About 5200 years ago, the cuneiform suddenly appeared, and its shape was quite abstract and it was the earliest mature text known to date. In other words, even the earliest cuneiform characters (Uruk IVa) are already developed and mature characters, rather than still in the initial stage of characters.
According to materialist dialectics, everything often has a development process, quantitative change leads to qualitative change. After a long accumulation, "primitive words" appear, and then "first-handed words" and finally evolve into "mature words". From this point of view, cuneiform characters should also undergo a long evolution, and finally the real cuneiform characters appeared 5,200 years ago.
However, what is strange is that countless top experts have dug three feet into the ground and explored for hundreds of years. To this day, no remains of origin of cuneiform characters have been found. Among them, the symbols of the artifacts and symbols that are spread throughout West Asia and earlier than cuneiform characters have nothing to do with the inheritance of cuneiform characters.
According to the cuneiform documentary records, there are two legends about the origin of in the Two Rivers Basin, namely the Hero's Word Creation View and the Word Creation View.
"Enmeka and the King of Arata" records that Uruk King Enmeka was the inventor of cuneiform. So far, Western scholars have regarded this passage of poetry as an important basis for the origin of cuneiform characters. However, the poem does not say that Eunmeika has no words before, but that he only writes his words on the clay plate.
"Inanna and Enki" records that Uruk's guardian god, Enki daughter Inanna , went to Elidu , "defrauding" "cultural property" from Enki, and then transporting them to Uruk. Among them, cuneiform is one of the "cultural property".
However, the previous two poems were written in the past year 2100 BC, and it was about a thousand years later than the archaeologically recognized cuneiform characters. It is impossible to be the truth about the origin of cuneiform characters.
Since the legends recorded in the literature are unreliable, we can only seek help from archaeological objects. However, although archaeology has dug up many cultural relics earlier than cuneiform characters, the origin of cuneiform characters is still not found. Among them, a large number of utensil symbols that were earlier than cuneiform characters had nothing to do with their origin.
Before the cuneiform character was produced, pottery symbols were unearthed in many areas around the Mesopotamia: the Hasunna site in Iraq, about 8,000 years ago, and the "Wan" characters of various shapes were unearthed; the Jafarabad site in Iran, 7,000-6,000 years ago, and 35 carved symbols were unearthed; the Qiaowei site in Iran, about 6,700-6,600 years ago, and 84 carved symbols were unearthed, which summarizes 26 types, including the "Wan" character (this symbol is very common in prehistoric sites in West Asia) has been unearthed seven times, etc.
In theory, they are earlier than cuneiform characters and should have a certain impact on them. Even cuneiform characters evolve from them, and at the very least, there will be a certain connection between the two. However, professor of the Department of West Asia, Peking University School of Foreign Languages, author of "History of West Asia Archaeology", and Assyrian Gongyushu pointed out: "Porcelain symbols have not affected the origin of cuneiform characters in West Asia. As far as we know, the origin of cuneiform characters has nothing to do with pottery symbols." Among them, including the extremely common "Wan" characters in West Asia, they still do not appear in cuneiform characters.
"The origin of cuneiform characters has nothing to do with (earlier) pottery symbols", this judgment is undoubtedly incredible, because taking Chinese utensil symbols and oracle bone inscriptions as an example, there will be more or less certain connections between the two:
Jiahu engraved on tortoise shells is more than 5,000 years away from oracle bone inscriptions, but there is obviously a close connection.
The double-pier engraving symbols engraved on pottery (see the picture below), as many as 630. Although the relationship with oracle bone inscriptions in terms of text form remains to be determined, the double-pier engraving symbols have three major graphic techniques: pictogram, pointing and understanding, and are undoubtedly passed down to oracle bone inscriptions.
In addition, although there is still a lot of controversy about whether Banpo engraving talisman, Qingdun engraving talisman, Zhuangqiao Tomb engraving talisman, etc., whether they are texts, it is generally believed that they have more or less related to the formation of Chinese characters and oracle bone inscriptions.
In short, although there are still many unsolved mysteries in the origin of Chinese characters, many of the utensils before oracle bone script often have some connection with the origin of Chinese characters. Therefore, the phenomenon of "the origin of cuneiform characters has nothing to do with (earlier) pottery symbols" can only be incredible.
If the symbol of the artifact has nothing to do with the origin of cuneiform characters, how did cuneiform characters evolve?
Take China as an example. The dictionary in oracle bone inscriptions is to hold a book with both hands, and "生" is a pictographic image of bamboo slips, so it can be seen that has bamboo slips in in the Shang Dynasty. From this we infer that there may also be bamboo slip documents in the Xia Dynasty. Because bamboo slips are prone to decay, the bamboo slips of Xia and Shang Dynasty are not found now, and it is difficult to trace the first-hand written words before oracle bone inscriptions. Therefore, the evolutionary text before cuneiform may have been written on bamboo slips and wooden slips, which has led to the inability to trace the origin of cuneiform text now.
However, before the cuneiform text, there were many utensil symbols in West Asia, so why did not leave any traces of the origin of the text on the artifact? Obviously unreasonable.
In view of this, scholars such as Gong Yushu believe that cuneiform characters are created and invented by one or some sages in a short period of time, rather than the result of development. In other words, cuneiform characters are formed in a very short time and have no so-called evolutionary process. Therefore, the origin of cuneiform characters cannot be found now. This returns to the "heroic concept of creating characters" mentioned above.
In short, cuneiform characters, which have the reputation of "the earliest text born in the world", have "unknown origin". They have basically matured when they debuted. So far, they have not found any clues of origin, which is really unbelievable.
What is surprising is that ancient Egyptian text is as "unknown" as cuneiform characters. So far, no evidence of long-term evolution has been found, and it is almost basically mature after its debut.
Reference materials: "Bang Yu Shu: Text is an invention, not the result of development" and other
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