Archaeology and its findings are key to understanding past events, for example Therasia in the Bronze Age. A new finding could change the history of ancient writing because some archaeologists found seal impressions on a ceramic pot handle, which may be related to Minoan civilization and its writing. This finding, studied and published in a relevant magazine associated with the British Museum, could lead a way the research of how and where the first attempts of ancient writing in the Aegean were.
I’m sure this fascinating discovery in the Therasia island in the Aegean sea (Greece) will surprise you. So, let’s not waste more time and see what’s behind this mysterious ancient writing finding.
What, when and where
Not that long ago, some archaeologists found a very special ceramic piece in Therasia, an island near Santorini in Greece. This piece was part of a big pot used in the early period of the Bronze Age, more than 4,000 years ago.
What shocked the archaeologists was two seal impressions on the handle of the pot. At that time, the alphabet didn’t exist, so this finding means they used symbols or drawings to communicate.
The first impression
You might think the impressions found on the handle were similar, but not at all. So, let’s see the differences between impressions.
The impression 1 had several symbols aligned in rows, they were very organized as if they were telling something. What archaeologists noticed was these symbols were very similar to ancient writing systems of Crete, a nearby island to where the findings were found. Basically, they saw there was a resemblance to hieroglyphics of Crete.
This led archaeologists to think these symbols belonged to a proto-writing because it’s considered a way of communication through symbols, but it’s not a full writing.
Impression number 2
This was more aesthetic, the design was more beautiful and geometric than the first impression. It was divided into four parts, each with triangles and zigzag lines which was already seen in other ancient objects of the Aegean.
So, as a difference with the first impression, the second one is not considered a writing. However, it is believed it was an artistic tradition and very common decoration of the time.
Importance of this finding
Before this finding, it was thought people in the Aegean didn’t make up writing by themselves, but that they copied other ideas from places like Egypt or Mesopotamia where writing was used long ago.
However, with this archaeologist finding, this thought has been changed. The symbols on the handle show that long before Greece created its writing system, there were already people communicating through symbols. There’s not clear evidence on what they wanted to tell, maybe show who was the owner of something, identify a family or record an important event.
What’s writing then?
We previously mentioned the seal impression number 1 was a proto-writing, but not a full writing. To be considered real writing it needs to represent sounds or words of a language, have repetitive symbols with a meaning and be able to be read by other people in the same situations. Having this in mind, we could say the first seal impression could be the previous step of the real writing.
We normalize writing because it’s something most people in the world are capable of, but if we think more about its origin… It’s remarkable how writing in ancient times has developed from symbols and drawings to what we know now.
Back then, there was no technology to communicate or anything, they had to create everything from scratch and use drawings to represent something for their communities. Now? We use words and we even make up new words from the ones we already have. Also, we are kind of going back to the use of these symbols with the current emojis. Who hasn’t sent a message with the sad emoji to answer the question ‘how are you?’.