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       Words of Wisdom:

Until the development of ideograms, alphabets and scripts, the primary means of recording knowledge was through the oral tradition. As well as providing a historic and mythological narrative, the oral tradition was the platform upon which the wisdom of the elders was transferred from generation to generation, a tradition which as far as we know is unique in the animal kingdom. The transfer from the oral tradition to the written word has led to an unprecedented level of information exchange between people today, but to what end.?

 
 
   Contents:
 
    Paleolithic Writing
  • Palaeolithic Writing:

From the earliest Palaeolithic pictograms to the 100+ known written languages today, the human species has endeavoured to find alternative means of transferring our thoughts. At the same time as researchers are still trying to decipher several well known scripts such as the Indus Valley. Epi-Olmec and Vincan, it is now proposed that the Palaeolithic images themselves represent the dawning of  writing.

(The Origin of Writing)

 
 
Ancient and Scared Texts.    
  • Ancient Texts:

History has recorded the tragic destruction of numerous libraries and texts but what remains offers us a rare glimpse into the imagination of our ancestors in a way that archaeology never can. This section is provided as a means of freely accessing some of the greatest written texts of all time.

(List of Ancient Texts)

 
 
    The Phaistos Disc.
  • The Phaistos Disc:

The Phaistos disc was discovered in 1908 in the Minoan palace of Phaistos on Crete, suggesting a dating of middle to late Minoan origin. Although there have been several attempts to decipher the images on the disc, none have been proven conclusively and the meaning behind this unique artefact remains unknown.

(The Phaistos Disc)

 
 
The Voynicht Manuscript    
  • The Voynicht Manuscript:

Described as 'The Worlds Most Mysterious Manuscript', this early 15th century document still resists a definitive explanation and defies cryptology. The jury's still out over the origin, author, authenticity, language, content and meaning of this manuscript, making it one the most interesting undeciphered texts in the world today.

(The Voynicht Manuscript)

 
 
    Indus Valley / Easter Island
  • Easter Island - Indus Valley Scripts:

Mohenjo Daro and Easter Island are diametrically opposite to each other and the cultures were separated by thousands of years, yet the similarity between the two scripts (Rongo-Rongo and Indus Valley) is undeniable and remains unexplained with neither having been deciphered.

(Easter Island/Indus Valley Scripts)

 
 
Tree Lore - The Ogham Alphabet    
  • Tree lore - The Ogham Alphabet:

Ogham script was commonly used in Europe c. 400 AD, and is often referred to today as the "Celtic Tree Alphabet" following Robert Graves 'White Goddess', in which he suggested that along with being an alphabetic script, each stroke of Ogham was also associated with a tree and the lunar calendar.

(More about Ogham Script)

 
 

Words of Wisdom:

Great names such as Solomon and Confucius are not only remembered for deeds, but for their words and thoughts too. Similarly, the musings of the Greek philosophers and the record keeping of the Mesopotamian astronomers are products which give insight to the processes of the ancient imagination in a way that a physical artefact never can.  It is now suspected that the origins of the written word can be discerned in the pictograms of Palaeolithic cave art, with suggestions that many of these early symbols have been carried down through history, transforming into letters of various alphabets around the ancient world, and still used today.

The prime example of this is the letter A (Gr: Alpha), which derived from the Phoenician letter, Aleph (), 'Plutarch, in Moralia, presents a discussion on why the letter alpha stands first in the alphabet. Ammonius asks Plutarch what he has to say for Cadmus, the Phoenician who reputedly settled in Thebes and introduced the alphabet to Greece, placing alpha first because it is the Phoenician name for Ox' (1). The same sign is seen upside down in earlier ancient scripts and is an archetypal symbol which is seen throughout the human record as far back as the Palaeolithic.

 

The ancient Egyptians called their script mdju netjer, or "words of the gods." (2), demonstrating that the importance of script was recognised as long as 5,000 years ago. Today, the importance of surviving ancient texts is of a different nature, as the darker side of human nature has systematically destroyed the greater part of our attempts to record our thoughts and deeds in script, revealing perhaps ironically, the enduring strength behind the oral tradition.

 

 

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