually taken on a range of functions far beyond its original purposes, writing has provided the foundation for amassing a great store of human knowledge and for developing the cognitive capacities of literate individuals:
Writing has evolved as a system for recording language in its externalized form, as speech, and in its internalized form, as ideas. In the latter capacity, it has no doubt helped to promote the (at least partly independent) development of the cognitive side of language—and indeed, our cognitive abilities more generally—by making possible complex constructions of ideas built on a mountain or chain of “captured” thoughts, which, when written down, can be increasingly probed and built upon. … Writing became a means of capturing our thoughts, and the thoughts of others, of storing them and holding them constant for later reflection, contemplation and development. In this way, writing made it possible to greatly expand our ability to process our own thoughts and the thoughts of others. That is, writing expanded our cognitive world, our access to other cognitive worlds and our ability to create new cognitive worlds.
(Pennington, 2000b, p. 6)