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The Development of Writing

Few people would disagree with the belief that primitive man learned to speak long before he developed a system of writing. But while his early spoken language may have been nothing more than a few sounds, early man could transmit messages across distances by means of signals from drums, smoke and fire. It was probably a desire to record messages that led to the development of alphabets. For early man, who could speak and who could send messages, could not put those messages into permanent form. The desire to have permanent records may not be easily understood in today’s world where electronic science has made disk and tape recordings commonplace. If early man wanted to leave records of past events to remind him of good times and bad, he had to depend on his memory, and on primitive markings such as piles of stones, cuttings on sticks, etc. The limitations of this system led early man to turn to rock drawings for the expression of sophisticated ideas. This form of writing depended on pictures to convey ideas, and although more advanced than previous developments, it was still too limited for man to be entirely satisfied. Man finally was able to develop a system of picture writing that associated symbols and sound. This system, which was originated by the early Sumerians and the Egyptians more than 3,000 B.C., is based on the same principle that we sue today in most world alphabets. It was about 1,000 B.C. that the Phoenicians took the complicated picture alphabets of the Egyptians and simplified then into about 30 symbols, each one standing for a

consonant sound. Finally, the ancient Greeks, about 800 B.C., refined this Phoenician alphabet and added signs for vowel sounds. The alphabet used in English, an din many other world languages, is called the Roman alphabet because it was developed by the Romans who had taken most of it from another Italic people, the Etruscan, who, in their turn, had learned it from the ancient Greeks. Letters on ancient monuments in Rome prove that the Roman alphabet, the same alphabet used today, had been perfected by A.D. 114.

Secret to Longevity Lies in Genes, Study Finds

Tue Jun 11, 5:16 PM ET

by Maggie Fox, Health and Sciences

Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) Want to live to be 100? Pick old grandp arents. It’s an old irony, but researchers said on Tuesday they had shown this is remarkably true when it comes to surviving into old age, and they believe a cluster of just a few genes may be responsible. They have set up a company that studies centenarians to see if the generic secret to living a long and healthy life may result in drugs that can prevent the diseases of aging, such as Alzheimer’s and heart disease. "It isn’t really that obvious," Dr. Thomas Perls, who led the study, said in a telephone in terview. "It isn’t old age that runs in families. It’s exceptional old age that runs in families. We think this may be a handful