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What if there was a technology
that allowed us to teleport

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the contents of our minds
across time and space directly

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into someone else's brain...

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..that worked across huge distances,
that could send our thoughts

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into the future,

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yet was so simple a child
could use it?

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Such a marvel, of course,
already exists.

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It's not the internet or mobile
phones, but an ancient technology,

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one that's at least
5,000 years old -

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the technology of writing.

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Writing is something that most of us
do every day

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without stopping to think about it.

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But if you do stop and think
about it, you realise

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that what you are doing
is quite magical.

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You are taking the thoughts
from inside your head and putting

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them out into the world in a form
where another human mind

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can understand them, even if
they are thousands of miles away -

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or perhaps centuries in the future.

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In this series, I want to explore
this transformative technology,

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the different scripts that can turn
spoken language into visual form,

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the varying methods we have used
to put words on a page and the way

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that changing the way we write
has changed the course of history.

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And the first question is
about the origin of writing.

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Did it develop in different
times, in different places?

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Or do all the scripts we see around
us share a single common root?

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And, if that is the case,
then where and how did it all begin?

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And who began it?

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Egypt, the Saqqara funerary
complex near Cairo.

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In 2300 BC, what today looks
like a hill of sand was the pyramid

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tomb of Pharaoh Teti.

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Inside the tomb, Egyptologist
Yasmin El Shazly took me

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to see something extraordinary.

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Oh, wow!

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Yeah, they're pretty impressive,
aren't they?

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They really are. Yeah.

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The walls of Teti's tomb were carved

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with thousands of stylised
pictures...

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..but this was not decoration.

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This is the earliest known
complete text,

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ancient Egyptian text.

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Just beautiful.

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These pictures are hieroglyphs -
a writing system older

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than the pyramids themselves.

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And what do they say? They are
spells that help resurrect the King

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in the afterlife.

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If you know how to read them,

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you can find the King's name
repeated again and again

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in every incantation.

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Oh! Oh! Rise up, O Teti!

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Take your head,

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collect your bones,
gather your limbs,

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shake the earth from your flesh.

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Take your bread that rots not,

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your beer that sours not,

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stand at the gates that bar
the common people.

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Rise up, O Teti, you shall not die!

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Wow! Oh, there's so much writing.
Yes.

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These are all magic spells,
designed to resurrect the King

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so he could live forever
in the afterlife.

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The fact that his name
is still there

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made him, in a sense, immortal.

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We're speaking about him right
now, and the ancient Egyptians
realised that, they realised

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that the written word
had so much power and that,

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by writing your name,

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you became immortal,
you immortalised yourself.

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Hieroglyphs are indeed magic.

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They may not raise the dead,
but, like all writing,

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they allow them to speak.

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Writing is one of the few
things that all societies do.

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Everybody uses a pen or a brush

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and, with that, we can express
all of our thoughts, record

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all of our information,

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study the stars and compose poems
and write letters to each other.

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So writing binds humanity
together practically

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more than any other activity.

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Today, we take it for granted,

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but the creation of writing
is the event which gave

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humanity a history.

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When you scrutinise what happened,
it is actually very dramatic

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in one important sense -
what we like to call

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in our department the giant
leap for mankind.

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Writing always starts with pictures

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and then it becomes a little bit
more complicated, and that's

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how you develop into a purely
alphabetic system later on.

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How did our ancestors conceive
of writing?

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How did they learn to make
pictures speak?

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And how did those pictures

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eventually become the letters
we use today?

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As I discovered, the answer
to those questions can only be found

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in an archaeology
of the human mind.

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Writing is a recent innovation.

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Our species has existed
for about 300,000 years

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and, for all but the last 5,000
of them, people had to record

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and transmit vital knowledge
without the aid of writing.

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Some cultures still do.

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HE VOCALISES

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In the Northern Territory
of Australia,

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Yidumduma Bill Harney, an elder
of the Wardaman people, is singing

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an ancient song about the creation
of the world.

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HE SINGS

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All the songline trail
that they made it,

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happening all the way right back
from beginning of everything,

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to people to people to people
all the way,

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billion years, to million years,

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and come down and 100 years and now,

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now come back to right up to us.

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And we know all the song now.

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That's why we're never sure
that creating song away,

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we still got it here today.

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What kind of knowledge is in those
songs?

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In a songline trail,

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the knowledge that is given you
from the old people,

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you know what they call
songline trail,

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naming all the different sights,

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the plants, trees, mountain,
water hole, and all that.

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And so it's like a map?

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Like a map. It is a map,
in your mind, but all links up.

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So break it here? Yeah, like this,

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you've got to put your fingernail
on it. Yeah?

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Meeting Bill,

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I was impressed by the richness
and complexity of Aboriginal culture

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handed down orally for probably
tens of thousands of years

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without the need to write
anything down.

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That's amazing!

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And that raised a fundamental
question about writing.

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Why did our ancestors
feel the need for it?

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What prompted them to start
recording things,

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not for the ear, but for the eye?

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Images are important, indeed
sacred in Aboriginal culture

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and, before I was allowed
to see them,

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Bill needed to introduce me
to the ancestors.

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HE VOCALISES

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Thank you.

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I said hi
to the spiritual people,

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call out I brought this stranger
to welcome them.

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I've got a young lady here,
told them it's a lady,

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and he's happy.

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Thank you.

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This is Gandawag-ya, the Moon Rock.

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As we talked, it quickly became
clear that Bill's way of thinking

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about images was quite different
to mine.

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While we're standing here now,

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this one what I call
Moon dream inside.

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And that's...that's half Moon.

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Yeah. That's it in there.

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Yeah. When he was a human,
he was called Yiwalyarri.

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He's up in the sky. Yeah.

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Now he's here, in the rock.
In the rock. Yeah.

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In the Wardaman creation story,

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all the plants and animals
of the world were once people,

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the Wardamans' ancestors,

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wandering across a formless,
muddy land

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until the creation dog let
out a mighty howl.

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When he's "hooo", like this,
the dog and the sound he made,

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everything changed.

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He changed our world.

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And this country now,

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where, from the soft mud,
man become a rock,

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and all these people become a tree,
and changed all the different

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animals, kangaroos, dingoes,

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whatever you can make,
lizards, snakes and all.

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As the mud hardened,
some of the ancestors passed

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into the rock, leaving traces
of that moment of creation.

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They were the mud, and people come
along and put their foot there.

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See? And that's what it is there.

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He was in the mud,
now he's in the rock.

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The humans there,
there's a dog here.

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All over, as I said.

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And that shatter off to the Moon,

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then one day all of the rock
as well,

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during the creation.

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When I see an image, I naturally
think of it as a representation,

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a picture of something.

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But, to Bill, these are not
pictures of the ancestors -

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these ARE the ancestors
gone into the rock.

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Bill's song about the ancestors
is also addressed to them...

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..but he has to rely on memory.

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These images,
powerful as they are,

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cannot tell him which words to use.

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In order for images to do that,

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they would have to gain a new power
-

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the power of representation.

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And write a big songline
from west to east.

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Cairo's Egyptian museum is crammed
with thousands of objects excavated

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from the tombs of ancient Egypt.

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One of the very oldest was
discovered by Gunter Dreyer

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in the 1990s, at a dig in the city
of Abydos.

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It's a clay vase, which predates
the first pharaoh by many centuries.

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It was made 5,700 years ago

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and it seems to use imagery
in a new way.

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Gunter believes that the vase
is decorated

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with a stylised representation

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of the distinctive geography
of the Nile Valley.

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Egyptians have always lived
on the land immediately adjacent

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to the Nile, where irrigation
ditches can bring river water

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to the fields.

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Ancient Egyptian life was largely
confined

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to this narrow strip of green.

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The desert highlands on either side
was where the dead were buried.

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So these lines represent something,
something that is not present.

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It's a conceptual revolution
in the meaning of a picture.

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And if a picture can represent
a thing, it can represent a word.

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But what was it that made people
want to represent words

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in visual form?

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5,000 years ago, Egypt lay at one
end of a zone of cultivation

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called the Fertile Crescent.

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At the other end lay Mesopotamia,
modern day Iraq.

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In both places, people had learned
how to irrigate the land

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to increase food production,

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that meant that not everyone
had to work the land

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and a more complex society
could develop.

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Irving Finkel from the British
Museum is an expert on Mesopotamia

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and the region's first civilisation,
Sumer.

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To set the scene,

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it's important to understand
that, in Mesopotamia, the Sumerians

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had what we call city-states,
independent walled entities

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with a large population of farmers
all around, administrators,

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a central temple and so forth.

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And it is in those enclaves
of so-called civilisation

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that the need was, I think,
first felt for some kind

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of record keeping.

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What we've got in front of us
is a very small handful of pieces

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of clay with writing on called
cuneiform writing.

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Yes. And we have in our department
a huge collection of 130,000 or so.

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I thought, if they were all here,
you'd become giddy and dizzy

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and perhaps even fall asleep.

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Overwhelmed anyway. Exactly.

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So we start with this.

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So that's the oldest of these ones.

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It is.

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Do you have an approximate date?

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It's probably about 2,900 BC,
something like that.

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Wow, so 5,000 years old.
Something like that.

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And the thing about it is you can
see it's a very orderly piece

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of work because it's ruled
into columns and these round things

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and half round things are numerals,

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and at the back there's a big total,
where all the numbers are added up.

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And this is a sign for barley,

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which indicates that it's some
kind of...

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You can see, that this is an ear of
barley,

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in a pictographic kind of form.

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Yes. And originally the writing
began in the pictographic form,

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what we call pictographic form,
which means that people produce

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the scribes, produce little
drawings of whatever

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they were talking about, the animals
and plants and things like this.

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So it's a very primitive level
of writing, but it's very ancient.

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00:18:13,360 --> 00:18:19,200
And it actually exemplifies probably
why writing came into existence

248
00:18:19,200 --> 00:18:22,080
in the first place,
because it's a document

249
00:18:22,080 --> 00:18:25,160
which is concerned with wages. Yes.

250
00:18:25,160 --> 00:18:30,440
And people argue that this script
came out of the requirement

251
00:18:30,440 --> 00:18:33,120
for complicated administration
of this kind

252
00:18:33,120 --> 00:18:35,600
where written records
became necessary.

253
00:18:35,600 --> 00:18:38,720
But anybody who works with
the Inland Revenue will be proud

254
00:18:38,720 --> 00:18:41,720
to feel that that was
their striking contribution

255
00:18:41,720 --> 00:18:43,680
to the progress of mankind.

256
00:18:45,240 --> 00:18:49,280
So what I was holding in my hands
was the distant ancestor

257
00:18:49,280 --> 00:18:51,200
of today's spreadsheet,

258
00:18:51,200 --> 00:18:54,920
a grid of boxes with symbols
that represent numbers

259
00:18:54,920 --> 00:18:58,080
and pictures that represent
commodities.

260
00:18:58,080 --> 00:19:01,760
But the language of accountancy
is limited.

261
00:19:01,760 --> 00:19:04,600
Eventually, the distinctive
wedge-shaped writing

262
00:19:04,600 --> 00:19:07,400
called cuneiform
that developed in Mesopotamia

263
00:19:07,400 --> 00:19:09,360
would be capable of representing

264
00:19:09,360 --> 00:19:11,080
the full richness of Sumerian

265
00:19:11,080 --> 00:19:14,160
and the other languages
of the region.

266
00:19:14,160 --> 00:19:16,960
It would be used to write great
epics,

267
00:19:16,960 --> 00:19:19,800
recount ghost stories
and tell jokes.

268
00:19:21,440 --> 00:19:26,840
But as Irving explained, to make
pictographic signs speak in this way

269
00:19:26,840 --> 00:19:29,720
would take another
great conceptual leap.

270
00:19:36,720 --> 00:19:40,080
You could go quite a long way
with these simple signs,

271
00:19:40,080 --> 00:19:43,480
but the giant leap came
when somebody conceived

272
00:19:43,480 --> 00:19:46,440
of this matter, that you could draw
a picture

273
00:19:46,440 --> 00:19:49,920
which represented something
that someone could recognise.

274
00:19:49,920 --> 00:19:54,520
But, at the same time, that sign
could be used just for the sound

275
00:19:54,520 --> 00:19:57,600
of the thing it looked like,

276
00:19:57,600 --> 00:20:02,880
so that the sound became drawn out
of or separated from the picture.

277
00:20:02,880 --> 00:20:06,920
So, on this tablet here,
there is an ear of barley.

278
00:20:06,920 --> 00:20:11,360
Now the word for barley in Sumerian
is pronounced like "she".

279
00:20:11,360 --> 00:20:15,000
So your Sumerian sees this and says,
"She, barley."

280
00:20:15,000 --> 00:20:18,800
But, at the same time, this scribe
or a fellow scribe,

281
00:20:18,800 --> 00:20:22,640
in writing a totally different kind
of document,

282
00:20:22,640 --> 00:20:26,880
could use this sign not
to mean barley, but just to write

283
00:20:26,880 --> 00:20:29,240
the sound of "she".

284
00:20:29,240 --> 00:20:32,360
And this giant leap is something
rather simple, and it's something

285
00:20:32,360 --> 00:20:36,160
which could have occurred
to a child, but, nevertheless,

286
00:20:36,160 --> 00:20:39,720
it is of great lasting significance.

287
00:20:39,720 --> 00:20:43,360
Using a picture to represent
a sound in this way is called

288
00:20:43,360 --> 00:20:45,520
the rebus principle

289
00:20:45,520 --> 00:20:49,360
and it makes it possible to spell
out words using pictures.

290
00:20:49,360 --> 00:20:51,480
To give a really clear example,

291
00:20:51,480 --> 00:20:53,840
there's a word "shega" in Sumerian,

292
00:20:53,840 --> 00:20:57,800
which means beautiful or pretty or
nice or something like that

293
00:20:57,800 --> 00:21:01,120
and so a scribe would write
it syllabically - "she-ga."

294
00:21:01,120 --> 00:21:05,360
So he would use this sign, the
barley sign, for the "she" bit.

295
00:21:05,360 --> 00:21:07,840
And then he'd have to write
"ga" for the second bit.

296
00:21:07,840 --> 00:21:10,800
As it happens, "ga" means milk.

297
00:21:10,800 --> 00:21:13,760
So he would draw the picture
which represented milk,

298
00:21:13,760 --> 00:21:16,400
and barley and milk together would
spell shega,

299
00:21:16,400 --> 00:21:19,600
which had nothing to do with either
barley or milk.

300
00:21:19,600 --> 00:21:22,240
So this is a kind of rebus writing.

301
00:21:22,240 --> 00:21:26,320
Rebus is a smart word for it,
it's really a pun in some sense.

302
00:21:26,320 --> 00:21:28,040
It's a kind of pun

303
00:21:28,040 --> 00:21:30,840
that you get another meeting
out of a sign.

304
00:21:33,760 --> 00:21:36,720
At the other end of the Fertile
Crescent,

305
00:21:36,720 --> 00:21:39,960
Egyptians, too, started to make
rebus puns.

306
00:21:39,960 --> 00:21:42,640
Compelling evidence of this comes

307
00:21:42,640 --> 00:21:46,680
from an extraordinary object
in Cairo's Egyptian Museum,

308
00:21:46,680 --> 00:21:50,560
the Narmer Palette,
carved in 3,000 BC.

309
00:22:03,640 --> 00:22:07,600
By conquering the Nile Delta,
Narmer took control of the river

310
00:22:07,600 --> 00:22:10,640
all the way to the sea,
becoming the first pharaoh

311
00:22:10,640 --> 00:22:12,680
of a unified Egyptian state.

312
00:22:14,320 --> 00:22:17,720
The Palette tells the story
entirely through pictures.

313
00:22:52,280 --> 00:22:56,560
But next to the main characters
in this grisly tale

314
00:22:56,560 --> 00:22:59,480
are seemingly random pairs
of images,

315
00:22:59,480 --> 00:23:01,960
such as a catfish and a chisel.

316
00:23:01,960 --> 00:23:06,080
They only make sense in light of the
rebus principle.

317
00:23:15,400 --> 00:23:19,680
The Egyptian word for catfish
is "nar", a chisel is "mer".

318
00:23:20,920 --> 00:23:24,400
When combined, they sound out
Narmer,

319
00:23:24,400 --> 00:23:27,080
the name of the first of
the pharaohs.

320
00:23:31,720 --> 00:23:35,960
Next to his defeated enemy
is the symbol for a harpoon -

321
00:23:35,960 --> 00:23:38,200
"war" in Egyptian.

322
00:23:38,200 --> 00:23:43,080
Below it is a rectangle similar
to the ones on the Abydos vase.

323
00:24:21,120 --> 00:24:24,600
The next step was to extend
the rebus principle,

324
00:24:24,600 --> 00:24:27,480
which on the Palette is used
to spell names,

325
00:24:27,480 --> 00:24:30,720
to the full vocabulary
of the Egyptian language.

326
00:24:33,040 --> 00:24:37,320
The script the Egyptians created
in this way rivals cuneiform

327
00:24:37,320 --> 00:24:41,640
for the prize of being the world's
first true

328
00:24:41,640 --> 00:24:44,760
writing system, hieroglyphs.

329
00:24:46,600 --> 00:24:49,920
Orly Goldwasser has made
them a lifetime study.

330
00:24:58,000 --> 00:25:00,000
Hello. Lovely to see you.

331
00:25:02,120 --> 00:25:03,680
How are you?

332
00:25:03,680 --> 00:25:06,360
Great. When I'm here, it's great.

333
00:25:06,360 --> 00:25:08,320
What have we got here then?

334
00:25:08,320 --> 00:25:10,000
What do you think it is?

335
00:25:11,200 --> 00:25:13,600
Well, it's certainly a text.

336
00:25:13,600 --> 00:25:16,200
I don't know which way to read it.
How do you know it's a text?

337
00:25:16,200 --> 00:25:19,440
It's all pictures. Stylised.

338
00:25:19,440 --> 00:25:21,920
Yeah, what else? With repetitions.

339
00:25:21,920 --> 00:25:23,440
Yeah.

340
00:25:23,440 --> 00:25:26,640
There's obviously
a certain ordering.

341
00:25:26,640 --> 00:25:30,200
The sizes. Oh, sizes
is very important.

342
00:25:30,200 --> 00:25:33,600
You see everything is actually
on the same size -

343
00:25:33,600 --> 00:25:37,800
people, birds, houses, snakes,
hands.

344
00:25:37,800 --> 00:25:42,240
The hand of a person
and the whole person

345
00:25:42,240 --> 00:25:44,280
is of the same size,

346
00:25:44,280 --> 00:25:48,360
so this gives your mind
immediately an order.

347
00:25:48,360 --> 00:25:51,680
The idea you are not in picture
reading,

348
00:25:51,680 --> 00:25:54,320
but in script reading. Mm.

349
00:25:56,200 --> 00:26:02,400
This is the greatest experiment
ever conducted to write language

350
00:26:02,400 --> 00:26:05,120
in pictures only. Only pictures.

351
00:26:07,240 --> 00:26:11,320
It's an enormous cognitive
effort to read it or to write it,

352
00:26:11,320 --> 00:26:12,760
but it's fantastic.

353
00:26:15,080 --> 00:26:19,560
What makes hieroglyphs so difficult
is that the scribes use thousands

354
00:26:19,560 --> 00:26:23,760
of symbols and the rebus means
that most of them have

355
00:26:23,760 --> 00:26:26,360
at least two quite
distinct meanings.

356
00:26:29,800 --> 00:26:34,320
If we are talking about a duck,
as you see it here,

357
00:26:34,320 --> 00:26:36,600
it can be a representation
of a duck

358
00:26:36,600 --> 00:26:39,080
and this is fine. This is easy.

359
00:26:39,080 --> 00:26:42,560
But in many other cases,
he is not a duck at all.

360
00:26:42,560 --> 00:26:46,240
He's just the sound of the duck -
so.

361
00:26:46,240 --> 00:26:50,240
For example, the word daughter
is sot,

362
00:26:50,240 --> 00:26:52,880
or something like that.

363
00:26:52,880 --> 00:26:55,800
We don't know exactly
how to pronounce it.

364
00:26:55,800 --> 00:26:59,360
So, for the so, we have our duck.

365
00:26:59,360 --> 00:27:05,800
And afterwards we put another
sign, something that looks like

366
00:27:05,800 --> 00:27:08,600
a small half French bread.

367
00:27:08,600 --> 00:27:13,560
You see it, cut French bread,
which gives the meaning - t.

368
00:27:13,560 --> 00:27:14,960
So sot.

369
00:27:17,920 --> 00:27:21,360
The rebus principle was the key that
unlocked writing

370
00:27:21,360 --> 00:27:25,240
for the peoples
of the Fertile Crescent.

371
00:27:25,240 --> 00:27:27,720
With pictures that spoke,
rulers could write

372
00:27:27,720 --> 00:27:30,960
the history of their reigns,

373
00:27:30,960 --> 00:27:32,680
draw up legal codes,

374
00:27:32,680 --> 00:27:35,240
administer far flung empires

375
00:27:35,240 --> 00:27:38,880
and build monuments
that still impress us today.

376
00:27:41,920 --> 00:27:45,360
The rebus is among the most
consequential intellectual

377
00:27:45,360 --> 00:27:47,200
innovations of all time.

378
00:27:49,160 --> 00:27:51,160
So who discovered it?

379
00:27:55,400 --> 00:28:01,440
True writing starts when the sounds
of a language are represented

380
00:28:01,440 --> 00:28:05,720
and that, I think, was first
developed in Egypt.

381
00:28:05,720 --> 00:28:08,840
And, of course, there's a bit
of a squabble between

382
00:28:08,840 --> 00:28:13,000
Egyptologists and Assyriologists
about who invented writing

383
00:28:13,000 --> 00:28:16,120
and, of course, we did -
important thing to clarify.

384
00:28:18,080 --> 00:28:21,600
So, was the rebus born in Egypt,

385
00:28:21,600 --> 00:28:23,800
or Mesopotamia,

386
00:28:23,800 --> 00:28:26,000
or somewhere else entirely?

387
00:28:31,280 --> 00:28:33,200
The National Library of China.

388
00:28:34,760 --> 00:28:39,000
I came here to see examples
of another ancient script

389
00:28:39,000 --> 00:28:41,720
used more than 3,000 years ago

390
00:28:41,720 --> 00:28:44,080
at the court
of the Shang Emperors.

391
00:28:44,080 --> 00:28:45,920
Wonderful. Thank you.

392
00:29:01,040 --> 00:29:02,960
Oh, that's extraordinary.

393
00:29:04,720 --> 00:29:07,240
It's such a complete example.

394
00:29:08,840 --> 00:29:11,520
I was looking at the shoulder blade
of an ox -

395
00:29:11,520 --> 00:29:13,680
dated around 1200 BC.

396
00:29:15,040 --> 00:29:19,680
Incised on it are characters
in a clearly pictographic script.

397
00:29:19,680 --> 00:29:21,760
This is an oracle bone

398
00:29:21,760 --> 00:29:25,440
used in pyromancy,
or divination by fire.

399
00:29:25,440 --> 00:29:27,520
Thousands of them
have been unearthed

400
00:29:27,520 --> 00:29:31,160
and each is inscribed with one
or more questions.

401
00:29:31,160 --> 00:29:33,680
And these could range enormously

402
00:29:33,680 --> 00:29:38,800
from "Is the Emperor's toothache
due to an angry ancestor?"

403
00:29:38,800 --> 00:29:40,400
to "Will it rain next week?"

404
00:29:40,400 --> 00:29:43,720
or perhaps, "Is this a good day
to invade our neighbours?"

405
00:29:45,200 --> 00:29:47,480
Once the question had been written
on the bone,

406
00:29:47,480 --> 00:29:50,120
you turned it around and made
a small pit.

407
00:29:52,120 --> 00:29:56,800
A hot poker was then inserted into
the pit and the bone would crack,

408
00:29:56,800 --> 00:29:59,840
and the answer to your question lay
in the form of the crack.

409
00:30:01,040 --> 00:30:04,560
And, in fact, this one has
been deciphered.

410
00:30:04,560 --> 00:30:08,280
It's asking whether the emperor
should muster his army,

411
00:30:08,280 --> 00:30:10,600
that much is clear,

412
00:30:10,600 --> 00:30:14,280
but because we've lost the art of
this particular form of divination,

413
00:30:14,280 --> 00:30:16,560
we don't know what the answer was.

414
00:30:19,320 --> 00:30:22,200
The reason the inscriptions
are often readable

415
00:30:22,200 --> 00:30:25,440
is that oracle bone script is
clearly the precursor

416
00:30:25,440 --> 00:30:27,320
of modern Chinese writing.

417
00:30:35,840 --> 00:30:38,480
In the Beijing Huijia
Private School,

418
00:30:38,480 --> 00:30:42,280
Sophia is teaching her six-year-old
pupils to read and write.

419
00:30:43,600 --> 00:30:46,880
Sophia's main task is to help her
pupils memorise

420
00:30:46,880 --> 00:30:49,640
hundreds of Chinese characters.

421
00:30:49,640 --> 00:30:53,480
To do so, she often starts
with the way a character was written

422
00:30:53,480 --> 00:30:56,920
3,000 years ago on oracle bones,

423
00:30:56,920 --> 00:31:01,240
where the pictographic nature of
Chinese writing is easier to see.

424
00:31:45,560 --> 00:31:48,000
At root, like hieroglyphs,

425
00:31:48,000 --> 00:31:51,400
Chinese characters are
stylised pictures,

426
00:31:51,400 --> 00:31:55,360
but the similarities with Ancient
Egyptian writing do not end there.

427
00:31:57,080 --> 00:31:59,640
Professor Yeung Shin Chen
is a philologist

428
00:31:59,640 --> 00:32:02,960
who has studied
both writing systems.

429
00:32:02,960 --> 00:32:06,480
Egyptian and the Chinese writing
are very comparable.

430
00:32:07,960 --> 00:32:10,840
When I started to learn
Egyptian hieroglyphics,

431
00:32:10,840 --> 00:32:13,760
I could feel that there
are so many similarities.

432
00:32:15,640 --> 00:32:20,040
Firstly, the ancient people
think to use pictures,

433
00:32:20,040 --> 00:32:23,840
but they found pictograms
are not enough

434
00:32:23,840 --> 00:32:27,080
because there are many
abstract concepts

435
00:32:27,080 --> 00:32:30,400
and abstract words in language.

436
00:32:30,400 --> 00:32:34,240
If you want to record
the language fully

437
00:32:34,240 --> 00:32:37,200
pictograms will never succeed,

438
00:32:37,200 --> 00:32:38,720
so the...

439
00:32:39,960 --> 00:32:43,480
Think of the method of rebus,
rebus principle.

440
00:32:45,440 --> 00:32:49,200
The rebus principle is particularly
useful in Chinese

441
00:32:49,200 --> 00:32:52,480
because the spoken language
has many homophones -

442
00:32:52,480 --> 00:32:56,480
words that sound the same
but have different meanings.

443
00:32:56,480 --> 00:32:59,400
For example, "mu" means "tree"

444
00:32:59,400 --> 00:33:02,320
but it also means "to wash oneself"

445
00:33:02,320 --> 00:33:07,280
and so the stylised picture of
a tree can represent the word tree,

446
00:33:07,280 --> 00:33:10,280
and it can also be used
as a so-called phonogram

447
00:33:10,280 --> 00:33:14,080
to represent the sound
"mu", to wash,

448
00:33:14,080 --> 00:33:17,600
but that, of course,
could be confusing.

449
00:33:17,600 --> 00:33:20,160
Sometimes we don't know

450
00:33:20,160 --> 00:33:25,240
what the phonograms indicate -

451
00:33:25,240 --> 00:33:27,280
the meaning or the sound...

452
00:33:28,760 --> 00:33:32,520
..so they use a determinative.

453
00:33:34,360 --> 00:33:39,080
A determinative is a symbol which
classifies words into categories

454
00:33:39,080 --> 00:33:43,080
and so gives a clue as to the
correct way to read a character.

455
00:33:44,760 --> 00:33:48,800
These three strokes indicate
that the character being written

456
00:33:48,800 --> 00:33:50,680
has something to do with water.

457
00:33:53,280 --> 00:33:56,080
They can be used to distinguish
mu - tree,

458
00:33:56,080 --> 00:33:57,880
from mu - to wash,

459
00:33:57,880 --> 00:34:01,800
and so clarify the ambiguity
inherent in rebus writing.

460
00:34:04,200 --> 00:34:07,400
There are 214 classifier signs

461
00:34:07,400 --> 00:34:11,040
and the majority of Chinese
characters are formed using one.

462
00:34:13,200 --> 00:34:17,160
Egyptian scribes, too, divided words
into categories

463
00:34:17,160 --> 00:34:20,120
and, as well as representing
words or sounds,

464
00:34:20,120 --> 00:34:24,200
many hieroglyphs can also
be used as classifiers.

465
00:34:24,200 --> 00:34:27,480
For example, you have a duck

466
00:34:27,480 --> 00:34:30,200
after all the names of birds.

467
00:34:30,200 --> 00:34:33,880
You can say "a falcon"
and then you will have a duck,

468
00:34:33,880 --> 00:34:38,040
which means that the falcon belongs
to the category of birds.

469
00:34:39,320 --> 00:34:44,240
The phonogram classifier combination
is a very good way

470
00:34:44,240 --> 00:34:46,480
to represent a word.

471
00:34:46,480 --> 00:34:48,960
Both Egyptian people
and Chinese people believed

472
00:34:48,960 --> 00:34:52,360
that's like a perfect method.

473
00:34:54,840 --> 00:34:58,000
Cuneiform - the writing system
of Mesopotamia -

474
00:34:58,000 --> 00:35:00,280
also made use of classifiers...

475
00:35:02,640 --> 00:35:05,560
..as did the last great
picture-based writing system

476
00:35:05,560 --> 00:35:09,880
to be developed in the new world
around 600 BC.

477
00:35:15,200 --> 00:35:18,360
Mayan glyphs also depend
on the rebus principle

478
00:35:18,360 --> 00:35:20,960
to spell out sounds

479
00:35:20,960 --> 00:35:24,440
and use classifiers to sort out
the consequent ambiguities.

480
00:35:25,920 --> 00:35:28,120
The similarities are striking.

481
00:35:29,680 --> 00:35:33,080
If you know a bit about cuneiform
and Mayan script

482
00:35:33,080 --> 00:35:36,440
and Egyptian script and Chinese
script, for example, the main four,

483
00:35:36,440 --> 00:35:40,120
you have an inescapable feeling that
even though they look

484
00:35:40,120 --> 00:35:42,160
completely unrelated,

485
00:35:42,160 --> 00:35:45,760
nevertheless they have many things
in common,

486
00:35:45,760 --> 00:35:49,240
and this forces you to consider

487
00:35:49,240 --> 00:35:51,480
the whole question
of origin and spread.

488
00:35:54,040 --> 00:35:58,560
So could there be a common origin
of all writing,

489
00:35:58,560 --> 00:36:00,600
a single time and place

490
00:36:00,600 --> 00:36:04,800
where the secret of turning pictures
into words was first discovered?

491
00:36:07,200 --> 00:36:10,400
The way I look at it is this - these
writing systems have in common

492
00:36:10,400 --> 00:36:12,000
the rebus principle.

493
00:36:12,000 --> 00:36:14,600
The rebus writing is
the written version

494
00:36:14,600 --> 00:36:17,080
of the pun in speech

495
00:36:17,080 --> 00:36:21,160
and everybody makes puns and puns
are a natural human form of humour,

496
00:36:21,160 --> 00:36:25,000
and once you start with the idea
of reducing speech

497
00:36:25,000 --> 00:36:29,480
to any kind of symbol from which
language can be retrieved,

498
00:36:29,480 --> 00:36:31,840
then the rebus thing hits you
in the face

499
00:36:31,840 --> 00:36:35,320
because when you're casting
around for the way to do it,

500
00:36:35,320 --> 00:36:37,120
it's obvious. It's just obvious.

501
00:36:38,480 --> 00:36:42,040
In other words, the similarities
between ancient writing systems

502
00:36:42,040 --> 00:36:44,720
reflect not a common origin,

503
00:36:44,720 --> 00:36:48,920
but what all people throughout
history have always had in common -

504
00:36:48,920 --> 00:36:50,360
the human mind.

505
00:36:51,760 --> 00:36:55,280
In other words, any load of human
beings, in any context,

506
00:36:55,280 --> 00:36:58,880
who have to invent writing will come
up with rebus writings -

507
00:36:58,880 --> 00:37:00,120
it's inevitable.

508
00:37:02,560 --> 00:37:05,360
At the Medieval Round Church
in Cambridge,

509
00:37:05,360 --> 00:37:08,640
I went to see an event organised
by my friend,

510
00:37:08,640 --> 00:37:11,840
the calligraphic artist
Brody Neuenschwander.

511
00:37:11,840 --> 00:37:14,760
He calls it A Brush With Silence

512
00:37:14,760 --> 00:37:18,400
and it celebrates the diversity
of scripts in use around the world.

513
00:37:19,800 --> 00:37:21,600
Brush With Silence
brings calligraphers

514
00:37:21,600 --> 00:37:24,040
from about 20 different
cultures together.

515
00:37:24,040 --> 00:37:28,160
They sit in silence and they write
their own scripts.

516
00:37:28,160 --> 00:37:30,720
It is a meditation in ink.

517
00:37:32,840 --> 00:37:35,480
But A Brush With Silence
presented me with a puzzle.

518
00:37:37,320 --> 00:37:39,640
While the Japanese
and Chinese calligraphers

519
00:37:39,640 --> 00:37:41,720
drew Chinese characters,

520
00:37:41,720 --> 00:37:45,280
whose connection with the origin
of writing I could see,

521
00:37:45,280 --> 00:37:48,640
at every other table,
the calligraphers were using scripts

522
00:37:48,640 --> 00:37:51,320
which look very different.

523
00:37:51,320 --> 00:37:53,720
Instead of thousands of pictograms,

524
00:37:53,720 --> 00:37:56,360
they employ just a few dozen
simple shapes.

525
00:37:57,640 --> 00:38:00,080
These are the world's alphabets.

526
00:38:04,760 --> 00:38:07,960
At first glance, alphabets
don't seem to have anything to do

527
00:38:07,960 --> 00:38:10,840
with the rebus principle,

528
00:38:10,840 --> 00:38:15,080
so what was the connection
between the way writing began

529
00:38:15,080 --> 00:38:17,720
and the way most people write today?

530
00:38:26,960 --> 00:38:30,000
In search of an answer
to those questions,

531
00:38:30,000 --> 00:38:32,680
I came to the Sinai Desert in Egypt

532
00:38:32,680 --> 00:38:34,760
with archaeologist Pierre Tallet.

533
00:38:38,480 --> 00:38:42,680
Pierre was returning to the plateau
of Serabit el-Khadim

534
00:38:42,680 --> 00:38:44,800
in the company of old friends.

535
00:38:56,240 --> 00:38:58,200
THEY EXCHANGE GREETINGS

536
00:39:00,000 --> 00:39:04,400
With our guide Saleem,
we set out to climb 400 metres

537
00:39:04,400 --> 00:39:05,840
to the plateau above.

538
00:39:08,360 --> 00:39:12,280
We were following a path trod
4,000 years ago

539
00:39:12,280 --> 00:39:16,080
by expeditions sent here
by the pharaohs of Egypt

540
00:39:16,080 --> 00:39:18,120
to mine the gemstone turquoise.

541
00:39:20,040 --> 00:39:24,080
This is the real entrance for
the place of Serabit el-Khadim.

542
00:39:24,080 --> 00:39:26,360
You have the main access
to the plateau

543
00:39:26,360 --> 00:39:30,280
and you can see,
on this big face of rock,

544
00:39:30,280 --> 00:39:32,920
plenty of inscriptions and drawings
that have been left

545
00:39:32,920 --> 00:39:37,160
by many people trying to commemorate
their venue in this place.

546
00:39:37,160 --> 00:39:39,280
Arriving in here into the place,
yeah. Yeah, yeah.

547
00:39:39,280 --> 00:39:42,560
And, for example, here
you have a very skilled inscription

548
00:39:42,560 --> 00:39:44,840
with very nice hieroglyphs,

549
00:39:44,840 --> 00:39:47,480
but, of course,
everybody was not able

550
00:39:47,480 --> 00:39:50,040
to write his name.

551
00:39:50,040 --> 00:39:53,280
And you have here other
means to commemorate

552
00:39:53,280 --> 00:39:55,360
the arrival of somebody.

553
00:39:55,360 --> 00:39:58,480
They could leave signs, very crude
signs, like this star,

554
00:39:58,480 --> 00:40:00,040
that you can see here.

555
00:40:00,040 --> 00:40:05,000
You even have an hashtag
on...a kind of hashtag, of course,

556
00:40:05,000 --> 00:40:08,320
on the big rock that you have
behind us.

557
00:40:08,320 --> 00:40:10,680
These people are trying to find
their own sign

558
00:40:10,680 --> 00:40:12,600
to identify themselves.
Yeah, of course.

559
00:40:12,600 --> 00:40:16,120
And you have, in fact,
literate and illiterate people

560
00:40:16,120 --> 00:40:18,800
that are all involved
in the same operations.

561
00:40:18,800 --> 00:40:21,880
And it's probably the combination
of those illiterate

562
00:40:21,880 --> 00:40:24,800
and literate people that would
produce a new script.

563
00:40:31,680 --> 00:40:34,000
We were also following
in the footsteps

564
00:40:34,000 --> 00:40:38,160
of a famous husband and wife team
of archaeologists,

565
00:40:38,160 --> 00:40:41,400
William and Hilda Flinders Petrie,

566
00:40:41,400 --> 00:40:44,240
who first came here in 1905.

567
00:40:53,360 --> 00:40:56,840
At the edge of the plateau,
the Petries came across the ruins

568
00:40:56,840 --> 00:40:59,800
of an Ancient Egyptian temple

569
00:40:59,800 --> 00:41:03,760
dominated by dozens of large stone
markers called stelae.

570
00:41:05,520 --> 00:41:08,120
The stelae were covered
in hieroglyphs

571
00:41:08,120 --> 00:41:11,560
that revealed to the Petries why
a temple had been built

572
00:41:11,560 --> 00:41:16,080
in this remote spot so far
from the Nile Valley.

573
00:41:16,080 --> 00:41:20,560
This one is one of the best stelae
that we have in this temple,

574
00:41:20,560 --> 00:41:24,480
and it is the biography of an
official.

575
00:41:24,480 --> 00:41:28,080
He complains at the beginning
because he is sent to Sinai

576
00:41:28,080 --> 00:41:30,840
not in the good period,
because it's during the summer

577
00:41:30,840 --> 00:41:34,560
and the weather was too hot,
but at the end it's a perfect story

578
00:41:34,560 --> 00:41:38,640
because he is getting more turquoise
than everybody before him,

579
00:41:38,640 --> 00:41:42,760
and everybody goes safe
and sound back to the Nile Valley.

580
00:41:42,760 --> 00:41:45,800
So this is a common type
of monument?

581
00:41:45,800 --> 00:41:47,840
Yes, we have several monuments
of that type.

582
00:41:47,840 --> 00:41:50,760
So we have a huge amount of
information about individuals.

583
00:41:50,760 --> 00:41:54,240
About individuals, and we have,
in fact,

584
00:41:54,240 --> 00:41:58,440
one stele for every mission that was
made to Sinai.

585
00:42:02,320 --> 00:42:06,280
The turquoise those missions
came here to find

586
00:42:06,280 --> 00:42:09,520
was an important ingredient
in the magic

587
00:42:09,520 --> 00:42:12,480
that raised a dead pharaoh
to eternal life.

588
00:42:15,800 --> 00:42:20,240
And the temple, the Petries
learned, was dedicated to Hathor,

589
00:42:20,240 --> 00:42:22,360
the goddess of turquoise,

590
00:42:22,360 --> 00:42:25,760
so that the miners
could invoke her aid,

591
00:42:25,760 --> 00:42:28,000
but it was in the mine
workings themselves

592
00:42:28,000 --> 00:42:32,200
that the Petries made their most
surprising discovery.

593
00:42:32,200 --> 00:42:34,440
Hilda stepped on a stone

594
00:42:34,440 --> 00:42:37,320
and she picked up the stone
and told Petrie,

595
00:42:37,320 --> 00:42:39,520
"There is something here."

596
00:42:39,520 --> 00:42:41,600
And this stone in the mine

597
00:42:41,600 --> 00:42:46,880
was the first inscription
in something very strange

598
00:42:46,880 --> 00:42:49,240
that nobody saw ever before.

599
00:42:50,520 --> 00:42:54,160
And Petrie looked on it,
and he said,

600
00:42:54,160 --> 00:42:55,840
"This is not Egyptian.

601
00:42:55,840 --> 00:42:59,840
"It looks like ugly,
very ugly hieroglyphics,

602
00:42:59,840 --> 00:43:01,480
"but it's not Egyptian.

603
00:43:01,480 --> 00:43:05,480
"There are too few signs here.

604
00:43:05,480 --> 00:43:09,080
"This should be an alphabet."

605
00:43:09,080 --> 00:43:11,080
And this was the boom.

606
00:43:12,280 --> 00:43:15,760
If Petrie was right,
these would be by far

607
00:43:15,760 --> 00:43:19,280
the oldest alphabetic inscriptions
ever found.

608
00:43:19,280 --> 00:43:21,680
Could this be the first alphabet?

609
00:43:21,680 --> 00:43:24,720
And if so, who was responsible
for it?

610
00:43:28,040 --> 00:43:32,560
Pierre showed me a fascinating clue
among the stelae.

611
00:44:04,680 --> 00:44:09,520
This individual clearly participated
in more than one expedition

612
00:44:09,520 --> 00:44:12,400
because he's pictured on another
stela,

613
00:44:12,400 --> 00:44:14,600
where the hieroglyphs give
us his name.

614
00:44:24,600 --> 00:44:29,760
Retjenu was an Egyptian name
for the biblical land of Canaan

615
00:44:29,760 --> 00:44:34,520
and Canaanite migrant workers may
have been a familiar sight in Egypt.

616
00:44:36,360 --> 00:44:41,840
These wall paintings decorate a tomb
above the Nile in upper Egypt.

617
00:44:41,840 --> 00:44:46,000
They date from the same period
as the stela at Serabit.

618
00:44:46,000 --> 00:44:48,160
And one panel shows travellers,

619
00:44:48,160 --> 00:44:51,520
in the distinctive patterned robes
of Canaan,

620
00:44:51,520 --> 00:44:54,880
which contrast with the simple
white loincloths

621
00:44:54,880 --> 00:44:56,240
of the Egyptians.

622
00:44:59,080 --> 00:45:03,400
The hieroglyphic inscription
explains that 37 foreigners came

623
00:45:03,400 --> 00:45:06,040
to make offerings
to the local ruler,

624
00:45:06,040 --> 00:45:08,280
perhaps hoping to be given work.

625
00:45:13,280 --> 00:45:17,560
Something similar happened
at Serabit, but, on the plateau,

626
00:45:17,560 --> 00:45:21,280
the cultural exchange between
Canaanites and Egyptians seems

627
00:45:21,280 --> 00:45:24,480
to have had momentous consequences.

628
00:46:03,040 --> 00:46:06,760
It seemed that the inscriptions
in the mines were related

629
00:46:06,760 --> 00:46:09,760
to the hieroglyphs
in the temple - but how?

630
00:46:11,160 --> 00:46:15,680
Then another Egyptologist examined
an object that Petrie had brought

631
00:46:15,680 --> 00:46:18,520
back from Serabit
to the British Museum.

632
00:46:19,920 --> 00:46:23,160
Thank you, Mark. Really, thank you.

633
00:46:24,520 --> 00:46:28,440
Last time that I saw him,
he was in a box. Yeah.

634
00:46:28,440 --> 00:46:32,600
He moved now into a basket.
Into a basket, yeah.

635
00:46:32,600 --> 00:46:38,040
For me, it's worth all the gold of
Egypt,

636
00:46:38,040 --> 00:46:41,360
this little piece that stays
here, in the basket.

637
00:46:44,080 --> 00:46:48,400
He has a small inscription
in Egyptian and a parallel

638
00:46:48,400 --> 00:46:52,160
inscription in the strange
signs below.

639
00:46:52,160 --> 00:46:56,680
So here you have an option
to break the code.

640
00:46:56,680 --> 00:46:59,560
This is why I call him the
Rosetta Stone of the alphabet.

641
00:47:01,480 --> 00:47:04,120
The code-breaker was
Sir Alan Gardiner.

642
00:47:06,040 --> 00:47:11,000
Gardiner looks on it
and it's very easy for him to read

643
00:47:11,000 --> 00:47:12,800
the Egyptian part.

644
00:47:12,800 --> 00:47:15,520
It's a repetitive formula,

645
00:47:15,520 --> 00:47:21,320
hundreds of times. It says, "The
beloved of the goddess Hathor."

646
00:47:22,360 --> 00:47:25,920
And then he looks on the strange
signs below.

647
00:47:25,920 --> 00:47:30,120
Gardiner guessed that they must
spell out a similar dedication

648
00:47:30,120 --> 00:47:33,840
in the Canaanite language to a
Canaanite goddess.

649
00:47:35,280 --> 00:47:39,080
A Canaanite wouldn't call
this goddess Hathor.

650
00:47:39,080 --> 00:47:42,240
So he wants a name,
he wants the name of the goddess

651
00:47:42,240 --> 00:47:45,640
because, if his theory is correct,
he has the beloved.

652
00:47:45,640 --> 00:47:47,760
Beloved of whom?

653
00:47:47,760 --> 00:47:50,960
On the other side of the sphinx
was what looked like a complete

654
00:47:50,960 --> 00:47:54,840
inscription and Gardiner
was struck by the last symbol.

655
00:47:56,320 --> 00:48:01,400
It looked like the letter T in the
ancient Paleo-Hebrew alphabet

656
00:48:01,400 --> 00:48:06,360
and that reminded him of a Canaanite
goddess known from scripture.

657
00:48:06,360 --> 00:48:09,720
In the Bible, we know the God Ba'al

658
00:48:09,720 --> 00:48:11,680
and he had a consort.

659
00:48:11,680 --> 00:48:14,440
The consort in Canaanite is

660
00:48:14,440 --> 00:48:18,640
always with a T ending of the
female - and she is Ba'alat.

661
00:48:18,640 --> 00:48:21,200
So Gardiner guessed that this was
what

662
00:48:21,200 --> 00:48:24,560
the last four symbols spelled out.

663
00:48:24,560 --> 00:48:29,560
The complete name of the Canaanite
goddess,

664
00:48:29,560 --> 00:48:33,680
that he presumed should
play the role of Hathor, here,

665
00:48:33,680 --> 00:48:35,120
Ba'alat.

666
00:48:37,160 --> 00:48:40,680
The name of the goddess
was the key to understanding

667
00:48:40,680 --> 00:48:42,720
the mysterious Serabit script.

668
00:48:44,920 --> 00:48:49,160
The first letter, this rectangle,
was clearly based on the Egyptian

669
00:48:49,160 --> 00:48:51,520
hieroglyph for house, Pr.

670
00:48:51,520 --> 00:48:55,360
Egyptian scribes used this symbol in
three ways -

671
00:48:55,360 --> 00:49:00,040
to write the word "house"
to represent the sound "Pr",

672
00:49:00,040 --> 00:49:04,320
and, finally, as a classifier
attached to any word to do

673
00:49:04,320 --> 00:49:06,960
with buildings in general.

674
00:49:06,960 --> 00:49:10,640
But the Canaanites ignored
all these complexities.

675
00:49:12,160 --> 00:49:17,920
The great trick, the genius trick,
was to take a picture,

676
00:49:17,920 --> 00:49:21,080
to read it in its Canaanite name.

677
00:49:21,080 --> 00:49:24,720
The house is "beit" in a Canaanite
dialect

678
00:49:24,720 --> 00:49:28,360
and then you take only the first
sound, the "ba".

679
00:49:29,480 --> 00:49:32,640
And whenever you will need the "ba",

680
00:49:32,640 --> 00:49:34,120
you draw this house.

681
00:49:35,440 --> 00:49:38,360
This is the familiar Rebus
principle,

682
00:49:38,360 --> 00:49:41,120
but applied in a radically new way.

683
00:49:41,120 --> 00:49:44,560
The characters do not stand
for the sound of the whole word,

684
00:49:44,560 --> 00:49:48,240
but only for the sound
at the beginning of the word.

685
00:49:48,240 --> 00:49:50,800
And this is the great invention.

686
00:49:50,800 --> 00:49:56,600
This is the alphabet in around 30
pictures, 25 to 30 pictures.

687
00:49:56,600 --> 00:50:02,000
You can write everything
because you are after single sounds

688
00:50:02,000 --> 00:50:05,160
that you need, and to write
something in this Canaanite dialect

689
00:50:05,160 --> 00:50:08,480
you needed around 30 sounds,
that's all.

690
00:50:08,480 --> 00:50:13,120
And this was the huge...the
fantastic invention.

691
00:50:36,760 --> 00:50:38,120
Here it is.

692
00:50:40,080 --> 00:50:42,960
This is it. Yeah, this is it.

693
00:50:42,960 --> 00:50:45,600
And maybe you have in front
of you one of the first As

694
00:50:45,600 --> 00:50:50,800
of history, just followed by one
of the first Bs of history, also.

695
00:50:50,800 --> 00:50:53,640
Literally alphabet.
Literally alphabet.

696
00:50:53,640 --> 00:50:55,440
And it is working as an alphabet.

697
00:50:55,440 --> 00:50:58,640
It is an alphabet.
They are using hieroglyphic signs,

698
00:50:58,640 --> 00:51:00,680
but in a much simpler way.

699
00:51:00,680 --> 00:51:02,360
The first B we have.

700
00:51:02,360 --> 00:51:04,720
The first B from the whole history.

701
00:51:07,760 --> 00:51:13,240
It was truly astonishing to see,
scratched nearly 4,000 years ago,

702
00:51:13,240 --> 00:51:17,800
a symbol which is the origin
of a letter I use every single day.

703
00:51:19,760 --> 00:51:23,400
The journey from the minds
of Serabit to the pages of my diary

704
00:51:23,400 --> 00:51:26,720
began when Hebded and his
followers took their new script back

705
00:51:26,720 --> 00:51:28,920
to Canaan, where it was adopted

706
00:51:28,920 --> 00:51:32,000
by another Canaanite people -
the Phoenicians.

707
00:51:32,000 --> 00:51:33,760
Traders and seafarers,

708
00:51:33,760 --> 00:51:36,160
they spread the alphabet
across the Middle East

709
00:51:36,160 --> 00:51:39,400
and the Mediterranean,
where it was taken up by Greeks

710
00:51:39,400 --> 00:51:40,800
and then Romans.

711
00:51:43,200 --> 00:51:47,760
We asked Orly Goldwasser to join
calligrapher Brody Neuenschwander

712
00:51:47,760 --> 00:51:52,920
to explore the steps that gradually
transformed hieroglyphs at Serabit

713
00:51:52,920 --> 00:51:55,080
into the letters we use today.

714
00:51:56,640 --> 00:51:58,880
The Canaanites took
the hieroglyphs

715
00:51:58,880 --> 00:52:01,040
that were meaningful for them

716
00:52:01,040 --> 00:52:03,840
and then they saw the head
of the bull.

717
00:52:03,840 --> 00:52:06,720
They could immediately relate to it

718
00:52:06,720 --> 00:52:11,040
because this was the head of their
own God, Ba'al.

719
00:52:11,040 --> 00:52:12,840
Ah-ha. OK.

720
00:52:12,840 --> 00:52:18,080
But, in in their Semitic dialect,
the animal was called "aluf",

721
00:52:18,080 --> 00:52:20,400
or "alph" or "aleph."

722
00:52:20,400 --> 00:52:23,160
So they looked at this bull,
but they would say "aluf" instead

723
00:52:23,160 --> 00:52:24,640
of the Egyptian word.

724
00:52:24,640 --> 00:52:27,560
Yeah, they said it in their own
language. What did they care?

725
00:52:27,560 --> 00:52:30,960
And then they decided this will
stand for "A".

726
00:52:30,960 --> 00:52:33,560
So they would make it much
simpler than that, I suppose,

727
00:52:33,560 --> 00:52:36,320
just in a couple of strokes of the
brush, really? Right.

728
00:52:37,400 --> 00:52:43,680
Many hundreds of years later,
scribes in Phoenicia adopt this...

729
00:52:43,680 --> 00:52:45,640
..this drawing of the bull.

730
00:52:45,640 --> 00:52:50,000
They just turn it around because
they don't care about the image

731
00:52:50,000 --> 00:52:53,240
and then the Romans just changed
the direction.

732
00:52:54,360 --> 00:52:59,200
And you reach your A in English and
in Latin,

733
00:52:59,200 --> 00:53:04,000
and what you have here is actually
the ancient Egyptian hieroglyph

734
00:53:04,000 --> 00:53:07,280
of the bull sleeping forever
in the letter A,

735
00:53:07,280 --> 00:53:11,480
because this is just the bull
turned on his horns.

736
00:53:11,480 --> 00:53:12,960
Do you see?

737
00:53:15,040 --> 00:53:19,080
Almost all the letters of the Latin
alphabet are ultimately derived

738
00:53:19,080 --> 00:53:22,400
from the hieroglyphs that the
Canaanites of Serabit chose

739
00:53:22,400 --> 00:53:25,280
to represent the sounds
of their tongue.

740
00:53:27,920 --> 00:53:31,880
The broken rectangle that was
the Egyptian sign for "house"

741
00:53:31,880 --> 00:53:34,040
was abbreviated by the Greeks...

742
00:53:35,680 --> 00:53:39,720
..flipped by the Romans,
to create the Latin B.

743
00:53:42,240 --> 00:53:44,600
The Egyptian hieroglyph for "water",

744
00:53:44,600 --> 00:53:46,760
"mayim" in the Canaanite tongue...

745
00:53:48,760 --> 00:53:50,800
..became the Greek Mu

746
00:53:50,800 --> 00:53:52,800
and then the Latin M.

747
00:53:57,000 --> 00:54:00,600
There were two Egyptian signs
which represented snakes.

748
00:54:01,880 --> 00:54:06,040
These became the Greek Nu and our N.

749
00:54:12,920 --> 00:54:15,640
So what was the Egyptian
word for head?

750
00:54:15,640 --> 00:54:18,760
We don't know exactly,
but something like "teptup",

751
00:54:18,760 --> 00:54:21,880
but it is of no interest
for the Canaanite.

752
00:54:21,880 --> 00:54:23,720
What is their word for head?

753
00:54:23,720 --> 00:54:26,760
Very different. "Rosh."
Rosh. With an R?

754
00:54:26,760 --> 00:54:31,360
Yes, with an R at the beginning,
and here they will reach the R.

755
00:54:31,360 --> 00:54:34,160
So this is the Canaanite...
This is the Canaanites. ..head.

756
00:54:34,160 --> 00:54:36,120
Yeah.

757
00:54:36,120 --> 00:54:38,680
Then the Greeks make a rather more

758
00:54:38,680 --> 00:54:41,720
abstract representation of the head
here,

759
00:54:41,720 --> 00:54:46,160
even though you can see
the general idea of head.

760
00:54:46,160 --> 00:54:49,120
The Romans turned everything
the other way, systematically.

761
00:54:49,120 --> 00:54:52,240
Everything is in the leading
direction.

762
00:54:52,240 --> 00:54:54,120
But it's been centuries

763
00:54:54,120 --> 00:54:57,200
and centuries since we've seen
any kind of image in this,

764
00:54:57,200 --> 00:55:01,360
and I don't think anybody would know
that behind that letter is actually

765
00:55:01,360 --> 00:55:02,840
a profile of a head. Yes.

766
00:55:02,840 --> 00:55:08,560
Again, the Egyptian hieroglyph
is hiding in the R. Right.

767
00:55:08,560 --> 00:55:10,720
They're always hiding.

768
00:55:12,600 --> 00:55:17,280
But it's not just Latin and Greek
letters that derive from Serabit.

769
00:55:18,560 --> 00:55:22,920
Almost all the world's alphabet
share this same root.

770
00:55:22,920 --> 00:55:24,720
Scripts like Hebrew...

771
00:55:27,280 --> 00:55:28,360
..Armenian...

772
00:55:29,720 --> 00:55:30,880
..Cyrillic...

773
00:55:33,520 --> 00:55:34,520
..Tibetan...

774
00:55:36,120 --> 00:55:37,520
..Devanagari...

775
00:55:39,760 --> 00:55:41,160
..Gujarati.

776
00:55:43,640 --> 00:55:46,920
Sometimes the connection
is far from obvious,

777
00:55:46,920 --> 00:55:48,480
but it's still there.

778
00:55:52,680 --> 00:55:55,320
This document is a leaf from a

779
00:55:55,320 --> 00:55:58,760
seventh century Koran dated
to 675 CE,

780
00:55:58,760 --> 00:56:00,920
the first Islamic century.

781
00:56:00,920 --> 00:56:05,240
It represents one of the earliest
examples of writing Arabic

782
00:56:05,240 --> 00:56:07,240
in a calligraphic style.

783
00:56:07,240 --> 00:56:12,400
But when I look at it, I see
in these archaic letter shapes

784
00:56:12,400 --> 00:56:15,480
the echoes of the alphabet at
Serabit.

785
00:56:15,480 --> 00:56:18,920
So, for example, if you see
this letter here,

786
00:56:18,920 --> 00:56:21,360
it looks like a line with a small
tail,

787
00:56:21,360 --> 00:56:24,360
this is the alif, the first
letter, the A.

788
00:56:25,720 --> 00:56:29,360
It originally looked a little
like a bull, like this,

789
00:56:29,360 --> 00:56:34,640
and it gets stylised in Phoenician,
simplified, simply this.

790
00:56:34,640 --> 00:56:39,200
Now the connection between
that and our A in English

791
00:56:39,200 --> 00:56:40,720
is quite obvious.

792
00:56:40,720 --> 00:56:45,000
Now, one more step takes us
to Nabatiye and Aramaic.

793
00:56:46,240 --> 00:56:49,280
Another simplification, it looks
simply like a six.

794
00:56:49,280 --> 00:56:51,920
And then in the Koran fragment
that we looked at,

795
00:56:51,920 --> 00:56:56,160
we can see that the loop has almost
completely disappeared and we simply

796
00:56:56,160 --> 00:56:57,760
have this little tail.

797
00:56:57,760 --> 00:57:01,320
And then the modern Arabic
script, a straight line.

798
00:57:01,320 --> 00:57:04,520
So that straight line through these
stages goes all the way back

799
00:57:04,520 --> 00:57:07,080
to that bull, even though
at different ends

800
00:57:07,080 --> 00:57:08,920
they look nothing alike.

801
00:57:11,400 --> 00:57:15,000
So the modern Arabic alphabet
and the Latin alphabet that we use

802
00:57:15,000 --> 00:57:17,480
to write English are our cousins,

803
00:57:17,480 --> 00:57:19,680
they belong to the same family.

804
00:57:20,760 --> 00:57:25,240
All the alphabets of Arabia,
of the Mediterranean,

805
00:57:25,240 --> 00:57:29,840
of the Middle East, all
of the alphabet scripts seem to go

806
00:57:29,840 --> 00:57:33,160
back to one original prototype.

807
00:57:33,160 --> 00:57:37,200
It seems that the alphabet,
the concept of writing each phoneme

808
00:57:37,200 --> 00:57:40,960
with a separate glyph, that idea,
as simple as it is,

809
00:57:40,960 --> 00:57:42,640
was only invented once.

810
00:57:43,920 --> 00:57:47,360
What Hebded and his followers did
in the mines of Serabit

811
00:57:47,360 --> 00:57:49,800
changed the world.

812
00:57:49,800 --> 00:57:53,240
They were not scribes or scholars,
but, when they adapted the

813
00:57:53,240 --> 00:57:57,720
rebus principle, which was the basis
of all ancient scripts, to make

814
00:57:57,720 --> 00:58:01,560
the first letters, they created
a form of communication

815
00:58:01,560 --> 00:58:04,320
which would eventually sweep
the globe.

816
00:58:08,640 --> 00:58:12,000
We owe to those illiterate
migrant workers

817
00:58:12,000 --> 00:58:14,400
the invention of the alphabet...

818
00:58:16,800 --> 00:58:20,680
..a simple script which gave the
gift of writing

819
00:58:20,680 --> 00:58:25,280
to countless cultures,
uniting the peoples of the world

820
00:58:25,280 --> 00:58:27,800
across space and time.

821
00:59:13,400 --> 00:59:19,280
In the year of our Lord, 1448,
in Mainz, Germany,

822
00:59:19,280 --> 00:59:22,840
a goldsmith named Johannes Gutenberg

823
00:59:22,840 --> 00:59:26,240
was experimenting with a lead alloy

824
00:59:26,240 --> 00:59:29,160
and a hand-held mould.

825
00:59:29,160 --> 00:59:34,200
His aim was to speed up the
process of putting ink on paper.

826
00:59:35,360 --> 00:59:38,680
But what he did was
speed up history.

827
00:59:43,800 --> 00:59:48,000
Gutenberg's invention spelled
the end of the Middle Ages

828
00:59:48,000 --> 00:59:52,080
and ushered in the modern
world of science and industry.

829
00:59:52,080 --> 00:59:56,720
Every innovation of today
is built on this foundation.

830
00:59:58,280 --> 01:00:04,040
Yet behind Gutenberg's press, lay
centuries of development and change

831
01:00:04,040 --> 01:00:06,240
in the way words were written -

832
01:00:06,240 --> 01:00:09,520
without which, he could
never have succeeded.

833
01:00:12,760 --> 01:00:17,480
This is the story of history's
most important technology.

834
01:00:17,480 --> 01:00:20,880
The technology of
putting words on a page.

835
01:01:07,240 --> 01:01:10,440
Looks a bit out of place.

836
01:01:10,440 --> 01:01:13,760
Well, I take a pretty experimental
and hands-on approach

837
01:01:13,760 --> 01:01:15,560
to calligraphy, to say the least.

838
01:01:17,320 --> 01:01:22,480
It only takes a few moments actually
to make one of the best pens I know.

839
01:01:22,480 --> 01:01:25,840
You're making a pen.
Yeah, that's right.

840
01:01:25,840 --> 01:01:30,160
Brody Neuenschwander is a
calligrapher, an artist who takes

841
01:01:30,160 --> 01:01:32,800
letters as his starting point.

842
01:01:32,800 --> 01:01:36,440
Brody is a modern artist,
but he stands in a tradition

843
01:01:36,440 --> 01:01:41,120
that stretches back 5,000 years
to the beginning of writing.

844
01:01:41,120 --> 01:01:44,360
For most of that time,
words were written by hand

845
01:01:44,360 --> 01:01:46,200
using a variety of tools.

846
01:01:47,480 --> 01:01:49,240
In this film,

847
01:01:49,240 --> 01:01:53,360
Brody and I want to explore the
changing methods people have used

848
01:01:53,360 --> 01:01:57,160
to create written texts
and how changing the way we write

849
01:01:57,160 --> 01:02:00,080
changed the course of history.

850
01:02:00,080 --> 01:02:03,720
I'm going to write a phrase from
a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins,

851
01:02:03,720 --> 01:02:07,200
"As kingfishers catch fire"
and use this pen.

852
01:02:07,200 --> 01:02:11,520
One of my favourite pens, made
of a drinks can, because it gives me

853
01:02:11,520 --> 01:02:14,080
so many possibilities, produce
different kinds of lines.

854
01:02:14,080 --> 01:02:17,040
So the A, we'll start
with a great...

855
01:02:17,040 --> 01:02:18,760
Oh, yes!

856
01:02:18,760 --> 01:02:21,360
And you should see right away
what this is doing for me.

857
01:02:21,360 --> 01:02:23,280
It's doing something
very particular.

858
01:02:23,280 --> 01:02:27,800
It's giving me the almost
splattered feel of a brush. Yes.

859
01:02:27,800 --> 01:02:31,800
And then the finest
hairline of a quill.

860
01:02:31,800 --> 01:02:34,080
And then this great big fat line.

861
01:02:34,080 --> 01:02:37,040
I can do all those different things
with this one...

862
01:02:37,040 --> 01:02:40,080
That you made in a minute?
In moments, absolutely.

863
01:02:40,080 --> 01:02:41,680
And you know what?

864
01:02:41,680 --> 01:02:43,880
The great thing is,
I'm never without a pen.

865
01:02:43,880 --> 01:02:45,920
I can always find a Coke can.

866
01:02:45,920 --> 01:02:49,920
I can always find a pair of scissors
and some tape and a pencil

867
01:02:49,920 --> 01:02:52,960
or a stick to put it on.
It's beautiful.

868
01:02:54,680 --> 01:02:57,240
So you've created a new piece
of technology here.

869
01:02:57,240 --> 01:03:00,360
But I know that you're also
interested in the writing implements

870
01:03:00,360 --> 01:03:01,960
of the past, aren't you?

871
01:03:01,960 --> 01:03:04,760
Writing is obviously
the fundamental, most important

872
01:03:04,760 --> 01:03:06,200
technology of society.

873
01:03:06,200 --> 01:03:09,600
It's how knowledge is created,
how it's shared, how it's preserved

874
01:03:09,600 --> 01:03:11,200
for the future.

875
01:03:11,200 --> 01:03:13,360
And each society does
that in its own way,

876
01:03:13,360 --> 01:03:15,400
with its own tools and materials.

877
01:03:15,400 --> 01:03:18,600
And I can investigate that
in a very, very precise way

878
01:03:18,600 --> 01:03:21,680
by going back to those tools
and materials and see what happens

879
01:03:21,680 --> 01:03:23,320
when I write with them.

880
01:03:23,320 --> 01:03:27,400
So, it's a sort of experimental
approach to historical research

881
01:03:27,400 --> 01:03:32,120
using the real tools and materials
that were used in earlier times.

882
01:03:38,760 --> 01:03:43,640
Arguably, the history of
writing begins in Egypt.

883
01:03:45,880 --> 01:03:50,440
The ancient Egyptians created
the world's first nation state.

884
01:03:50,440 --> 01:03:52,760
And they ran it with the help

885
01:03:52,760 --> 01:03:55,200
of one of the very
earliest writing systems.

886
01:03:59,200 --> 01:04:03,120
Egyptian hieroglyphs can still
be read in monumental inscriptions

887
01:04:03,120 --> 01:04:04,360
carved in stone.

888
01:04:05,960 --> 01:04:10,480
But the Egyptians also
had a portable everyday medium

889
01:04:10,480 --> 01:04:11,480
on which to write.

890
01:04:18,080 --> 01:04:20,000
Brody has come to Egypt

891
01:04:20,000 --> 01:04:23,080
to learn about this pioneering
information technology.

892
01:04:28,560 --> 01:04:30,800
My name is Sam. I'm Brody. Welcome.

893
01:04:30,800 --> 01:04:35,240
I'll give you a brief idea about
this plant, the papyrus plant,

894
01:04:35,240 --> 01:04:38,160
and how the ancient Egyptians
were using this plant

895
01:04:38,160 --> 01:04:40,160
to make paper.

896
01:04:40,160 --> 01:04:42,880
Papyrus is a type of sedge,

897
01:04:42,880 --> 01:04:46,840
which grows all along
the banks of the Nile.

898
01:04:46,840 --> 01:04:49,720
Readily available
and easily harvested,

899
01:04:49,720 --> 01:04:53,280
this unassuming plant was
turned by the Egyptians

900
01:04:53,280 --> 01:04:56,320
into one of the foundations
of civilisation.

901
01:04:56,320 --> 01:04:59,440
We remove the green parts,

902
01:04:59,440 --> 01:05:01,720
all of the green cover.

903
01:05:01,720 --> 01:05:06,320
We divide it into a long
and thin slices, like this.

904
01:05:06,320 --> 01:05:08,760
But that part once was breakable,
as you can see,

905
01:05:08,760 --> 01:05:10,120
or easy to break.

906
01:05:10,120 --> 01:05:12,800
To make the slices more flexible,

907
01:05:12,800 --> 01:05:15,280
we use this one.

908
01:05:15,280 --> 01:05:18,800
The slice now would be
more strong and more flexible

909
01:05:18,800 --> 01:05:21,480
than before when it was big.

910
01:05:21,480 --> 01:05:26,360
Then we soak the
slices in fresh water.

911
01:05:26,360 --> 01:05:31,000
After two weeks, we take
the slices from the water.

912
01:05:31,000 --> 01:05:34,080
We arrange them between
two pieces of cotton.

913
01:05:34,080 --> 01:05:36,160
These are the slices
that we have here, the slices,

914
01:05:36,160 --> 01:05:40,280
in vertical
and horizontal lines, like this.

915
01:05:42,640 --> 01:05:44,920
One vertical, another horizontal

916
01:05:44,920 --> 01:05:47,160
and down in space.

917
01:05:47,160 --> 01:05:50,800
One by one, and so, by two,
then we complete the whole sheet.

918
01:05:50,800 --> 01:05:52,680
We cover them.

919
01:05:52,680 --> 01:05:56,080
We put them under a press machine
for one week.

920
01:06:00,320 --> 01:06:03,280
One week, and off the press,

921
01:06:03,280 --> 01:06:06,120
we get this paper,

922
01:06:06,120 --> 01:06:09,000
and this is the first
paper in the world.

923
01:06:11,640 --> 01:06:13,560
Well, it feels like
a wonderful surface.

924
01:06:13,560 --> 01:06:15,960
I think I would really enjoy
writing on it, actually. Mm.

925
01:06:19,520 --> 01:06:24,080
As civilisation spread from Egypt
across the Mediterranean world,

926
01:06:24,080 --> 01:06:28,360
so did papyrus. It became
an important export,

927
01:06:28,360 --> 01:06:34,200
and when Egypt was finally conquered
by the Roman Empire in 30 BC,

928
01:06:34,200 --> 01:06:36,760
one of the biggest prizes
of conquest was domination

929
01:06:36,760 --> 01:06:39,320
of the Mediterranean papyrus trade.

930
01:06:41,920 --> 01:06:45,640
The Romans had a large and complex
empire that ran on the written word

931
01:06:45,640 --> 01:06:48,600
and papyrus, being their form
of paper, was imported from Egypt,

932
01:06:48,600 --> 01:06:51,080
and it shipped over here
in enormous quantities,

933
01:06:51,080 --> 01:06:55,520
and papyrus, rolled up into scrolls,
was for centuries the Roman book.

934
01:06:55,520 --> 01:06:58,040
If there was a fresco
of a householder,

935
01:06:58,040 --> 01:07:00,080
wanting to show they were literate,

936
01:07:00,080 --> 01:07:02,560
they would be holding a scroll.
Very deeply ingrained.

937
01:07:02,560 --> 01:07:05,800
But how were those
papyrus scrolls produced?

938
01:07:07,120 --> 01:07:11,840
Back in Brody's studio, we set out
to explore how the Romans wrote.

939
01:07:18,560 --> 01:07:20,120
What have you got here?

940
01:07:20,120 --> 01:07:24,080
Well, I just got back from Cairo,
where I bought this papyrus,

941
01:07:24,080 --> 01:07:26,000
which I'd never used before.

942
01:07:26,000 --> 01:07:28,640
Now, I'm really interested to see
what the surface is like,

943
01:07:28,640 --> 01:07:32,520
and so I've got a reed pen here,
cut to nearly a point,

944
01:07:32,520 --> 01:07:37,960
which is what they used for
writing semiformal Roman books.

945
01:07:37,960 --> 01:07:41,960
Brody sets out to copy a letter,
sent from Rome to Egypt,

946
01:07:41,960 --> 01:07:45,920
preserved in the desert sand
for nearly 2,000 years.

947
01:07:45,920 --> 01:07:49,320
So I'm going to see what it's
like to write those letters

948
01:07:49,320 --> 01:07:51,400
with this reed pen.

949
01:07:52,640 --> 01:07:55,160
You always learn a lot
at the very first moment

950
01:07:55,160 --> 01:07:58,240
that you touch the pen
to the writing surface.

951
01:07:59,720 --> 01:08:02,400
How does it feel?

952
01:08:02,400 --> 01:08:04,280
Very...

953
01:08:04,280 --> 01:08:07,080
..smooth, even...

954
01:08:07,080 --> 01:08:08,920
..I would say almost slippery.

955
01:08:08,920 --> 01:08:10,880
It's, er...

956
01:08:10,880 --> 01:08:12,240
..it's like skating.

957
01:08:12,240 --> 01:08:15,480
Whoa, you're going at quite a pace.

958
01:08:15,480 --> 01:08:18,880
Yes, it's encouraging a very light,

959
01:08:18,880 --> 01:08:22,280
sort of almost flicking
kind of motion of the pen.

960
01:08:22,280 --> 01:08:25,000
Seems really it's rather amazing.

961
01:08:25,000 --> 01:08:27,720
I have to dip frequently.
That's one thing I'm noticing.

962
01:08:27,720 --> 01:08:30,080
So it uses more than...
Well, I think, you know, this,

963
01:08:30,080 --> 01:08:33,240
that's probably because of the reed
doesn't have a natural reservoir,

964
01:08:33,240 --> 01:08:35,760
the way a quill would.
Ah, a quill does, yeah.

965
01:08:35,760 --> 01:08:39,960
So it's flowing out very quickly.
Yes.

966
01:08:39,960 --> 01:08:43,840
But it's naturally urging me

967
01:08:43,840 --> 01:08:45,560
to stretch the letters out,

968
01:08:45,560 --> 01:08:49,000
and I'm getting that feeling, that
I recognise from Roman scrolls,

969
01:08:49,000 --> 01:08:52,600
of a spacious, horizontal
style of writing.

970
01:08:52,600 --> 01:08:55,720
But that's just coming naturally,
is it, because of the paper?

971
01:08:55,720 --> 01:08:58,240
Yeah, that's how it feels... Yeah.
..with this pen.

972
01:09:00,040 --> 01:09:02,520
So you are getting a feel
for what it is to be a scribe

973
01:09:02,520 --> 01:09:05,080
in Roman Empire?

974
01:09:05,080 --> 01:09:08,720
Yeah, I have the feeling
that if I were one of those scribes

975
01:09:08,720 --> 01:09:12,160
working in the book shops
near Trajan's Forum,

976
01:09:12,160 --> 01:09:14,320
and you walked in with your
copy of Ovid, and you said,

977
01:09:14,320 --> 01:09:17,440
"I need it before a
dinner party on Friday",

978
01:09:17,440 --> 01:09:20,800
you know, I think I could
manage that for you. Right.

979
01:09:20,800 --> 01:09:23,880
So this is really going
very quickly... Yes.

980
01:09:23,880 --> 01:09:26,040
..and since I can write
on this papyrus quickly,

981
01:09:26,040 --> 01:09:30,240
and since it's not an expensive,
was not an expensive material,

982
01:09:30,240 --> 01:09:33,000
then I think the price of books
would not have been very high

983
01:09:33,000 --> 01:09:34,880
in ancient Rome.

984
01:09:39,760 --> 01:09:41,880
So we're here in
Trajan's market. Yeah,

985
01:09:41,880 --> 01:09:44,040
and these spaces here
are like Roman shops,

986
01:09:44,040 --> 01:09:46,640
single rooms, open directly
out onto the street,

987
01:09:46,640 --> 01:09:49,480
and they've got
accommodation in there for supplies

988
01:09:49,480 --> 01:09:52,360
and for merchandising,
maybe for staff,

989
01:09:52,360 --> 01:09:54,560
and if you look at this
travertine doorway here,

990
01:09:54,560 --> 01:09:57,280
you can see there's a shutter
or a groove into which... Oh, yes.

991
01:09:57,280 --> 01:09:59,720
Yes. ..the shutters, there's
space here for a door to open.

992
01:09:59,720 --> 01:10:02,240
Right. Inside,
space for merchandise and stock,

993
01:10:02,240 --> 01:10:03,880
maybe a mezzanine floor above,

994
01:10:03,880 --> 01:10:06,120
where the shopkeeper
could sleep at night,

995
01:10:06,120 --> 01:10:09,400
and a really large amount
of space for stuff. Right.

996
01:10:09,400 --> 01:10:12,280
And when this was in use,
if it was a shop, you could imagine

997
01:10:12,280 --> 01:10:14,520
the merchandise spilling
out onto the street here.

998
01:10:14,520 --> 01:10:16,920
We know about adverts
written up on the walls,

999
01:10:16,920 --> 01:10:19,800
so if it's a book shop, there would
be books on display up here for sale

1000
01:10:19,800 --> 01:10:21,560
to try catch passing trade

1001
01:10:21,560 --> 01:10:23,760
and intrigue people
to come and make a purchase.

1002
01:10:23,760 --> 01:10:25,840
So there's a thriving book culture?

1003
01:10:25,840 --> 01:10:28,840
Well, we know that there's a
lot of books in ancient Rome

1004
01:10:28,840 --> 01:10:31,080
and the book market seems to
get more vibrant and busier

1005
01:10:31,080 --> 01:10:32,960
as the centuries go by.

1006
01:10:32,960 --> 01:10:36,600
Papyrus imported in bulk from Egypt
was not necessarily very expensive.

1007
01:10:36,600 --> 01:10:39,240
It came in different grades,
and the top grade might be pricey,

1008
01:10:39,240 --> 01:10:41,360
but there were other cheaper
grades available.

1009
01:10:41,360 --> 01:10:43,360
The labour might be furnished
by slave scribes,

1010
01:10:43,360 --> 01:10:45,440
working for book-sellers
and publishers,

1011
01:10:45,440 --> 01:10:47,920
so the labour might not be
terribly expensive as well,

1012
01:10:47,920 --> 01:10:51,920
and sometimes authors do criticise
book shop copies as being cheap

1013
01:10:51,920 --> 01:10:55,200
and rushed, made for a mass-market
and not with a great deal of care.

1014
01:10:55,200 --> 01:10:58,080
The poet Martial says, for example,
you could buy a volume of his verse

1015
01:10:58,080 --> 01:11:00,200
for one denarius.
That's a soldier's daily wage.

1016
01:11:00,200 --> 01:11:03,840
So it's not an inaccessible
purchase for many people.

1017
01:11:03,840 --> 01:11:06,920
And if you couldn't
afford a particular book,

1018
01:11:06,920 --> 01:11:10,720
you could always go and consult it
in one of Rome's public libraries.

1019
01:11:10,720 --> 01:11:12,920
As well as the commercial
book-sellers,

1020
01:11:12,920 --> 01:11:15,200
there were public libraries,
founded by the Empress.

1021
01:11:15,200 --> 01:11:18,000
We know of about 29 of them
by the late antique period,

1022
01:11:18,000 --> 01:11:20,440
so lots and lots of them.

1023
01:11:20,440 --> 01:11:24,280
It all adds up to a picture
of a world where books

1024
01:11:24,280 --> 01:11:26,360
were widely available.

1025
01:11:26,360 --> 01:11:29,400
In the libraries, we can estimate
maybe tens of thousands of scrolls,

1026
01:11:29,400 --> 01:11:31,480
and that's just
the big public collections.

1027
01:11:31,480 --> 01:11:34,960
So around us here in this square
mile or so of the city centre,

1028
01:11:34,960 --> 01:11:37,880
maybe hundreds of
thousands of scroll books.

1029
01:11:37,880 --> 01:11:41,640
But that thriving
literary culture was all based

1030
01:11:41,640 --> 01:11:44,680
on the ready
availability of papyrus,

1031
01:11:44,680 --> 01:11:46,920
and by the end of the third century,

1032
01:11:46,920 --> 01:11:51,320
Rome's control over the
Mediterranean had begun to slip.

1033
01:11:51,320 --> 01:11:54,440
Over time, the Roman Empire
split into East and West.

1034
01:11:54,440 --> 01:11:57,200
Seaborne trade became harder
and more expensive to do,

1035
01:11:57,200 --> 01:11:59,120
as the empire fragmented,

1036
01:11:59,120 --> 01:12:03,320
and the trade in papyrus became
harder and harder to sustain,

1037
01:12:03,320 --> 01:12:05,960
and you can count the number
of fragments of books that survive

1038
01:12:05,960 --> 01:12:08,760
by each century, and you can see
the number goes down and down.

1039
01:12:08,760 --> 01:12:11,680
So there are just
fewer books being made,

1040
01:12:11,680 --> 01:12:14,960
and this city of great libraries and
thousands of thousands of papyri

1041
01:12:14,960 --> 01:12:17,960
changes, and a late antique writer
says, "Libraries are shut up now,

1042
01:12:17,960 --> 01:12:20,000
"and echoing like
tombs, and empty".

1043
01:12:23,240 --> 01:12:24,880
Rome's empire shrinks

1044
01:12:24,880 --> 01:12:28,480
and becomes the start of
the new Christian Middle Ages.

1045
01:12:29,720 --> 01:12:33,800
The fall of the Roman Empire is
one of the great inflection points

1046
01:12:33,800 --> 01:12:38,280
of history, and it coincides
with a change in the technology

1047
01:12:38,280 --> 01:12:40,520
of writing in Europe.

1048
01:12:40,520 --> 01:12:43,760
As papyrus disappeared,
so did the book,

1049
01:12:43,760 --> 01:12:46,720
as a relatively inexpensive,
everyday commodity.

1050
01:12:48,320 --> 01:12:51,360
Books would become rare
and precious objects,

1051
01:12:51,360 --> 01:12:55,440
as Europeans turned to a new
and much more expensive material

1052
01:12:55,440 --> 01:12:58,680
on which to write.

1053
01:13:28,800 --> 01:13:31,040
I am Lee Mapley.

1054
01:13:31,040 --> 01:13:34,920
I am the only traditional master
parchment maker left in the world,

1055
01:13:34,920 --> 01:13:36,560
which is quite unique.

1056
01:13:39,280 --> 01:13:41,920
Essentially,
we're taking a raw material,

1057
01:13:41,920 --> 01:13:44,920
completely natural sheepskin,
calfskin or goatskin,

1058
01:13:44,920 --> 01:13:49,360
and we are converting it
into a beautiful writing material.

1059
01:13:49,360 --> 01:13:53,400
We tie the skin into a frame
and it has to be stretched.

1060
01:13:53,400 --> 01:13:56,560
I'm realigning the fibres of the
skin to get it nice and solid,

1061
01:13:56,560 --> 01:13:59,360
to keep that nice flat surface,

1062
01:13:59,360 --> 01:14:02,200
so then I can also work
any flesh off the skin

1063
01:14:02,200 --> 01:14:04,920
and work the grease out
of the skin in the frame.

1064
01:14:06,640 --> 01:14:09,800
So it's literally elbow
grease and hot water to remove

1065
01:14:09,800 --> 01:14:12,080
that grease from the skin.

1066
01:14:19,120 --> 01:14:24,320
Ah! So I've got here a fabulous
quality piece of parchment,

1067
01:14:24,320 --> 01:14:28,600
prepared for writing,
and you can see where it comes from.

1068
01:14:28,600 --> 01:14:30,000
You can see its origin.

1069
01:14:30,000 --> 01:14:34,040
The four legs of the cow
and the four corners coming out.

1070
01:14:34,040 --> 01:14:35,520
This is the spine of the animal.

1071
01:14:35,520 --> 01:14:39,520
You can just see a slightly paler
line running down the middle

1072
01:14:39,520 --> 01:14:41,080
of the skin,

1073
01:14:41,080 --> 01:14:44,000
with the pelvic bones
even showing here.

1074
01:14:45,440 --> 01:14:49,080
This would be where, for a large
book, the page would be folded.

1075
01:14:49,080 --> 01:14:51,160
That's why we call it
the spine of a book.

1076
01:14:51,160 --> 01:14:53,960
The spine of a book!
Yeah, of course!

1077
01:14:53,960 --> 01:14:57,360
The fact the parchment
could be folded made it possible

1078
01:14:57,360 --> 01:15:00,520
to stitch leaves together
into a codex,

1079
01:15:00,520 --> 01:15:03,120
the form of the modern book.

1080
01:15:03,120 --> 01:15:07,600
Each sheet of parchment would yield
eight pages of an octavo volume,

1081
01:15:07,600 --> 01:15:12,400
which meant that it took a lot
of animals to make a single book.

1082
01:15:12,400 --> 01:15:16,680
But a book made from parchment
would be extremely durable.

1083
01:15:16,680 --> 01:15:20,160
It's resistant to
natural acid in the air.

1084
01:15:20,160 --> 01:15:22,960
You can't burn it.
It is classified as non-combustible.

1085
01:15:22,960 --> 01:15:24,960
You can't tear it.
It's incredibly strong.

1086
01:15:24,960 --> 01:15:26,560
It holds the insides of a beast.

1087
01:15:26,560 --> 01:15:30,280
A beast could be 500 or 600 kilos
and they don't fall out, do they?

1088
01:15:30,280 --> 01:15:32,520
So it's nigh on indestructible.

1089
01:15:35,240 --> 01:15:38,080
You know that, whatever you write,

1090
01:15:38,080 --> 01:15:41,480
you're leaving this nugget of
history for thousands of years

1091
01:15:41,480 --> 01:15:43,640
for those that follow.

1092
01:15:53,480 --> 01:15:57,440
The medieval pen was
also an animal product.

1093
01:15:57,440 --> 01:15:59,480
A bird's feather.

1094
01:15:59,480 --> 01:16:01,280
Cutting a quill
starts with shortening it.

1095
01:16:01,280 --> 01:16:03,560
Sadly, it's a little
less romantic that way,

1096
01:16:03,560 --> 01:16:05,560
but otherwise it would
stick in your eye.

1097
01:16:07,880 --> 01:16:11,160
And then you have
to open the end of it,

1098
01:16:11,160 --> 01:16:12,640
and make a slit,

1099
01:16:12,640 --> 01:16:15,400
and the slit that I make
now by lifting the knife

1100
01:16:15,400 --> 01:16:18,840
is what brings the ink
to the point of the pen,

1101
01:16:18,840 --> 01:16:21,480
and then,
starting on the other side,

1102
01:16:21,480 --> 01:16:25,280
I cut from one side towards
the slit that I just made,

1103
01:16:25,280 --> 01:16:28,280
and then from the other side,
towards the slit,

1104
01:16:28,280 --> 01:16:30,560
and I make a symmetrical point.

1105
01:16:32,280 --> 01:16:35,320
Now I use a lot of different
tools, modern ones and all,

1106
01:16:35,320 --> 01:16:40,080
but I've still never found anything
better than a good swan quill.

1107
01:16:45,680 --> 01:16:48,320
The lines have been
scored into the parchment.

1108
01:16:48,320 --> 01:16:51,080
That has an advantage because both
sides are lined at the same time.

1109
01:16:51,080 --> 01:16:53,160
Same time, in the same
place, same thickness, yes.

1110
01:16:53,160 --> 01:16:56,640
Exactly what we want, because
parchment is translucent. Mm.

1111
01:16:56,640 --> 01:16:58,880
You always have show-through
to the other side. Yes.

1112
01:16:58,880 --> 01:17:01,760
You want the rows of letters
back-to-back. Yeah.

1113
01:17:01,760 --> 01:17:04,400
Otherwise, they interfere
with the reader. Yeah, yeah.

1114
01:17:04,400 --> 01:17:05,560
That makes sense.

1115
01:17:05,560 --> 01:17:07,040
I don't want to write into the line,

1116
01:17:07,040 --> 01:17:10,040
because that's a little gutter
and my ink will run along it,

1117
01:17:10,040 --> 01:17:13,200
so I'm going to avoid actually
making the mark into the line.

1118
01:17:13,200 --> 01:17:16,880
Ooh, that's a nice skin.
Why? What makes it a nice skin?

1119
01:17:16,880 --> 01:17:19,960
Oh, just the way the pen feels,

1120
01:17:19,960 --> 01:17:24,040
when you write in the textured,
velvety surface.

1121
01:17:24,040 --> 01:17:25,680
Mm.

1122
01:17:25,680 --> 01:17:29,040
It grabs it just the right way,

1123
01:17:29,040 --> 01:17:34,120
just enough resistance, so that
you know exactly what you're doing.

1124
01:17:36,320 --> 01:17:40,720
The surface of the parchment
has a sort of velvety nap to it.

1125
01:17:40,720 --> 01:17:45,480
Very fine, but it's
enough to grab the ink,

1126
01:17:45,480 --> 01:17:47,280
and as it's drawing,

1127
01:17:47,280 --> 01:17:50,120
the fibres close in
and hold the ink tightly.

1128
01:17:50,120 --> 01:17:53,960
It sounds a little bit odd,
but, in a way, I'm almost tattooing

1129
01:17:53,960 --> 01:17:57,200
this parchment. Well, it is skin.

1130
01:17:57,200 --> 01:17:59,640
It's skin, and the ink is
going into the surface.

1131
01:17:59,640 --> 01:18:03,480
This is why medieval books last
so long, why the letters stay

1132
01:18:03,480 --> 01:18:06,800
so sharp and clear,
for centuries and centuries.

1133
01:18:09,080 --> 01:18:11,760
I mean, look how sharp it is.
Oh, and so neat!

1134
01:18:11,760 --> 01:18:13,760
Yes. Well, I mean... And regular.

1135
01:18:13,760 --> 01:18:16,200
Yeah, well,
that's a little bit me... Of course!

1136
01:18:16,200 --> 01:18:17,560
THEY CHUCKLE

1137
01:18:17,560 --> 01:18:20,160
..but it really is
also the materials.

1138
01:18:20,160 --> 01:18:25,040
I mean, they just encourage
this wonderful...

1139
01:18:25,040 --> 01:18:27,920
..sort of stately pace of writing.

1140
01:18:27,920 --> 01:18:29,080
Yes.

1141
01:18:29,080 --> 01:18:31,920
You see, it's slow.
Yes, it's slow. Right?

1142
01:18:31,920 --> 01:18:34,760
How many pages do you think
you could do in a day?

1143
01:18:34,760 --> 01:18:37,000
Well, it depends on the
number of words on the page,

1144
01:18:37,000 --> 01:18:40,200
but let's say one of the great
Bibles, which has two columns,

1145
01:18:40,200 --> 01:18:43,320
of 30 or so lines each,

1146
01:18:43,320 --> 01:18:46,720
one or two of those pages a day
would be a very good day's work.

1147
01:18:46,720 --> 01:18:48,520
Two pages a day?

1148
01:18:48,520 --> 01:18:52,680
So, if we're talking about a
book - say, 250, 300 pages long -

1149
01:18:52,680 --> 01:18:55,000
that's a year's worth of writing?
Something like that,

1150
01:18:55,000 --> 01:18:57,000
and usually split up
among a team of people,

1151
01:18:57,000 --> 01:19:00,120
but if one person were doing it,
yeah, it would take him a year

1152
01:19:00,120 --> 01:19:01,960
to do a large book, certainly.

1153
01:19:01,960 --> 01:19:05,600
Whereas you were talking about
producing an Ovid within a week.

1154
01:19:05,600 --> 01:19:08,120
Yes, well, it's a shorter
text than the Bible,

1155
01:19:08,120 --> 01:19:11,120
but let's just put
it in other terms.

1156
01:19:11,120 --> 01:19:15,960
I think that writing
on papyrus with a reed

1157
01:19:15,960 --> 01:19:19,320
is three or four times faster

1158
01:19:19,320 --> 01:19:21,240
than writing with a
quill on parchment.

1159
01:19:25,360 --> 01:19:29,880
As it happens, Brody's studio
is in the middle of Bruges.

1160
01:19:29,880 --> 01:19:33,880
In the Middle Ages, this city was
a great centre of book production,

1161
01:19:33,880 --> 01:19:37,120
responsible for a large fraction
of all the books being made

1162
01:19:37,120 --> 01:19:38,440
in Western Europe.

1163
01:19:40,200 --> 01:19:44,240
I went to the town hall to visit
the city archivist, Ludo Vandamme,

1164
01:19:44,240 --> 01:19:47,440
to try to put what I'd learned
about writing on parchment

1165
01:19:47,440 --> 01:19:49,640
into historical context.

1166
01:19:49,640 --> 01:19:51,960
So, what have you here in the box?

1167
01:19:51,960 --> 01:19:53,680
Huh!

1168
01:19:53,680 --> 01:19:57,240
Oh, we have animal remains.

1169
01:19:57,240 --> 01:19:59,640
Yes, clearly! No way!

1170
01:19:59,640 --> 01:20:01,280
Let's take this account.

1171
01:20:02,960 --> 01:20:05,640
1307. 1307, and...

1172
01:20:05,640 --> 01:20:08,800
But that's quite clearly... Yes.
..a product of an animal, isn't it?

1173
01:20:08,800 --> 01:20:10,080
Yes.

1174
01:20:10,080 --> 01:20:13,360
Why have they left behind
the hide like that?

1175
01:20:13,360 --> 01:20:15,840
I have no idea. You don't know? No.

1176
01:20:15,840 --> 01:20:18,880
When we have a look
into the manuscript... Yes.

1177
01:20:18,880 --> 01:20:22,560
..it's an account, an account
of the city of Bruges, 1307.

1178
01:20:22,560 --> 01:20:27,120
Which language? Then we see that
this parchment is a better quality.

1179
01:20:27,120 --> 01:20:29,040
Oh, much finer. Look, here.

1180
01:20:29,040 --> 01:20:31,680
So nice, white, beige...
Very white, very fine.

1181
01:20:31,680 --> 01:20:33,040
Fine.

1182
01:20:34,480 --> 01:20:37,320
Parchment was rather expensive,

1183
01:20:37,320 --> 01:20:41,080
so what's remarkable
in this account,

1184
01:20:41,080 --> 01:20:44,520
we see that the city of Bruges...

1185
01:20:44,520 --> 01:20:46,280
..paid...

1186
01:20:46,280 --> 01:20:48,360
I think here we have it,

1187
01:20:48,360 --> 01:20:49,680
yeah, here,

1188
01:20:49,680 --> 01:20:51,440
"Fronchine, Fronchine",

1189
01:20:51,440 --> 01:20:53,840
that's vellum, that's parchment.

1190
01:20:53,840 --> 01:20:57,320
So, for all the parchment used
by the city administration

1191
01:20:57,320 --> 01:21:00,400
for this year... 1307.

1192
01:21:00,400 --> 01:21:05,080
..they paid £14,
which was a huge amount of money.

1193
01:21:05,080 --> 01:21:08,520
So... So the council spent
£14 on parchment alone.

1194
01:21:08,520 --> 01:21:09,960
On parchment, yes.

1195
01:21:09,960 --> 01:21:13,600
Well, you see, it's the highest
amount we see here,

1196
01:21:13,600 --> 01:21:15,160
in this column... Right.

1197
01:21:15,160 --> 01:21:16,840
£4,

1198
01:21:16,840 --> 01:21:19,520
£8, and a huge amount,

1199
01:21:19,520 --> 01:21:24,200
£14, and it's parchment.
Parchment, mm.

1200
01:21:24,200 --> 01:21:28,040
The city government may have been
spending a small fortune on it,

1201
01:21:28,040 --> 01:21:31,360
but most of the parchment
used in Bruges went to

1202
01:21:31,360 --> 01:21:33,320
the extensive book industry -

1203
01:21:33,320 --> 01:21:37,760
and here, too, the archives
contain fascinating detail.

1204
01:21:37,760 --> 01:21:38,880
So what's this one?

1205
01:21:38,880 --> 01:21:41,200
This is a very unique register,

1206
01:21:41,200 --> 01:21:46,200
because it's the register
of the Guild of St John,

1207
01:21:46,200 --> 01:21:48,960
and St John is the guild
with all the people

1208
01:21:48,960 --> 01:21:53,240
who are working in the book industry
in Bruges at this moment.

1209
01:21:53,240 --> 01:21:58,040
So we have a snapshot,
one year, 1472... 1472.

1210
01:21:58,040 --> 01:22:01,280
..of the whole book
production in Bruges? Yes.

1211
01:22:01,280 --> 01:22:02,680
Amazing. That we have, yeah.

1212
01:22:02,680 --> 01:22:05,360
And Bruges is THE centre
in Europe at this time, for books.

1213
01:22:05,360 --> 01:22:09,920
Bruges is the centre, so we see here
a lot of different professions.

1214
01:22:09,920 --> 01:22:13,440
Yeah. Here we have a certain Haas,

1215
01:22:13,440 --> 01:22:14,840
and he was parchment maker. Yes.

1216
01:22:14,840 --> 01:22:17,360
We have book binders,
eliminators,

1217
01:22:17,360 --> 01:22:20,120
there are scribes, etc,

1218
01:22:20,120 --> 01:22:23,680
the whole book production
is here in this register.

1219
01:22:23,680 --> 01:22:25,720
And there were a lot of women, too,

1220
01:22:25,720 --> 01:22:28,200
and that's especially for Bruges
and Flanders at that moment,

1221
01:22:28,200 --> 01:22:30,000
who ran their own shop.

1222
01:22:30,000 --> 01:22:33,440
So these are running workshops?
Running workshops, yeah. Excellent.

1223
01:22:33,440 --> 01:22:35,480
And how many workshops
do you think we have?

1224
01:22:35,480 --> 01:22:39,360
If you have a look here,
we have 50 workshops. Right.

1225
01:22:39,360 --> 01:22:43,640
But we can say about one
workshop producing, let's say,

1226
01:22:43,640 --> 01:22:46,320
20 books a year. OK.

1227
01:22:46,320 --> 01:22:50,000
So 50-ish workshops, we're
talking about 1,000 books.

1228
01:22:50,000 --> 01:22:51,560
1,000, I think, that's a maximum.

1229
01:22:51,560 --> 01:22:55,600
The maximum is 1,000
a year in Bruges,

1230
01:22:55,600 --> 01:22:58,640
and Bruges is the biggest centre
of production in Europe

1231
01:22:58,640 --> 01:23:00,440
at this time, right? Yes.

1232
01:23:00,440 --> 01:23:02,280
That's not a lot of books.

1233
01:23:02,280 --> 01:23:05,240
It's not a lot, no. It isn't.

1234
01:23:05,240 --> 01:23:09,240
Judging by this evidence, it seems
that total European book production

1235
01:23:09,240 --> 01:23:12,320
in the Middle Ages could not
have been more than a few thousand

1236
01:23:12,320 --> 01:23:14,400
volumes a year,

1237
01:23:14,400 --> 01:23:18,000
something like one book
for every 10,000 Europeans.

1238
01:23:19,040 --> 01:23:22,960
So books were rare and expensive.

1239
01:23:22,960 --> 01:23:27,360
Ludo showed me a contract for
one particularly deluxe example.

1240
01:23:27,360 --> 01:23:30,440
It is for a nobleman, a huge book,

1241
01:23:30,440 --> 01:23:32,760
two volumes, 600 folios,

1242
01:23:32,760 --> 01:23:35,040
decorated, eliminated,

1243
01:23:35,040 --> 01:23:37,800
the top 1% produced in Bruges,

1244
01:23:37,800 --> 01:23:40,120
still conserved in Paris... Oh!

1245
01:23:40,120 --> 01:23:42,000
..and what will it cost?

1246
01:23:42,000 --> 01:23:43,280
It cost, er...

1247
01:23:44,440 --> 01:23:46,680
..here we see,

1248
01:23:46,680 --> 01:23:48,960
vingt livres - this is French - £20.

1249
01:23:50,080 --> 01:23:52,080
So, one book, two volumes, £20.

1250
01:23:52,080 --> 01:23:54,160
Do we have an idea
of what that actually means?

1251
01:23:54,160 --> 01:23:56,280
Yes, yes, yes...
What could it buy in Bruges?

1252
01:23:56,280 --> 01:23:57,920
We have an idea.

1253
01:23:57,920 --> 01:24:01,600
When you, in this time,
you want to buy a house in Bruges,

1254
01:24:01,600 --> 01:24:04,400
you can buy a house for £20.

1255
01:24:04,400 --> 01:24:08,360
Let's say a middle class house...
But still a house. A house.

1256
01:24:08,360 --> 01:24:10,960
So the choice is a
book or a house? Yes.

1257
01:24:10,960 --> 01:24:14,320
Well, he chose the book,
this nobleman. Nobleman. Yes.

1258
01:24:14,320 --> 01:24:16,160
Money to burn. There's no question.

1259
01:24:16,160 --> 01:24:17,800
He chose for the book.

1260
01:24:18,880 --> 01:24:22,120
The libraries of Bruges
still have examples

1261
01:24:22,120 --> 01:24:26,560
of the sort of book
that cost as much as a house.

1262
01:24:30,640 --> 01:24:33,120
This is the absolute
luxury manuscript.

1263
01:24:33,120 --> 01:24:36,320
You couldn't get anything
more precious, more expensive

1264
01:24:36,320 --> 01:24:38,360
and more prestigious than this.

1265
01:24:41,640 --> 01:24:45,120
I'm looking at gold, which would
have had to have been beaten

1266
01:24:45,120 --> 01:24:47,520
into thin sheets
to be applied to the page.

1267
01:24:48,560 --> 01:24:52,800
I'm looking at blue, which actually
came all the way from Afghanistan.

1268
01:24:55,160 --> 01:24:58,240
I'm looking at malachite green
brought from Central Europe.

1269
01:24:59,280 --> 01:25:04,320
It is an 800-page book
which represents 400 animals.

1270
01:25:05,400 --> 01:25:10,840
400 animals in a very
agrarian economy.

1271
01:25:13,120 --> 01:25:16,720
Books like this represent
a pinnacle of medieval art.

1272
01:25:17,800 --> 01:25:22,800
But they also represent a limitation
on literacy and scholarship

1273
01:25:22,800 --> 01:25:26,320
compared to the broad literary
culture of ancient Rome.

1274
01:25:30,640 --> 01:25:33,880
When I started my experiments
with a reed pen on papyrus,

1275
01:25:33,880 --> 01:25:36,120
I was astonished with
how quick it was.

1276
01:25:36,120 --> 01:25:40,280
First of all, papyrus was
a cheap writing material.

1277
01:25:40,280 --> 01:25:43,640
That means that books were
accessible to a certain segment

1278
01:25:43,640 --> 01:25:46,320
of the population
in Greek and Roman times.

1279
01:25:47,800 --> 01:25:50,360
I think we could almost say
that the Middle Ages

1280
01:25:50,360 --> 01:25:53,120
is that period when papyrus
is no longer used,

1281
01:25:53,120 --> 01:25:56,840
no longer available, and parchment
becomes the writing surface.

1282
01:25:58,280 --> 01:26:00,040
What do we gain from it?

1283
01:26:00,040 --> 01:26:02,760
This world of beautiful
illuminated manuscripts?

1284
01:26:02,760 --> 01:26:05,680
What do we lose?
A broader reading culture.

1285
01:26:05,680 --> 01:26:08,360
So the shift from
antiquity to the Middle Ages

1286
01:26:08,360 --> 01:26:11,160
is the shift from
papyrus to parchment

1287
01:26:11,160 --> 01:26:14,920
and the shift from a wide literate
public to a very small one.

1288
01:26:14,920 --> 01:26:18,320
Very interesting to see how
writing materials and techniques

1289
01:26:18,320 --> 01:26:21,480
can have such an immense influence
on cultural development.

1290
01:26:25,640 --> 01:26:29,680
That's the story in Europe,
but in Asia, too,

1291
01:26:29,680 --> 01:26:33,320
history has been shaped by the
process of putting words on a page.

1292
01:26:34,680 --> 01:26:39,520
In China, a rich literary and
artistic tradition developed...

1293
01:26:41,480 --> 01:26:45,080
..based on a distinctive
pictorial script

1294
01:26:45,080 --> 01:26:47,360
and a unique writing technology.

1295
01:26:54,400 --> 01:26:56,920
The key components
of that technology

1296
01:26:56,920 --> 01:27:01,200
are traditionally known as
the four treasures of the study.

1297
01:27:02,240 --> 01:27:04,200
First is paper.

1298
01:27:10,960 --> 01:27:12,840
Then the brush.

1299
01:27:14,920 --> 01:27:19,920
And the calligrapher needs an ink
stone on which to grind her ink,

1300
01:27:19,920 --> 01:27:24,240
which comes in the form
of a stick of solid pigment.

1301
01:27:24,240 --> 01:27:26,640
The four treasures allow
Wang Xiaoning

1302
01:27:26,640 --> 01:27:30,800
to practise brush calligraphy
in much the same way as it has been

1303
01:27:30,800 --> 01:27:32,600
for thousands of years.

1304
01:29:09,360 --> 01:29:13,400
Brush calligraphy produced works
of art that were reprised in China

1305
01:29:13,400 --> 01:29:17,320
every bit as much as illuminated
manuscripts were in Europe.

1306
01:29:19,680 --> 01:29:21,880
But in a medieval manuscript,

1307
01:29:21,880 --> 01:29:25,240
the art is in the decoration
around the text.

1308
01:29:25,240 --> 01:29:29,680
The nature of the Latin alphabet
and the characteristics of parchment

1309
01:29:29,680 --> 01:29:33,080
produced letters that were regular
and repetitive.

1310
01:29:35,240 --> 01:29:39,120
But in Chinese brush calligraphy,
the art is in the brushwork

1311
01:29:39,120 --> 01:29:41,600
that produces the characters
themselves.

1312
01:29:42,680 --> 01:29:46,560
And that is made possible by
the nature of the writing surface.

1313
01:29:53,160 --> 01:29:57,080
Paper was invented in China
in the 2nd century AD.

1314
01:29:58,160 --> 01:30:02,760
And by the 7th century, papermaking
was an important Chinese industry.

1315
01:30:37,720 --> 01:30:40,720
Paper was key to another
Chinese invention.

1316
01:30:40,720 --> 01:30:42,600
Wood block printing.

1317
01:30:44,640 --> 01:30:48,680
Each handwritten page of text
was glued to a wooden block

1318
01:30:48,680 --> 01:30:52,640
and then the characters were
carved out by a skilled craftsman.

1319
01:30:54,880 --> 01:30:58,320
This step was laborious
and expensive.

1320
01:31:08,720 --> 01:31:10,880
But once the wood
block was produced,

1321
01:31:10,880 --> 01:31:13,840
it was quick and cheap
to print from...

1322
01:31:15,680 --> 01:31:20,360
..thanks to paper that was
absorbent, flexible and inexpensive.

1323
01:31:41,640 --> 01:31:44,640
And because Chinese paper
didn't tear easily,

1324
01:31:44,640 --> 01:31:48,200
it was a simple matter to stitch
the pages together into a book.

1325
01:31:49,320 --> 01:31:53,480
Indeed, paper was so plentiful
that, even 1,000 years ago,

1326
01:31:53,480 --> 01:31:56,840
Chinese people could buy
blank notebooks.

1327
01:31:57,920 --> 01:32:02,680
It would have been inconceivable
to a European from the Middle Ages

1328
01:32:02,680 --> 01:32:06,400
to have something like this where
you can record your thoughts.

1329
01:32:07,440 --> 01:32:11,400
In Europe, every single
blank page was an expensive

1330
01:32:11,400 --> 01:32:14,320
and scarce resource.

1331
01:32:14,320 --> 01:32:18,000
In a world of parchment,
many thoughts go unrecorded.

1332
01:32:24,880 --> 01:32:29,040
A source of pride,
but also a state secret.

1333
01:32:30,640 --> 01:32:35,400
For 600 years, only the Chinese
knew how to make paper.

1334
01:32:35,400 --> 01:32:39,320
But nothing can be
kept hidden forever.

1335
01:32:49,920 --> 01:32:52,920
This is the Meros Paper
Mill near Samarkand,

1336
01:32:52,920 --> 01:32:56,840
a key city on the Silk Road
between China and the Mediterranean.

1337
01:32:56,840 --> 01:32:58,520
In the Middle Ages,

1338
01:32:58,520 --> 01:33:01,400
there were hundreds of such
water-powered paper mills

1339
01:33:01,400 --> 01:33:03,960
operating in the region,
churning out paper

1340
01:33:03,960 --> 01:33:07,360
for the Islamic Empire
of the Abbasid Caliphs.

1341
01:33:10,640 --> 01:33:14,600
Papermaking had come to Samarkand
as the result of a battle.

1342
01:33:17,120 --> 01:33:20,920
In 751, the westward expansion
of the Tang dynasty

1343
01:33:20,920 --> 01:33:24,040
was checked by Arab forces
at the River Talas.

1344
01:33:25,360 --> 01:33:28,360
It was a defeat that ensured
that to this day

1345
01:33:28,360 --> 01:33:31,080
Central Asia would be part
of the Muslim world.

1346
01:33:32,400 --> 01:33:37,320
And in the captured baggage train of
the Chinese army were papermakers.

1347
01:33:37,320 --> 01:33:39,680
The secret was out.

1348
01:33:39,680 --> 01:33:42,320
How to turn the bark
of the mulberry tree

1349
01:33:42,320 --> 01:33:44,600
into the seemingly humble material

1350
01:33:44,600 --> 01:33:47,800
that was the foundation
of Chinese culture and power.

1351
01:33:51,520 --> 01:33:54,560
I could watch this forever.
Her hands... It's mesmerized.

1352
01:33:54,560 --> 01:33:56,840
She just does it so quickly
and efficiently.

1353
01:33:56,840 --> 01:33:59,640
And you can imagine how important
that would have been

1354
01:33:59,640 --> 01:34:03,280
because this is being done
in hundreds of workshops

1355
01:34:03,280 --> 01:34:07,640
by thousands of people to produce
this unbelievable quantity of paper.

1356
01:34:07,640 --> 01:34:09,280
It starts like this.

1357
01:34:09,280 --> 01:34:11,800
To make the paper
from mulberry tree,

1358
01:34:11,800 --> 01:34:14,040
you cut the spring growth.

1359
01:34:14,040 --> 01:34:16,200
That's these thin sticks.

1360
01:34:16,200 --> 01:34:20,320
And you can peel it off. Look.
Try it. Yeah. Comes off easily.

1361
01:34:20,320 --> 01:34:22,240
That's very satisfying.

1362
01:34:22,240 --> 01:34:23,920
Yes.

1363
01:34:23,920 --> 01:34:27,280
But it gives you the inner pith,
which is what you want,

1364
01:34:27,280 --> 01:34:30,920
still attached to the outer bark.
The harder bark, yeah.

1365
01:34:30,920 --> 01:34:34,880
So, to get rid of that, that strip
is soaked in water for several days

1366
01:34:34,880 --> 01:34:38,640
and that softens it and expands it,
opening up the fibres. Yeah.

1367
01:34:38,640 --> 01:34:43,120
You get this rather slimy... But
squidgy. Squidgy piece of bark.

1368
01:34:43,120 --> 01:34:47,280
So now Roxanne,
great swordswoman that she is,

1369
01:34:47,280 --> 01:34:49,640
can go over this
with her sharp knife,

1370
01:34:49,640 --> 01:34:52,120
scrape off this brown
outer side... Yes.

1371
01:34:52,120 --> 01:34:55,120
..trim away any imperfections
that she finds

1372
01:34:55,120 --> 01:34:58,280
which would otherwise be little
brown flecks in the paper. Right.

1373
01:34:58,280 --> 01:35:00,120
And then the resulting...

1374
01:35:01,080 --> 01:35:04,280
..product is this golden-coloured,

1375
01:35:04,280 --> 01:35:06,640
inner... Soft. ..pith.

1376
01:35:06,640 --> 01:35:10,080
These fibres... Are very fibrous.
..will be the paper.

1377
01:35:11,840 --> 01:35:13,400
Wonderful.

1378
01:35:22,360 --> 01:35:25,280
The mulberry pith
is cooked for a while...

1379
01:35:28,880 --> 01:35:32,280
..and then the mill pounds it
for up to eight hours...

1380
01:35:33,640 --> 01:35:35,560
..to produce a pulp.

1381
01:35:38,600 --> 01:35:40,800
Added to water,

1382
01:35:40,800 --> 01:35:45,280
the pulp makes a thick soup
of cellulose fibres,

1383
01:35:45,280 --> 01:35:49,080
which are scooped up
in a rectangular sieve.

1384
01:35:50,920 --> 01:35:53,360
As the water flows
through the sieve,

1385
01:35:53,360 --> 01:35:56,320
it leaves behind a
thin mat of the fibres.

1386
01:35:59,280 --> 01:36:02,280
This is pressed
between pieces of cotton

1387
01:36:02,280 --> 01:36:04,760
to form a single sheet of paper...

1388
01:36:10,760 --> 01:36:13,600
..which can later be hung up to dry.

1389
01:36:25,320 --> 01:36:29,560
Then the Islamic papermakers added
a new step to the Chinese process.

1390
01:36:31,840 --> 01:36:33,840
They polished each sheet...

1391
01:36:35,080 --> 01:36:37,600
..to produce a smooth
writing surface.

1392
01:36:43,160 --> 01:36:47,600
The preparation of paper for Islamic
calligraphy is quite a process

1393
01:36:47,600 --> 01:36:50,600
and the reason is
that they use a reed pen,

1394
01:36:50,600 --> 01:36:54,360
as the ancient Romans did,
but it's cut to a wide point

1395
01:36:54,360 --> 01:36:59,160
and that wide point is going to be
pushed from right to left

1396
01:36:59,160 --> 01:37:03,360
to make the long strokes
of Arabic calligraphy.

1397
01:37:03,360 --> 01:37:06,240
And therefore you cannot
have any unevennesses

1398
01:37:06,240 --> 01:37:08,480
or any roughnesses in the paper.

1399
01:37:08,480 --> 01:37:10,360
So, I've never used it.

1400
01:37:10,360 --> 01:37:12,800
I'm very interested to see
how it feels to...

1401
01:37:14,040 --> 01:37:16,200
..to guide a reed pen

1402
01:37:16,200 --> 01:37:20,280
across this polished paper surface.

1403
01:37:23,640 --> 01:37:26,560
The first thing I notice
is that the...

1404
01:37:27,640 --> 01:37:30,120
..strokes need to be made
pretty slowly

1405
01:37:30,120 --> 01:37:33,320
because if I'm going fast,
the ink is pulling back.

1406
01:37:35,120 --> 01:37:38,360
It's a matter of finding
the right speed and pressure.

1407
01:37:39,400 --> 01:37:41,320
That's really fascinating.

1408
01:37:43,680 --> 01:37:47,640
At the beginning, I was going too
fast and the ink was pulling back,

1409
01:37:47,640 --> 01:37:50,600
but I've found the speed
that this paper is demanding

1410
01:37:50,600 --> 01:37:53,840
and now my ink stained
just where I put it.

1411
01:37:56,880 --> 01:38:01,560
What we have here with Islamic
paper is something that's cheap

1412
01:38:01,560 --> 01:38:04,760
but very sophisticated,
very finely manicured and tailored

1413
01:38:04,760 --> 01:38:07,600
to making extremely graceful
calligraphy.

1414
01:38:13,640 --> 01:38:18,000
In Samarkand during the Middle Ages,
the papermaking industry

1415
01:38:18,000 --> 01:38:20,840
was on a surprisingly
impressive scale.

1416
01:38:25,120 --> 01:38:28,920
There were perhaps as many as 400
paper mills operating in this region

1417
01:38:28,920 --> 01:38:31,680
in the Middle Ages,
all the way to the 18th century,

1418
01:38:31,680 --> 01:38:34,200
supplying paper to the entire
Islamic world.

1419
01:38:34,200 --> 01:38:36,400
The production of
a factory like this

1420
01:38:36,400 --> 01:38:38,640
would have been several thousand
sheets a day,

1421
01:38:38,640 --> 01:38:41,840
and if you take that times 400,
we have millions of sheets of paper

1422
01:38:41,840 --> 01:38:43,640
being made every day.

1423
01:38:43,640 --> 01:38:47,120
This was the paper that supplied
the entire Islamic world

1424
01:38:47,120 --> 01:38:51,080
with the basis for its intellectual,
religious and cultural life.

1425
01:38:53,520 --> 01:38:56,840
And that intellectual life
was rich indeed.

1426
01:38:59,400 --> 01:39:02,680
The five centuries that followed
the beginning of papermaking

1427
01:39:02,680 --> 01:39:06,320
in Samarkand came to be known
as the Islamic Golden Age.

1428
01:39:09,120 --> 01:39:11,600
The arts and sciences flourished.

1429
01:39:12,640 --> 01:39:17,280
Islamic scholars made discoveries
in geology, biology, medicine

1430
01:39:17,280 --> 01:39:19,720
and especially mathematics.

1431
01:39:21,680 --> 01:39:25,640
They gave us the words
algebra and algorithm,

1432
01:39:25,640 --> 01:39:29,840
and we still count using
an Arabic number system.

1433
01:39:34,640 --> 01:39:37,800
Samarkand was, itself, a
great centre of scholarship.

1434
01:39:39,000 --> 01:39:40,840
In Registan Square,

1435
01:39:40,840 --> 01:39:44,080
three great Islamic
universities face each other.

1436
01:39:48,880 --> 01:39:52,320
They are covered in monumental
Arabic calligraphy...

1437
01:39:58,640 --> 01:40:02,600
..praising God and extolling
the virtues of learning.

1438
01:40:06,880 --> 01:40:11,400
The oldest of the three universities
was founded by Ulugh Beg,

1439
01:40:11,400 --> 01:40:15,320
ruler of Samarkand
in the 15th century.

1440
01:40:15,320 --> 01:40:19,800
But today, Ulugh Beg is famous not
as a prince, but as an astronomer.

1441
01:40:21,840 --> 01:40:26,680
Not far from Registan Square,
Ulugh Beg built his pride and joy -

1442
01:40:26,680 --> 01:40:29,840
the greatest observatory
the world had ever seen.

1443
01:40:31,040 --> 01:40:34,120
Unfortunately,
it did not survive him

1444
01:40:34,120 --> 01:40:38,440
except for the part
that was underground.

1445
01:41:12,400 --> 01:41:16,680
The top half of the sextant once
reached 30 metres above ground,

1446
01:41:16,680 --> 01:41:21,440
making it by far the largest
such instrument ever built.

1447
01:41:21,440 --> 01:41:24,000
Sunlight passing through
a controlled opening

1448
01:41:24,000 --> 01:41:26,320
would have illuminated
the curved track,

1449
01:41:26,320 --> 01:41:29,680
which is marked very
precisely with degrees.

1450
01:41:29,680 --> 01:41:32,880
A copper ruler inserted
in one of these slots

1451
01:41:32,880 --> 01:41:36,040
added precision by measuring
the fraction of a degree

1452
01:41:36,040 --> 01:41:38,480
called the minutes of arc.

1453
01:41:38,480 --> 01:41:41,680
Ulugh Beg used the sextant to
measure the height of the sun

1454
01:41:41,680 --> 01:41:44,520
at noon each day.

1455
01:41:44,520 --> 01:41:47,640
At midsummer and midwinter,
these measurements allowed him

1456
01:41:47,640 --> 01:41:50,080
to determine the length
of the solar year.

1457
01:42:16,880 --> 01:42:19,680
The scientific
observations being made here

1458
01:42:19,680 --> 01:42:23,560
were far in advance of anything
happening in Europe at the time.

1459
01:42:44,320 --> 01:42:48,560
In fact, eventually, Islamic science
travelled all the way to Europe...

1460
01:42:53,120 --> 01:42:56,040
..where it would help
to lay the foundations

1461
01:42:56,040 --> 01:42:58,280
of a scientific revolution.

1462
01:43:00,360 --> 01:43:04,000
This style catalogue,
published by a Polish astronomer,

1463
01:43:04,000 --> 01:43:06,640
lists the position
of the fixed stars

1464
01:43:06,640 --> 01:43:09,520
as determined by
six great observers.

1465
01:43:09,520 --> 01:43:12,640
Among them is Ulug Beighi.

1466
01:43:16,680 --> 01:43:21,840
This extraordinary frontispiece
shows the ancient Greek Ptolemy,

1467
01:43:21,840 --> 01:43:23,320
Tycho Brahe,

1468
01:43:23,320 --> 01:43:24,880
Ulug Beighi,

1469
01:43:24,880 --> 01:43:28,480
he's the one with the long,
Oriental moustache

1470
01:43:28,480 --> 01:43:31,240
in the image, sitting at table,
being highly honoured

1471
01:43:31,240 --> 01:43:34,280
in this sequence of persons who have
mighty observatories,

1472
01:43:34,280 --> 01:43:37,440
made observations
of the fixed stars.

1473
01:43:37,440 --> 01:43:43,000
So you've got a succession, on each
side, of astronomers and the idea

1474
01:43:43,000 --> 01:43:49,080
in this image is that the catalogues
are steadily improved as each passes

1475
01:43:49,080 --> 01:43:53,880
on their findings for improvement
by their successors.

1476
01:43:53,880 --> 01:43:58,320
By the time this book was published
in 1690, the ancient view

1477
01:43:58,320 --> 01:44:01,880
of the heavens had been radically
transformed by the discoveries

1478
01:44:01,880 --> 01:44:08,160
of astronomers like Galileo,
Copernicus, Kepler and Isaac Newton.

1479
01:44:08,160 --> 01:44:10,720
They were all Europeans.

1480
01:44:10,720 --> 01:44:15,520
Proof, that by the 17th century,
European intellectual life was every

1481
01:44:15,520 --> 01:44:20,040
bit as sophisticated as the
scholarship of the Islamic world.

1482
01:44:20,040 --> 01:44:23,880
But that change was only possible
because of two developments

1483
01:44:23,880 --> 01:44:27,200
in the production
of the written word.

1484
01:44:27,200 --> 01:44:29,880
First, these pages
are made of paper,

1485
01:44:29,880 --> 01:44:33,520
which arrived in Europe
via Muslim Spain.

1486
01:44:33,520 --> 01:44:35,480
Even more significant,

1487
01:44:35,480 --> 01:44:38,040
this is a printed book.

1488
01:44:38,040 --> 01:44:41,600
The impact of printing
in the Western world is comparable

1489
01:44:41,600 --> 01:44:43,560
in scope, in all areas of learning,

1490
01:44:43,560 --> 01:44:45,640
to the impact, in the Islamic world,

1491
01:44:45,640 --> 01:44:48,200
of the use of paper.

1492
01:44:48,200 --> 01:44:51,600
Printing would eventually spread
the written word to every level

1493
01:44:51,600 --> 01:44:53,040
of European society.

1494
01:44:54,960 --> 01:44:58,400
But how did this radical
new technology find a market

1495
01:44:58,400 --> 01:45:02,120
in a world where books were
a luxury for the very rich?

1496
01:45:09,680 --> 01:45:12,120
The European printing revolution

1497
01:45:12,120 --> 01:45:15,200
began in the German town
of Mainz in 1448...

1498
01:45:20,080 --> 01:45:22,160
..when Johannes Gutenberg

1499
01:45:22,160 --> 01:45:25,920
began casting the letters of
the Latin alphabet in metal.

1500
01:45:29,400 --> 01:45:33,080
These little type pieces spelled
the end of the Middle Ages

1501
01:45:33,080 --> 01:45:36,160
and helped to usher
in the modern world,

1502
01:45:36,160 --> 01:45:40,480
but they could only do
so because of a lucky accident.

1503
01:45:40,480 --> 01:45:45,440
The letters of the Latin alphabet
just happened to be the right shape.

1504
01:45:46,720 --> 01:45:51,400
Gutenberg was looking for a
way to produce multiple copies

1505
01:45:51,400 --> 01:45:56,840
of the same text in a much faster
way than scribes could copy texts

1506
01:45:56,840 --> 01:45:58,720
in the manuscript period.

1507
01:46:01,520 --> 01:46:06,080
Gutenberg's idea was to speed
up the process of putting words

1508
01:46:06,080 --> 01:46:09,000
on a page by replacing
the scribe with a machine.

1509
01:46:10,760 --> 01:46:15,160
The secret of Gutenberg's printing
press was his ability to mass

1510
01:46:15,160 --> 01:46:19,320
produce multiple copies, in metal,
of each individual letter.

1511
01:46:21,200 --> 01:46:24,680
And in this,
he had a hidden advantage.

1512
01:46:29,600 --> 01:46:33,360
The letters of the Latin alphabet
are really very simple shapes

1513
01:46:33,360 --> 01:46:35,840
and when you write them in the way
they would have been written

1514
01:46:35,840 --> 01:46:37,960
at the time printing was invented,

1515
01:46:37,960 --> 01:46:41,720
all the letters
are very clearly separate.

1516
01:46:41,720 --> 01:46:45,760
This is a modular way of writing,
and, in fact, if I want to make

1517
01:46:45,760 --> 01:46:49,240
a little box of metal with them, no
problem, because I'm already,

1518
01:46:49,240 --> 01:46:50,480
I'm already there, basically.

1519
01:46:50,480 --> 01:46:53,000
The design has already happened.

1520
01:46:53,000 --> 01:46:56,560
These simple, block like letters
can become blocks of metal

1521
01:46:56,560 --> 01:46:57,960
and can be printed.

1522
01:47:58,000 --> 01:48:00,160
But it's easy for us to forget

1523
01:48:00,160 --> 01:48:03,400
what a big risk Gutenberg
was taking.

1524
01:48:03,400 --> 01:48:05,920
To set up his print shop
took capital,

1525
01:48:05,920 --> 01:48:09,240
capital which would have to be
repaid.

1526
01:48:09,240 --> 01:48:14,560
And so it was vital that the first
book he printed turn a profit.

1527
01:48:15,680 --> 01:48:18,600
Well, this is one
of the really great treasures

1528
01:48:18,600 --> 01:48:20,440
of Lambeth Palace Library.

1529
01:48:20,440 --> 01:48:23,600
It's a copy of the

1530
01:48:23,600 --> 01:48:27,320
Vulgate Bible printed by
Johannes Gutenberg in Mainz

1531
01:48:27,320 --> 01:48:29,600
in the mid 1450s.

1532
01:48:29,600 --> 01:48:33,480
So it's a copy of the first
substantial printed book

1533
01:48:33,480 --> 01:48:36,680
to be produced in the West,
with moveable type.

1534
01:48:38,200 --> 01:48:40,600
The people who bought books
in the 15th century

1535
01:48:40,600 --> 01:48:45,200
were a small and elite group of rich
individuals and institutions.

1536
01:48:45,200 --> 01:48:49,600
Every book they had ever seen was a
manuscript and they had a clear

1537
01:48:49,600 --> 01:48:52,400
idea of what a book
should look like.

1538
01:48:52,400 --> 01:48:56,920
What people would have really
prized in the manuscript,

1539
01:48:56,920 --> 01:49:01,320
would have thought marked it out
as a manuscript of high quality

1540
01:49:01,320 --> 01:49:06,000
was the regularity of the text
and of the letter forms,

1541
01:49:06,000 --> 01:49:08,000
the evenness of the inking,

1542
01:49:08,000 --> 01:49:10,600
the contrast between
the white of the page

1543
01:49:10,600 --> 01:49:13,480
and the black of the text.

1544
01:49:13,480 --> 01:49:18,160
Those qualities, regularity
of letter forms and line length,

1545
01:49:18,160 --> 01:49:21,400
were precisely the characteristics
of moveable type.

1546
01:49:21,400 --> 01:49:24,480
What was the challenge
for the scribe was relatively

1547
01:49:24,480 --> 01:49:27,040
straightforward for the typesetter.

1548
01:49:28,160 --> 01:49:31,560
So moveable type could produce
a printed book that matched

1549
01:49:31,560 --> 01:49:33,200
the quality of the manuscripts

1550
01:49:33,200 --> 01:49:37,000
that readers were used
to looking at and buying.

1551
01:49:37,000 --> 01:49:40,360
And Gutenberg didn't stop there.

1552
01:49:40,360 --> 01:49:43,600
He printed on parchment
and had the printed text

1553
01:49:43,600 --> 01:49:45,640
illuminated by hand.

1554
01:49:45,640 --> 01:49:49,240
The impression of a
manuscript is so complete

1555
01:49:49,240 --> 01:49:51,480
that, for hundreds of years,

1556
01:49:51,480 --> 01:49:55,080
the librarians at
Lambeth Palace were fooled.

1557
01:49:55,080 --> 01:49:59,800
And until the early 19th century,
it was thought to be a manuscript.

1558
01:49:59,800 --> 01:50:03,200
It was catalogued as a manuscript,
and I think Gutenberg

1559
01:50:03,200 --> 01:50:06,320
would have been delighted
by our confusion,

1560
01:50:06,320 --> 01:50:10,120
because what he was trying
to achieve with the printing

1561
01:50:10,120 --> 01:50:15,360
of this book was to produce a book
by a new technique that people

1562
01:50:15,360 --> 01:50:21,480
would think was just as good as
the manuscripts that they were used

1563
01:50:21,480 --> 01:50:23,280
to buying and reading.

1564
01:50:23,280 --> 01:50:26,000
So what he was trying to do
was to do something new

1565
01:50:26,000 --> 01:50:27,760
that would seem old.

1566
01:50:28,800 --> 01:50:31,120
Gutenberg's strategy worked.

1567
01:50:31,120 --> 01:50:34,040
His printed Bibles sold with ease.

1568
01:50:34,040 --> 01:50:38,480
He soon had imitators, and within
a few decades, there were hundreds

1569
01:50:38,480 --> 01:50:40,920
of printing presses
operating in Europe,

1570
01:50:40,920 --> 01:50:44,520
manufacturing books
on an unprecedented scale.

1571
01:50:47,000 --> 01:50:50,520
It's difficult to overstate
the transformative effect

1572
01:50:50,520 --> 01:50:53,720
that workshops
like this had on Europe.

1573
01:50:53,720 --> 01:50:58,320
Just one of these printing presses
could produce more books in two

1574
01:50:58,320 --> 01:51:02,520
weeks than the entire scribal
industry of Bruges could produce

1575
01:51:02,520 --> 01:51:04,440
in a year.

1576
01:51:04,440 --> 01:51:06,640
The price of books plummeted.

1577
01:51:06,640 --> 01:51:09,560
What had cost pounds
now cost shillings.

1578
01:51:09,560 --> 01:51:13,920
And so there was an enormous
expansion in the reading public.

1579
01:51:13,920 --> 01:51:17,640
All sorts of new books with
new ideas start being written

1580
01:51:17,640 --> 01:51:20,400
to satisfy this new market.

1581
01:51:20,400 --> 01:51:24,120
Europe would no longer
be the intellectual laggard.

1582
01:51:25,440 --> 01:51:30,840
But what would be the impact
of moveable type beyond Europe?

1583
01:51:30,840 --> 01:51:34,800
Printed books
were soon travelling east

1584
01:51:34,800 --> 01:51:39,480
as European printers sought
to serve Christian readers

1585
01:51:39,480 --> 01:51:43,760
living under Muslim rule
in the Ottoman Empire.

1586
01:51:43,760 --> 01:51:47,480
It looks quite humble, but this is
a rather rare and precious specimen.

1587
01:51:47,480 --> 01:51:52,080
This is the first Arabic book
printed with moveable type.

1588
01:51:52,080 --> 01:51:55,920
It was printed in 1514,
in Fano, Italy.

1589
01:51:55,920 --> 01:51:59,520
And this here is a Book
of Hours, printed in Arabic.

1590
01:52:01,880 --> 01:52:04,520
But the manuscript tradition
in the Islamic world

1591
01:52:04,520 --> 01:52:07,280
was very different
from that in Europe.

1592
01:52:07,280 --> 01:52:11,040
Instead of a modulus
script of separate letters,

1593
01:52:11,040 --> 01:52:14,120
Arabic was written in a cursive
style, in which the letters

1594
01:52:14,120 --> 01:52:16,760
in a word are all connected.

1595
01:52:16,760 --> 01:52:20,040
These connections are obligatory,
and readers would never have seen

1596
01:52:20,040 --> 01:52:22,960
Arabic written any other way.

1597
01:52:22,960 --> 01:52:26,440
You see, the Arabic script is much
more than simply a cursive script

1598
01:52:26,440 --> 01:52:28,760
that connects letters together.

1599
01:52:28,760 --> 01:52:33,280
In fact, it's words that stack
and are interwoven across the line.

1600
01:52:33,280 --> 01:52:36,120
There, it is not simply a sequence
of words, but some words

1601
01:52:36,120 --> 01:52:37,560
might be higher and lower.

1602
01:52:37,560 --> 01:52:40,840
The ends of words might weave
into the beginnings of others.

1603
01:52:40,840 --> 01:52:44,080
And all of that is incredibly
difficult to reproduce

1604
01:52:44,080 --> 01:52:45,960
with moveable type.

1605
01:52:45,960 --> 01:52:48,960
These difficulties
are readily apparent

1606
01:52:48,960 --> 01:52:51,200
in the printed Book of Hours.

1607
01:52:51,200 --> 01:52:54,440
You can see that we have
two forms of the Arabic

1608
01:52:54,440 --> 01:52:56,320
script on a single page.

1609
01:52:56,320 --> 01:52:59,840
The first form is a recognisable,
calligraphic Arabic hand.

1610
01:52:59,840 --> 01:53:01,560
It's a cliche, a wooden block.

1611
01:53:01,560 --> 01:53:03,160
It's not moveable type.

1612
01:53:03,160 --> 01:53:05,840
And so, it would be recognisable
to any reader of Arabic

1613
01:53:05,840 --> 01:53:07,360
as good Arabic.

1614
01:53:07,360 --> 01:53:10,760
But underneath it, you have
a completely new invention.

1615
01:53:10,760 --> 01:53:13,480
It is the Arabic
moveable type script

1616
01:53:13,480 --> 01:53:16,240
and it results from the adaptation,

1617
01:53:16,240 --> 01:53:20,080
a forced adaptation of Arabic
to the moveable type environment,

1618
01:53:20,080 --> 01:53:23,320
making it closer to the
logic of the Latin script.

1619
01:53:23,320 --> 01:53:26,880
And you can see here that the
words do not stack upon each other

1620
01:53:26,880 --> 01:53:28,720
like the calligraphic hand.

1621
01:53:28,720 --> 01:53:31,280
The letters are all
on one basic line,

1622
01:53:31,280 --> 01:53:35,320
and you can even see, if you
look closely, that the baseline

1623
01:53:35,320 --> 01:53:37,760
that connects the cursive
letters together is not complete,

1624
01:53:37,760 --> 01:53:40,760
and there are gaps between
the individual letters.

1625
01:53:40,760 --> 01:53:42,800
Though well transcribed,

1626
01:53:42,800 --> 01:53:46,200
I don't think would have
recognised this as Arabic.

1627
01:53:46,200 --> 01:53:50,960
It was difficult for moveable type
to reproduce the look of an Arabic

1628
01:53:50,960 --> 01:53:54,760
manuscript, and that made it hard
to compete

1629
01:53:54,760 --> 01:53:58,240
with the well-established
local book trade.

1630
01:53:58,240 --> 01:54:02,160
So, although Ottoman printers
were soon printing in the Hebrew

1631
01:54:02,160 --> 01:54:04,720
and Armenian alphabets,

1632
01:54:04,720 --> 01:54:08,800
it was more than two centuries
before the first Arabic print shop

1633
01:54:08,800 --> 01:54:12,760
was established in Istanbul in 1727.

1634
01:54:17,920 --> 01:54:22,360
What we have here is
the first Arabic book,

1635
01:54:22,360 --> 01:54:25,400
printed with moveable type,
in the Muslim world,

1636
01:54:25,400 --> 01:54:29,520
about 200 years after the
Book of Hours that we've looked

1637
01:54:29,520 --> 01:54:30,800
at previously.

1638
01:54:30,800 --> 01:54:33,360
This text shows a remarkable advance

1639
01:54:33,360 --> 01:54:35,440
in Arabic printing technology,

1640
01:54:35,440 --> 01:54:37,840
where there are many
more ligatures that mimic

1641
01:54:37,840 --> 01:54:40,320
the Arabic calligraphic hand.

1642
01:54:40,320 --> 01:54:43,560
Nevertheless, unlike in Europe,

1643
01:54:43,560 --> 01:54:46,720
moveable type failed
to capture the market,

1644
01:54:46,720 --> 01:54:51,240
and within 20 years,
the print shop was out of business.

1645
01:54:51,240 --> 01:54:56,360
After a short stint, basically
printing technology died off,

1646
01:54:56,360 --> 01:54:59,600
and so we can wonder why
did printing never really take off?

1647
01:54:59,600 --> 01:55:03,880
And while the most obvious
difference between the first book

1648
01:55:03,880 --> 01:55:07,480
printed using moveable
type in the Muslim world

1649
01:55:07,480 --> 01:55:10,560
and the Gutenberg Bible,
is the book's contents.

1650
01:55:10,560 --> 01:55:11,960
This is a dictionary.

1651
01:55:11,960 --> 01:55:14,680
This would have had a
much more limited audience.

1652
01:55:14,680 --> 01:55:17,000
It wouldn't have been consumed
by everyone and wouldn't

1653
01:55:17,000 --> 01:55:19,800
have been a book that everyone
would have had an interest in.

1654
01:55:19,800 --> 01:55:23,400
That book would have been
the Koran, but moveable type,

1655
01:55:23,400 --> 01:55:26,680
although improved, was still
not good enough to reproduce

1656
01:55:26,680 --> 01:55:29,480
the calligraphy of the holy book.

1657
01:55:29,480 --> 01:55:34,800
If you could have had affordable
and mass-produced Korans,

1658
01:55:34,800 --> 01:55:37,640
I think you would have
had a huge market for that.

1659
01:55:37,640 --> 01:55:40,440
The trouble is, they had to meet
a certain quality.

1660
01:55:40,440 --> 01:55:43,840
You could not print
a Koran like this.

1661
01:55:43,840 --> 01:55:46,760
This does not reproduce
a manuscript, it does not reproduce

1662
01:55:46,760 --> 01:55:50,600
the format of the Koran that the
faithful were used to seeing.

1663
01:55:50,600 --> 01:55:54,880
So the most widely read and
widely appreciated Arabic book

1664
01:55:54,880 --> 01:55:57,960
was never printed
using moveable type.

1665
01:55:57,960 --> 01:56:01,160
And that took a huge part
of the market out, whereas Gutenberg

1666
01:56:01,160 --> 01:56:05,000
printed the book, the Bible,
that, basically, everyone on

1667
01:56:05,000 --> 01:56:07,360
the continent would have wanted.

1668
01:56:09,000 --> 01:56:11,560
So there's an irony.

1669
01:56:11,560 --> 01:56:15,080
Printing took off in Europe
in large part because Gutenberg

1670
01:56:15,080 --> 01:56:18,600
could produce, with moveable type,
a book that looked

1671
01:56:18,600 --> 01:56:21,240
as if it had been written by hand.

1672
01:56:24,240 --> 01:56:28,920
And that was possible because he
was printing the Latin alphabet.

1673
01:56:28,920 --> 01:56:32,280
If he had been trying to print
a different script,

1674
01:56:32,280 --> 01:56:34,400
he might never have succeeded.

1675
01:56:34,400 --> 01:56:39,360
That simple fact lies behind
a thousand fold increase

1676
01:56:39,360 --> 01:56:41,840
in the availability of information,

1677
01:56:41,840 --> 01:56:44,840
an explosion of ideas

1678
01:56:44,840 --> 01:56:48,720
that led directly to the
European scientific revolution,

1679
01:56:48,720 --> 01:56:51,600
the Industrial Revolution
that followed,

1680
01:56:51,600 --> 01:56:54,160
and the world we live in today.

1681
01:56:56,640 --> 01:57:00,600
Pen and paper, ink and alphabet.

1682
01:57:00,600 --> 01:57:05,600
These things are so familiar
as to be almost invisible.

1683
01:57:05,600 --> 01:57:08,960
But these are world altering
technologies.

1684
01:57:10,600 --> 01:57:12,920
Our history has been shaped

1685
01:57:12,920 --> 01:57:15,800
by the shape of the letters we write

1686
01:57:15,800 --> 01:57:18,560
and the means we use to write them.

1687
01:57:19,680 --> 01:57:23,040
Remember THAT next time
you pick up a pencil!

1688
01:57:59,480 --> 01:58:03,480
OVERLAPPING VOICES READING THE WORDS

1689
01:58:22,560 --> 01:58:25,120
GIRL SPEAKS SPANISH

1690
01:58:32,360 --> 01:58:35,840
Martha is reading from
The Book from the Ground -

1691
01:58:35,840 --> 01:58:39,440
a novella by the famous
Chinese artist Xu Bing.

1692
01:58:40,520 --> 01:58:44,240
He has assembled hundreds
of emojis and icons

1693
01:58:44,240 --> 01:58:48,800
into a script that can be read by
anyone, of whatever nationality,

1694
01:58:48,800 --> 01:58:52,560
because it is freed from the words
of any particular language.

1695
01:59:03,000 --> 01:59:05,560
Is this a glimpse of our future?

1696
01:59:07,760 --> 01:59:10,640
For 5,000 years,
the technology of writing

1697
01:59:10,640 --> 01:59:14,440
has allowed people to communicate
across space and time

1698
01:59:14,440 --> 01:59:18,040
and made civilisation itself
possible.

1699
01:59:18,040 --> 01:59:19,920
From common roots,

1700
01:59:19,920 --> 01:59:23,560
writing developed into
a myriad of distinct scripts.

1701
01:59:24,960 --> 01:59:29,640
But, today, a new digital
communication technology

1702
01:59:29,640 --> 01:59:32,560
is becoming universal
across the globe.

1703
01:59:33,600 --> 01:59:38,080
Will this new technology bring
a new universal way of writing?

1704
01:59:38,080 --> 01:59:42,560
And as writing changes,
will we change with it?

1705
02:00:22,240 --> 02:00:24,240
CROWD CHANTS

1706
02:00:36,360 --> 02:00:39,880
This is Dolmabahce Square
in Istanbul.

1707
02:00:39,880 --> 02:00:43,840
Every year, Turks gather here
to mark the anniversary

1708
02:00:43,840 --> 02:00:46,560
of the death
of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

1709
02:00:47,840 --> 02:00:50,880
Mustafa Kemal was the founder
of modern Turkey

1710
02:00:50,880 --> 02:00:55,040
and his influence is still felt
on many aspects of Turkish life,

1711
02:00:55,040 --> 02:00:58,600
not least whenever anyone here
picks up a pen,

1712
02:00:58,600 --> 02:01:04,320
because, in 1928, Mustafa Kemal
did something extraordinary.

1713
02:01:04,320 --> 02:01:07,400
He changed the way that Turks write.

1714
02:01:09,400 --> 02:01:12,680
The written word is so important
in everyday life

1715
02:01:12,680 --> 02:01:15,200
that there can be
few more radical acts

1716
02:01:15,200 --> 02:01:19,120
than forcing an entire nation
to learn a new script.

1717
02:01:20,840 --> 02:01:24,120
Yet what happened in Turkey
in the 1920s

1718
02:01:24,120 --> 02:01:27,600
was just part of a movement
that swept across the world

1719
02:01:27,600 --> 02:01:29,240
in the 20th century.

1720
02:01:30,880 --> 02:01:34,640
A series of script reforms
that threatened to replace

1721
02:01:34,640 --> 02:01:37,600
the multitude of traditional
writing systems

1722
02:01:37,600 --> 02:01:40,800
with a single, universal script -

1723
02:01:40,800 --> 02:01:42,840
the Latin alphabet.

1724
02:01:46,320 --> 02:01:50,280
The Latin alphabet was the script
of the Roman Empire.

1725
02:01:54,680 --> 02:01:58,160
But its global spread
was due to printing.

1726
02:02:03,320 --> 02:02:07,160
It was because Latin letters
turned out to be easier to print

1727
02:02:07,160 --> 02:02:09,160
than other scripts...

1728
02:02:11,240 --> 02:02:15,280
..that printing took off in Europe
in a way it did not elsewhere.

1729
02:02:16,320 --> 02:02:19,280
The resulting explosion
in information

1730
02:02:19,280 --> 02:02:22,400
led to scientific
and industrial revolutions that,

1731
02:02:22,400 --> 02:02:24,840
by the early 20th century,

1732
02:02:24,840 --> 02:02:29,800
had taken Europe to unprecedented
levels of wealth and power.

1733
02:02:33,200 --> 02:02:36,560
This link between the Latin alphabet

1734
02:02:36,560 --> 02:02:39,560
and the rise of Western
industrial society...

1735
02:02:41,320 --> 02:02:43,920
..led leaders
in other parts of the world

1736
02:02:43,920 --> 02:02:46,840
who wanted to take their countries
down the same path...

1737
02:02:48,320 --> 02:02:52,560
..to see, in the Western script,
a key to modernity.

1738
02:02:55,160 --> 02:02:57,600
The Latin script,
it's a Western thing,

1739
02:02:57,600 --> 02:03:00,200
and even the idea of modernisation

1740
02:03:00,200 --> 02:03:04,320
is so much geared towards the West.

1741
02:03:12,880 --> 02:03:18,200
Could adopting the Latin alphabet
be a shortcut to mass literacy,

1742
02:03:18,200 --> 02:03:21,160
mass communication
and a modern society?

1743
02:03:22,240 --> 02:03:28,040
Or was changing the script
a recipe for confusion and conflict?

1744
02:03:34,560 --> 02:03:37,240
The story of script reform in Turkey

1745
02:03:37,240 --> 02:03:40,560
begins with the fall
of the Ottoman Empire.

1746
02:03:43,120 --> 02:03:48,120
For more than 600 years, the Ottoman
Turks had ruled vast territories

1747
02:03:48,120 --> 02:03:51,520
that, at times, included
much of south-eastern Europe,

1748
02:03:51,520 --> 02:03:54,280
West Asia and North Africa.

1749
02:03:56,960 --> 02:03:59,800
But then came the First World War.

1750
02:04:03,640 --> 02:04:07,080
With military defeat at the hands
of the Western Allies,

1751
02:04:07,080 --> 02:04:11,480
Turkey lost its empire
and gained a new reformist leader

1752
02:04:11,480 --> 02:04:14,240
in the shape of Mustafa Kemal.

1753
02:04:16,520 --> 02:04:19,920
Mustafa Kemal is an Ottoman officer.

1754
02:04:19,920 --> 02:04:25,120
His project is basically to combine
his own political ambitions

1755
02:04:25,120 --> 02:04:27,640
with some kind of
a modernising agenda

1756
02:04:27,640 --> 02:04:32,080
for what remains of the Ottoman
Empire and, hence, the desire

1757
02:04:32,080 --> 02:04:36,000
to set up a modern,
Westernised writing system.

1758
02:04:37,880 --> 02:04:42,440
Mustafa Kemal's plan to Westernise
the Turkish writing system

1759
02:04:42,440 --> 02:04:45,120
built on decades of dissatisfaction

1760
02:04:45,120 --> 02:04:47,560
with the way that Turkish
was written.

1761
02:04:48,600 --> 02:04:51,600
Since the very beginnings
of the Ottoman Empire,

1762
02:04:51,600 --> 02:04:54,680
its rulers had chosen to represent
the Turkish language

1763
02:04:54,680 --> 02:04:58,560
with the script of the Quran,
the Arabic alphabet,

1764
02:04:58,560 --> 02:05:01,880
but spoken Arabic and spoken Turkish

1765
02:05:01,880 --> 02:05:05,240
are two very different languages.

1766
02:05:05,240 --> 02:05:08,680
The problem for Ottomans
is that Turkish

1767
02:05:08,680 --> 02:05:11,320
is not very compatible
with the Arabic script.

1768
02:05:11,320 --> 02:05:14,840
I mean, it's almost
diametrically opposed

1769
02:05:14,840 --> 02:05:20,720
in the sense that Arabic has
an incredible number of consonants

1770
02:05:20,720 --> 02:05:24,280
and, on the other hand, it has
a very limited number of vowels.

1771
02:05:25,320 --> 02:05:29,800
By contrast, spoken Turkish
employs limited consonants

1772
02:05:29,800 --> 02:05:32,400
but a large diversity of vowels.

1773
02:05:32,400 --> 02:05:35,640
Vowels which are not represented
in the Arabic alphabet.

1774
02:05:36,720 --> 02:05:40,640
The idea that the Arabic script
was a mismatch

1775
02:05:40,640 --> 02:05:44,960
was something that was more or less
recognised by members of the elite.

1776
02:05:44,960 --> 02:05:47,680
The Ottomans had been
toying with the idea

1777
02:05:47,680 --> 02:05:51,840
of reforming their alphabet
for at least 50, 60 years.

1778
02:05:54,600 --> 02:05:58,360
But Mustafa Kemal was not
a man for half measures.

1779
02:05:58,360 --> 02:06:01,080
Rather than reform
the Arabic alphabet,

1780
02:06:01,080 --> 02:06:06,440
he decided to replace it completely
with the Latin alphabet of the West.

1781
02:06:08,320 --> 02:06:12,560
It's in the summer of 1928
that he came up with the idea

1782
02:06:12,560 --> 02:06:15,880
and then it's like a PR campaign,

1783
02:06:15,880 --> 02:06:21,600
because he travels through Anatolia
and his instrument is a blackboard.

1784
02:06:21,600 --> 02:06:25,360
There's a fascinating photograph,
it's become iconic,

1785
02:06:25,360 --> 02:06:29,560
where you have him pointing
at the new letters.

1786
02:06:29,560 --> 02:06:31,560
With the Latin alphabet,

1787
02:06:31,560 --> 02:06:34,840
it was easier to spell
Turkish words phonetically,

1788
02:06:34,840 --> 02:06:38,880
which it was felt would make it
easier to learn to read.

1789
02:06:38,880 --> 02:06:42,920
There was little ground to really

1790
02:06:42,920 --> 02:06:47,360
oppose the logic
behind this transformation,

1791
02:06:47,360 --> 02:06:52,240
given that 90% or even more
of the population was illiterate.

1792
02:06:53,640 --> 02:06:56,600
It was very rapid -
almost overnight.

1793
02:06:56,600 --> 02:06:59,560
I think it took one year
for everybody to address,

1794
02:06:59,560 --> 02:07:01,520
including the press.

1795
02:07:01,520 --> 02:07:05,240
Overnight, you are told
that you should insert

1796
02:07:05,240 --> 02:07:07,680
more and more Latin scripts,

1797
02:07:07,680 --> 02:07:12,280
so you can still keep, you know,
the usual Arabic alphabet,

1798
02:07:12,280 --> 02:07:14,320
but, at the end of the year,

1799
02:07:14,320 --> 02:07:18,640
you're going to have to
have it all in the Latin script.

1800
02:07:20,080 --> 02:07:25,080
For Mustafa Kemal was not content
with introducing a new script,

1801
02:07:25,080 --> 02:07:29,080
he was also determined
to ban the old one.

1802
02:07:29,080 --> 02:07:33,520
And, by 1929,
Arabic script is outlawed.

1803
02:07:34,560 --> 02:07:37,640
It is outlawed. You cannot use it.

1804
02:07:37,640 --> 02:07:39,680
MUSIC

1805
02:07:41,840 --> 02:07:46,320
At first sight, it seems
unnecessary to ban a script

1806
02:07:46,320 --> 02:07:49,840
which literate Turks
have been using for centuries,

1807
02:07:49,840 --> 02:07:54,080
but Mustafa Kemal was aware that
the meaning of the Arabic script

1808
02:07:54,080 --> 02:07:57,360
was not confined to the words
it represented.

1809
02:07:57,360 --> 02:07:59,280
SINGING

1810
02:08:06,280 --> 02:08:09,320
Sufis are a case in point.

1811
02:08:09,320 --> 02:08:12,480
They are famous for
their whirling trance

1812
02:08:12,480 --> 02:08:14,760
and their deep study of Islam.

1813
02:08:18,440 --> 02:08:21,280
Sufis try and achieve
a direct communion with God

1814
02:08:21,280 --> 02:08:23,560
through rituals such as these.

1815
02:08:24,920 --> 02:08:27,880
But also through the text
of the Quran.

1816
02:08:27,880 --> 02:08:31,600
They believe that there are hidden
meanings not just inside the words,

1817
02:08:31,600 --> 02:08:34,800
but inside the very letters
of the Arabic alphabet.

1818
02:08:34,800 --> 02:08:37,240
SINGING

1819
02:08:44,000 --> 02:08:48,080
Cemalnur Sargut,
a renowned Turkish Sufi writer,

1820
02:08:48,080 --> 02:08:52,480
told me something about the sacred
significance of Arabic letters.

1821
02:09:00,600 --> 02:09:02,600
And the meanings multiply.

1822
02:09:02,600 --> 02:09:07,600
For example, many chapters
of the Quran begin with Muqatta'at.

1823
02:09:10,080 --> 02:09:13,360
Mysterious groups of three,
four or five letters

1824
02:09:13,360 --> 02:09:17,000
that do not spell
any known word in Arabic.

1825
02:09:18,640 --> 02:09:22,120
The most common Muqatta'at
is Alif Laam Meem -

1826
02:09:22,120 --> 02:09:26,560
the equivalent of A, L and M
in the Latin alphabet.

1827
02:09:29,240 --> 02:09:30,920
As Cemalnur explained,

1828
02:09:30,920 --> 02:09:36,000
to Sufis, these letters
are a sort of spiritual code.

1829
02:10:19,600 --> 02:10:22,840
The spiritual connection
between script and religion

1830
02:10:22,840 --> 02:10:25,600
extends to the act
of writing itself.

1831
02:10:26,640 --> 02:10:29,200
Mahmut Sahin
is a Turkish calligrapher

1832
02:10:29,200 --> 02:10:32,840
but, 80 years after
Mustafa Kemal's script reform,

1833
02:10:32,840 --> 02:10:36,560
he still writes mostly
in Arabic letters.

1834
02:10:58,840 --> 02:11:03,520
Even the materials used in writing
acquire sacred significance.

1835
02:11:36,880 --> 02:11:39,320
Whatever the practical
justification,

1836
02:11:39,320 --> 02:11:44,760
discarding the Arabic alphabet
came at a high cost to many Turks.

1837
02:11:51,080 --> 02:11:54,880
There is, of course,
the psychological, cultural trauma

1838
02:11:54,880 --> 02:11:58,080
of people who are highly attached
to their religion,

1839
02:11:58,080 --> 02:12:02,240
for whom the language, the script,
is not just a script,

1840
02:12:02,240 --> 02:12:04,240
it is the script of the Quran.

1841
02:12:39,960 --> 02:12:41,960
But, for Mustafa Kemal,

1842
02:12:41,960 --> 02:12:46,360
this brutal rupture with the past
was precisely the point.

1843
02:12:46,360 --> 02:12:50,000
The adoption of the Latin script
was not just a practical matter

1844
02:12:50,000 --> 02:12:52,080
of improving literacy,

1845
02:12:52,080 --> 02:12:56,960
it was also an attempt to alter
the trajectory of Turkish history

1846
02:12:56,960 --> 02:13:01,320
away from its Islamic past
towards the kind of secular,

1847
02:13:01,320 --> 02:13:05,600
technological society
that was being created in Europe.

1848
02:13:05,600 --> 02:13:09,760
For Mustafa Kemal, it's really
the appeal of the West.

1849
02:13:09,760 --> 02:13:15,600
There's a linguistic justification
for the, erm...for the reform,

1850
02:13:15,600 --> 02:13:18,320
but there's also
a civilizational one.

1851
02:13:18,320 --> 02:13:21,560
It is because you want to
become European.

1852
02:13:23,320 --> 02:13:26,000
So the script is crucial.

1853
02:13:26,000 --> 02:13:29,520
It's one of the most daring reforms

1854
02:13:29,520 --> 02:13:31,640
because it really touches...

1855
02:13:31,640 --> 02:13:34,880
And it has a promise
of enlightenment.

1856
02:13:34,880 --> 02:13:38,600
I mean, viewed from the perspective
of the 1920s,

1857
02:13:38,600 --> 02:13:40,600
this is a way of saying,

1858
02:13:40,600 --> 02:13:45,400
this is our first step towards
creating a nation

1859
02:13:45,400 --> 02:13:50,600
and of spreading literacy
and education to the masses.

1860
02:13:51,560 --> 02:13:54,600
The script in itself is so symbolic.

1861
02:13:54,600 --> 02:13:57,600
It's something that everybody
recognises.

1862
02:13:57,600 --> 02:14:01,880
Symbolically, I think
it's a very powerful move,

1863
02:14:01,880 --> 02:14:05,040
and it's very well received
by the West.

1864
02:14:05,040 --> 02:14:08,200
It's a huge PR thing.

1865
02:14:08,200 --> 02:14:12,120
REPORTER: Ataturk lives quietly,
spends time teaching the youngest

1866
02:14:12,120 --> 02:14:16,560
of his six adopted daughters the
alphabet he made all Turkey learn.

1867
02:14:18,880 --> 02:14:23,600
But Turks were not the only people
having to learn a new way to write.

1868
02:14:24,600 --> 02:14:28,080
In the 1920s, the Latin alphabet,

1869
02:14:28,080 --> 02:14:32,560
with its promise of modernity,
was on the march across Asia.

1870
02:14:37,280 --> 02:14:39,680
The story of what happened next

1871
02:14:39,680 --> 02:14:44,280
illustrates the power of script
to shape who we are.

1872
02:14:55,080 --> 02:15:00,560
# Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar

1873
02:15:03,640 --> 02:15:09,800
# Allahu Akbar

1874
02:15:09,800 --> 02:15:18,600
# Allahu Akbar... #

1875
02:15:34,080 --> 02:15:37,040
There is nothing more evocative
of the Islamic world

1876
02:15:37,040 --> 02:15:38,880
than the call to prayer.

1877
02:15:41,600 --> 02:15:43,720
But there's something else
that tells us

1878
02:15:43,720 --> 02:15:45,640
that we're in a Muslim country.

1879
02:15:45,640 --> 02:15:48,640
The Arabic script is everywhere,

1880
02:15:48,640 --> 02:15:52,480
because script isn't just
a means of communication,

1881
02:15:52,480 --> 02:15:54,960
it's a badge of identity,

1882
02:15:54,960 --> 02:16:00,520
and with a change in script comes
a fundamental change in identity.

1883
02:16:02,560 --> 02:16:05,120
This is Bukhara in Uzbekistan.

1884
02:16:06,200 --> 02:16:09,040
Once an important oasis city
on the Silk Road

1885
02:16:09,040 --> 02:16:11,320
between China and the Mediterranean.

1886
02:16:13,520 --> 02:16:16,880
In the 19th century, it,
like most of the Islamic states

1887
02:16:16,880 --> 02:16:21,200
of Central Asia, was absorbed
by the expanding Russian Empire.

1888
02:16:22,240 --> 02:16:25,640
Under the tsars, the Turkic
languages of the region

1889
02:16:25,640 --> 02:16:29,640
continued, however, to be written
in the Arabic script,

1890
02:16:29,640 --> 02:16:34,280
which had been used here since the
Muslim conquests of the 8th century.

1891
02:16:36,280 --> 02:16:39,920
But, in 1917,
the Russian Empire collapsed

1892
02:16:39,920 --> 02:16:42,840
and power was seized
by the Communist Party.

1893
02:16:43,920 --> 02:16:48,640
Their leader, Lenin, was determined
to modernise and secularise

1894
02:16:48,640 --> 02:16:52,640
every aspect of society
across the new Soviet Union

1895
02:16:52,640 --> 02:16:58,000
and, in Central Asia, as in Turkey,
that meant changing the script.

1896
02:17:01,560 --> 02:17:04,920
Shahnoza Soatova is a philologist

1897
02:17:04,920 --> 02:17:08,560
and an expert on script reform
in Uzbekistan.

1898
02:17:44,640 --> 02:17:48,800
As in Turkey, the new script
was part of a literacy drive.

1899
02:17:50,360 --> 02:17:56,040
But, as in Turkey also, it created
a brutal rupture with the past.

1900
02:17:57,120 --> 02:18:02,200
For the Arabic script is quite
literally woven into the fabric

1901
02:18:02,200 --> 02:18:04,600
of cities like Samarkand.

1902
02:18:18,640 --> 02:18:22,560
Practically every panel of every
building in this magnificent place

1903
02:18:22,560 --> 02:18:24,520
is covered in writing.

1904
02:18:26,600 --> 02:18:30,200
It's a masterpiece
of Arabic calligraphic art

1905
02:18:30,200 --> 02:18:32,280
expressed in architecture.

1906
02:18:39,760 --> 02:18:42,600
Some of the panels look like
geometric patterns

1907
02:18:42,600 --> 02:18:47,560
but are, in fact, also writing
in the angular Kufic script.

1908
02:18:49,600 --> 02:18:53,960
For example, in the very middle
of this pattern above the gate

1909
02:18:53,960 --> 02:18:56,800
is a lozenge where, in the middle,
in dark blue,

1910
02:18:56,800 --> 02:18:58,920
is the name of Allah four times,

1911
02:18:58,920 --> 02:19:01,560
made to look like
a repeating pattern.

1912
02:19:02,680 --> 02:19:06,560
And around the side of that lozenge,
picked out in turquoise,

1913
02:19:06,560 --> 02:19:08,440
is the name of Muhammad.

1914
02:19:37,360 --> 02:19:41,040
Latinisation was, at heart,
a political project.

1915
02:19:42,360 --> 02:19:45,560
But, back in Moscow,
politics were changing.

1916
02:19:46,560 --> 02:19:49,640
Lenin's successor, Joseph Stalin,

1917
02:19:49,640 --> 02:19:53,360
was less interested
in world revolution

1918
02:19:53,360 --> 02:19:56,520
than in consolidating
his total control

1919
02:19:56,520 --> 02:20:00,040
over all the subject peoples
of a new Russian empire.

1920
02:20:01,080 --> 02:20:06,040
And, once again, new politics
meant a new script.

1921
02:20:29,160 --> 02:20:33,200
The Russian Cyrillic alphabet
remained the script of Central Asia

1922
02:20:33,200 --> 02:20:35,120
for five decades,

1923
02:20:35,120 --> 02:20:38,720
but then the politics of Russia
changed again.

1924
02:20:38,720 --> 02:20:42,640
In 1991, the Soviet Union fell apart

1925
02:20:42,640 --> 02:20:45,960
and Uzbekistan became
an independent country.

1926
02:20:45,960 --> 02:20:49,640
Uzbeks now had
a new political identity

1927
02:20:49,640 --> 02:20:52,880
and for the nation's leader,
Islam Karimov,

1928
02:20:52,880 --> 02:20:55,600
there was no stronger way
to signal this change

1929
02:20:55,600 --> 02:20:58,400
than to change the script yet again.

1930
02:20:59,400 --> 02:21:03,280
Out went Cyrillic,
but it wasn't Arabic that returned.

1931
02:22:04,840 --> 02:22:07,880
No country has changed
its script more often

1932
02:22:07,880 --> 02:22:11,360
in such a relatively short period
as Uzbekistan.

1933
02:22:12,440 --> 02:22:14,840
But, through all these
dizzying changes,

1934
02:22:14,840 --> 02:22:16,880
there has been one constant.

1935
02:22:16,880 --> 02:22:20,360
The pull of the Latin alphabet
as a means of connecting

1936
02:22:20,360 --> 02:22:25,600
with the wider world and as a symbol
of a nation that embraces modernity.

1937
02:22:29,920 --> 02:22:33,640
But the eastward march of the Latin
alphabet would eventually bring it

1938
02:22:33,640 --> 02:22:38,040
into contact with a culture
with writing at its heart.

1939
02:22:43,400 --> 02:22:46,840
In any park in China,
it's not unusual

1940
02:22:46,840 --> 02:22:51,000
to find people of all ages
writing words in water.

1941
02:23:03,960 --> 02:23:06,320
They are not using an alphabet

1942
02:23:06,320 --> 02:23:10,760
but writing characters in China's
ancient pictorial script.

1943
02:24:03,640 --> 02:24:07,080
The Chinese script
has been in continuous use

1944
02:24:07,080 --> 02:24:09,560
for more than 3,000 years.

1945
02:24:46,840 --> 02:24:51,120
But, for much of the last century,
those who ruled China

1946
02:24:51,120 --> 02:24:55,640
were determined that the ancient
Chinese script would fade away,

1947
02:24:55,640 --> 02:24:58,800
to be replaced
by something simpler.

1948
02:25:20,320 --> 02:25:22,880
China had yet to industrialise.

1949
02:25:22,880 --> 02:25:27,080
The people were still living
a traditional way of life.

1950
02:25:33,880 --> 02:25:39,240
The resulting economic weakness made
the country prey to Western powers.

1951
02:26:03,880 --> 02:26:06,680
Popular discontent
of the decline of China

1952
02:26:06,680 --> 02:26:10,080
exploded on May 4th, 1919.

1953
02:26:10,080 --> 02:26:14,040
The streets of Beijing were filled
with protesting students

1954
02:26:14,040 --> 02:26:16,400
demanding radical change.

1955
02:26:16,400 --> 02:26:20,600
It was a moment that heralded
30 years of political turmoil

1956
02:26:20,600 --> 02:26:25,560
that would lead to civil war in
China and a war between scripts.

1957
02:26:57,640 --> 02:27:00,880
The most enthusiastic partisans
of script reform

1958
02:27:00,880 --> 02:27:03,360
were the Communist Party of China.

1959
02:27:03,360 --> 02:27:07,600
They turned to their ideological
allies in the Soviet Union

1960
02:27:07,600 --> 02:27:11,280
who had already Latinised
the scripts of Central Asia.

1961
02:27:25,240 --> 02:27:29,240
The new system was designed
to make reading and writing easier

1962
02:27:29,240 --> 02:27:31,560
by spelling out words phonetically.

1963
02:27:32,600 --> 02:27:37,400
It was called Latinxua Sin Wenz -
Latin new writing.

1964
02:28:16,840 --> 02:28:21,760
As Mao's forces marched south,
conquering more and more territory,

1965
02:28:21,760 --> 02:28:24,200
Latinxua Sin Wenz followed behind.

1966
02:28:25,280 --> 02:28:29,040
It was used in newspapers,
books, in school textbooks

1967
02:28:29,040 --> 02:28:31,200
and in railway timetables.

1968
02:28:36,640 --> 02:28:39,200
Kept in the National Library
of Beijing,

1969
02:28:39,200 --> 02:28:42,560
thousands of publications
attest to the Latin push

1970
02:28:42,560 --> 02:28:44,400
throughout the country.

1971
02:28:47,880 --> 02:28:52,040
The librarians were kind enough
to let me look at a few of them,

1972
02:28:52,040 --> 02:28:55,600
dating from the 1930s to 1950.

1973
02:29:03,080 --> 02:29:06,880
It's fascinating to see Chinese
written in Latin letters,

1974
02:29:06,880 --> 02:29:08,840
the Latinxua Sin Wenz,

1975
02:29:08,840 --> 02:29:12,080
because you get the feeling
you can understand it,

1976
02:29:12,080 --> 02:29:15,040
which isn't usually the case
when you see

1977
02:29:15,040 --> 02:29:17,040
a page of Chinese characters.

1978
02:29:18,080 --> 02:29:22,840
It feels more familiar, and
that's made more so by the fact

1979
02:29:22,840 --> 02:29:26,560
that this content is sprinkled
with words that I can understand.

1980
02:29:26,560 --> 02:29:28,920
"Stalin." "Trumen."

1981
02:29:28,920 --> 02:29:32,000
But there is a range of content.

1982
02:29:32,000 --> 02:29:36,680
There is a lot of poetry
and there are a lot of articles

1983
02:29:36,680 --> 02:29:39,880
on how to write
the new Latin script,

1984
02:29:39,880 --> 02:29:43,120
including little pictures
on how to hold the pen

1985
02:29:43,120 --> 02:29:49,120
and also how to form the cursive
of the Latin letters.

1986
02:29:49,120 --> 02:29:54,040
Interestingly, a lot of them
have the order of the strokes,

1987
02:29:54,040 --> 02:29:55,880
one, two, three,

1988
02:29:55,880 --> 02:29:59,840
which is something you see in school
books for Chinese characters,

1989
02:29:59,840 --> 02:30:02,640
where the order of the strokes
is very important,

1990
02:30:02,640 --> 02:30:05,400
but not something so common
in the West.

1991
02:30:06,880 --> 02:30:12,360
What is obvious is the overtly
political nature of all of this.

1992
02:30:12,360 --> 02:30:14,640
Here we have Gorky

1993
02:30:14,640 --> 02:30:19,360
stabbing a fat capitalist
with an enormous pen,

1994
02:30:19,360 --> 02:30:24,320
giving the idea that the pen
is mightier than the sword

1995
02:30:24,320 --> 02:30:29,560
and perhaps underlining
the need for mass literacy.

1996
02:30:29,560 --> 02:30:31,880
But even into the 1950s,

1997
02:30:31,880 --> 02:30:35,080
all the content is written
in both systems -

1998
02:30:35,080 --> 02:30:37,920
the Latin letters
and the Chinese characters -

1999
02:30:37,920 --> 02:30:41,360
which shows that, even after
decades of publishing,

2000
02:30:41,360 --> 02:30:43,880
the editors can't be sure
that the readers

2001
02:30:43,880 --> 02:30:46,080
will understand the new system.

2002
02:30:47,120 --> 02:30:50,320
The revolution might have
triumphed by this time

2003
02:30:50,320 --> 02:30:52,800
but the new writing has not.

2004
02:31:29,200 --> 02:31:32,040
Dozens of dialects
are spoken across China

2005
02:31:32,040 --> 02:31:35,080
and the pronunciation of words
varies greatly.

2006
02:31:35,080 --> 02:31:38,040
For example,
in the Mandarin-speaking areas,

2007
02:31:38,040 --> 02:31:40,600
the word for love is "ai",

2008
02:31:40,600 --> 02:31:45,040
but in the Cantonese dialect,
love is pronounced "nuo".

2009
02:31:45,040 --> 02:31:49,120
Rendered phonetically, the two words
would look quite different,

2010
02:31:49,120 --> 02:31:52,280
but, in the Chinese script,
they are both represented

2011
02:31:52,280 --> 02:31:54,120
by the same character,

2012
02:31:54,120 --> 02:31:58,600
so even if the spoken languages
sound completely different,

2013
02:31:58,600 --> 02:32:01,640
the written characters
are shared everywhere.

2014
02:32:01,640 --> 02:32:06,120
In this way, the Chinese script
binds the Chinese people together.

2015
02:32:17,880 --> 02:32:21,680
And the Chinese people have
a deep, emotional attachment

2016
02:32:21,680 --> 02:32:23,640
to their ancient script.

2017
02:33:00,120 --> 02:33:04,600
Chinese writing is the embodiment
of Chinese civilisation.

2018
02:33:04,600 --> 02:33:07,120
Every character tells a story

2019
02:33:07,120 --> 02:33:09,800
about how the ancestors
of the Chinese people

2020
02:33:09,800 --> 02:33:12,280
saw the world around them.

2021
02:33:14,840 --> 02:33:17,560
For example,
the character for woman...

2022
02:33:18,600 --> 02:33:21,320
..is combined with
the character for child...

2023
02:33:22,600 --> 02:33:26,560
..to give a character
which means good.

2024
02:33:36,240 --> 02:33:38,560
The character for field...

2025
02:33:40,360 --> 02:33:43,560
..when combined with the character
which means strength...

2026
02:33:44,600 --> 02:33:47,320
..gives the character for a man.

2027
02:34:03,600 --> 02:34:06,600
In 1949, Chairman Mao
declared the birth

2028
02:34:06,600 --> 02:34:08,880
of the People's Republic of China.

2029
02:34:08,880 --> 02:34:11,840
The Communists had been victorious.

2030
02:34:13,080 --> 02:34:17,960
But, by this time, Mao had quietly
buried Latinxua Sin Wenz.

2031
02:34:17,960 --> 02:34:22,000
The cultural cost of abandoning
the Chinese script was too high

2032
02:34:22,000 --> 02:34:27,040
a price to pay for the supposed
efficiencies of the Latin alphabet.

2033
02:34:28,760 --> 02:34:32,080
But that left the problem
of achieving mass literacy

2034
02:34:32,080 --> 02:34:36,120
with a complex script
which, throughout Chinese history,

2035
02:34:36,120 --> 02:34:39,200
had always been the province
of the elite.

2036
02:34:44,520 --> 02:34:46,560
CHILDREN RECITE TOGETHER

2037
02:35:02,640 --> 02:35:04,920
TEACHER SINGS IN CHINESE

2038
02:35:31,080 --> 02:35:33,720
To be able to read
and write Chinese,

2039
02:35:33,720 --> 02:35:37,280
you need to learn several thousand
pictorial characters.

2040
02:35:38,440 --> 02:35:42,080
It seems like a daunting task
for a six-year-old.

2041
02:36:26,800 --> 02:36:29,440
I think the Western people

2042
02:36:29,440 --> 02:36:33,480
have some illusions
about Chinese characters.

2043
02:36:33,480 --> 02:36:37,560
In the biggest character dictionary,

2044
02:36:37,560 --> 02:36:39,560
we have about...

2045
02:36:39,560 --> 02:36:43,880
More than 50,000 Chinese characters.

2046
02:36:43,880 --> 02:36:46,280
That's a very big amount.

2047
02:36:46,280 --> 02:36:49,720
But if you consider the basic unit,

2048
02:36:49,720 --> 02:36:53,000
the basic element,
it's not too large.

2049
02:36:53,000 --> 02:36:56,360
It's about 300 basic elements,

2050
02:36:56,360 --> 02:37:02,280
so it's not so complicated
as some Westerners think.

2051
02:37:02,280 --> 02:37:04,560
So what is... What is that?

2052
02:37:04,560 --> 02:37:06,280
A fruit basket.

2053
02:37:06,280 --> 02:37:08,240
Orange. Orange.

2054
02:37:08,240 --> 02:37:09,600
Grapes.

2055
02:37:10,560 --> 02:37:12,080
Onions.

2056
02:37:12,080 --> 02:37:16,840
Dr Thomas Hope is a neuroscientist
interested in how we read.

2057
02:37:16,840 --> 02:37:20,040
He agrees that it's easy
to overstate

2058
02:37:20,040 --> 02:37:22,560
the differences between scripts.

2059
02:37:23,640 --> 02:37:27,320
Perhaps the most obvious
difference between pictographic

2060
02:37:27,320 --> 02:37:31,840
and Latin scripts is that the Latin
scripts have only 26 letters,

2061
02:37:31,840 --> 02:37:35,040
whereas your pictographic scripts
appear to have thousands

2062
02:37:35,040 --> 02:37:37,080
and thousands of characters.

2063
02:37:37,080 --> 02:37:40,520
But of course you can't learn to
read just by learning the letters.

2064
02:37:40,520 --> 02:37:43,480
I know this. I've been watching
my children learn to read.

2065
02:37:43,480 --> 02:37:45,120
That is a hat.

2066
02:37:45,120 --> 02:37:48,840
It's not enough. You have to learn
to understand and recognise

2067
02:37:48,840 --> 02:37:51,920
the words, too, and once you've
got to recognise the words,

2068
02:37:51,920 --> 02:37:54,360
well, there's thousands
and thousands of them,

2069
02:37:54,360 --> 02:37:57,400
so what that means is that
the actual learning problem

2070
02:37:57,400 --> 02:38:00,640
you have to solve
to achieve skilled reading

2071
02:38:00,640 --> 02:38:04,640
is at least roughly similar
across these two scripts.

2072
02:38:04,640 --> 02:38:09,640
As a scientist, Thomas is interested
in whether brain science can

2073
02:38:09,640 --> 02:38:14,440
throw light on the question of the
accessibility of different scripts.

2074
02:38:15,480 --> 02:38:19,680
For him, a key experiment
was devised by Dr Tae Twomey,

2075
02:38:19,680 --> 02:38:23,600
who came up with a way to compare
how the same brain works

2076
02:38:23,600 --> 02:38:25,800
when it is reading a phonetic script

2077
02:38:25,800 --> 02:38:28,880
compared to when it is reading
a pictographic script.

2078
02:38:29,920 --> 02:38:34,080
It takes advantage of the fact
that Japanese readers

2079
02:38:34,080 --> 02:38:36,280
have to learn both types of script.

2080
02:38:39,120 --> 02:38:42,680
In my Japanese experiment,
we asked the participant to read

2081
02:38:42,680 --> 02:38:46,040
a Japanese word written in
either kanji characters

2082
02:38:46,040 --> 02:38:48,600
or hiragana kana characters,

2083
02:38:48,600 --> 02:38:53,040
and we compared whether the brain
activation is any different.

2084
02:38:54,080 --> 02:38:57,360
To write their language,
the Japanese use Chinese

2085
02:38:57,360 --> 02:39:00,560
pictographic characters,
which they call kanji.

2086
02:39:01,600 --> 02:39:05,360
But in most texts, these
kanji characters will be found

2087
02:39:05,360 --> 02:39:08,560
alongside letters
called hiragana kana,

2088
02:39:08,560 --> 02:39:11,200
which spell out words phonetically.

2089
02:39:13,120 --> 02:39:17,840
For example, the pronoun "I"
can be spelt phonetically

2090
02:39:17,840 --> 02:39:19,840
with three kana letters.

2091
02:39:22,320 --> 02:39:26,040
Or represented by a single
kanji character.

2092
02:39:28,720 --> 02:39:31,640
There are only 50 or so
kana characters

2093
02:39:31,640 --> 02:39:34,840
and it's always nearly 100%
correspondence

2094
02:39:34,840 --> 02:39:36,920
between the letter and the sound,

2095
02:39:36,920 --> 02:39:41,240
so once you know what each kana is,
you can read everything.

2096
02:39:42,280 --> 02:39:44,080
But the kanji characters,

2097
02:39:44,080 --> 02:39:47,360
there's no relationship
between the print and the sound.

2098
02:39:49,120 --> 02:39:52,400
So we're trying to understand
whether when Japanese people

2099
02:39:52,400 --> 02:39:55,120
read Japanese kanji
or Japanese kana,

2100
02:39:55,120 --> 02:39:58,160
do they use a different part
of the brain?

2101
02:39:59,680 --> 02:40:03,640
Three areas of the brain are
particularly important for reading.

2102
02:40:03,640 --> 02:40:08,080
Two are associated with the senses
of sound and vision.

2103
02:40:09,320 --> 02:40:12,680
The bit of the brain that
does hearing is on the side,

2104
02:40:12,680 --> 02:40:16,120
sort of near the ear, and the bit
of the brain that does vision

2105
02:40:16,120 --> 02:40:19,400
is on the back, basically
where the optic nerve goes in.

2106
02:40:20,640 --> 02:40:23,800
The auditory area is part
of a larger brain structure

2107
02:40:23,800 --> 02:40:25,640
called the temporal lobe.

2108
02:40:25,640 --> 02:40:28,640
A place where sensations
are combined with memories

2109
02:40:28,640 --> 02:40:31,560
to create meaning
out of our experiences.

2110
02:40:33,360 --> 02:40:36,640
All reading starts with a stimulus
to the visual region

2111
02:40:36,640 --> 02:40:41,320
and ends with that stimulus being
interpreted in the temporal lobe.

2112
02:40:41,320 --> 02:40:45,320
But that stimulus can travel
down two different pathways,

2113
02:40:45,320 --> 02:40:48,880
directly from the vision area
to the temporal lobe

2114
02:40:48,880 --> 02:40:51,560
or via the auditory area.

2115
02:40:55,800 --> 02:41:00,560
It's tempting to assume that reading
phonetic hiragana kana characters

2116
02:41:00,560 --> 02:41:02,920
would activate the auditory pathway,

2117
02:41:02,920 --> 02:41:05,880
whereas the direct vision
to meaning pathway

2118
02:41:05,880 --> 02:41:09,560
would be activated by picture-based
kanji characters,

2119
02:41:09,560 --> 02:41:12,880
but that's not quite
what the experiment showed.

2120
02:41:14,000 --> 02:41:17,880
I did assume that the way
that we read sound-based

2121
02:41:17,880 --> 02:41:21,640
versus a pictographic language
would just be completely different,

2122
02:41:21,640 --> 02:41:24,560
erm, and it just turns out
maybe not so much.

2123
02:41:25,560 --> 02:41:28,120
Instead, all three areas are active

2124
02:41:28,120 --> 02:41:32,080
irrespective of which type
of script is being read.

2125
02:41:32,080 --> 02:41:37,280
We use the same set of regions,
so the network itself is the same,

2126
02:41:37,280 --> 02:41:40,320
but the use of the component
was slightly different

2127
02:41:40,320 --> 02:41:42,240
depending on the script.

2128
02:41:42,240 --> 02:41:46,000
When the subjects were reading
the more phonetic scripts,

2129
02:41:46,000 --> 02:41:51,080
they tended to prefer just
a little bit more the sound pathway,

2130
02:41:51,080 --> 02:41:54,120
and when they were reading
the pictographic script,

2131
02:41:54,120 --> 02:41:57,840
they tended to prefer just a little
bit more the visual pathway,

2132
02:41:57,840 --> 02:41:59,920
but were still using them both.

2133
02:42:02,360 --> 02:42:06,840
Dr Twomey's experiment suggests that
our brains are doing similar work

2134
02:42:06,840 --> 02:42:11,120
whether reading words represented
by Chinese characters

2135
02:42:11,120 --> 02:42:13,640
or spelt with a phonetic alphabet.

2136
02:42:13,640 --> 02:42:18,800
The two writing systems
are equally easy or hard to learn.

2137
02:42:20,880 --> 02:42:24,080
Revolutionary political leaders
like Lenin and Mao

2138
02:42:24,080 --> 02:42:27,840
once saw the Latin alphabet
as a necessary ingredient

2139
02:42:27,840 --> 02:42:29,720
of a modern society.

2140
02:42:29,720 --> 02:42:33,040
But it seems that the key
to mass literacy

2141
02:42:33,040 --> 02:42:35,840
is, after all, not the alphabet,

2142
02:42:35,840 --> 02:42:38,280
it's mass education.

2143
02:42:38,280 --> 02:42:41,840
Just send people to school
and, if you send people to school,

2144
02:42:41,840 --> 02:42:45,080
it turns out they can learn
to read pictographic scripts

2145
02:42:45,080 --> 02:42:48,280
as well as we can learn to read
an alphabetic script.

2146
02:42:58,720 --> 02:43:01,640
But, today, it is not just
human beings

2147
02:43:01,640 --> 02:43:04,240
who have to be able
to interpret a script.

2148
02:43:07,600 --> 02:43:10,600
REPORTER: While it is true
that the computer can be called

2149
02:43:10,600 --> 02:43:13,080
a kind of brain,
although a very limited one,

2150
02:43:13,080 --> 02:43:16,640
in order to solve any problem,
the computer must first be

2151
02:43:16,640 --> 02:43:19,880
instructed by a human programmer,
who has painstakingly

2152
02:43:19,880 --> 02:43:22,160
and logically analysed the problem.

2153
02:43:23,640 --> 02:43:25,920
In America in the 1960s,

2154
02:43:25,920 --> 02:43:29,000
the foundations of the internet
were being laid.

2155
02:43:29,000 --> 02:43:33,320
The native script of computers
is a simple binary code

2156
02:43:33,320 --> 02:43:35,120
of ones and zeros,

2157
02:43:35,120 --> 02:43:38,840
but, in order to facilitate
human interaction with computers,

2158
02:43:38,840 --> 02:43:42,840
American computer scientists
developed ASCII -

2159
02:43:42,840 --> 02:43:47,120
the American Standard Code
for Information Interchange,

2160
02:43:47,120 --> 02:43:52,040
which allows communication with
computers using human language -

2161
02:43:52,040 --> 02:43:55,040
language written in Latin letters.

2162
02:43:56,360 --> 02:44:00,080
This universal standard
meant that, for many decades,

2163
02:44:00,080 --> 02:44:04,040
using a computer meant using
the Latin alphabet.

2164
02:44:04,040 --> 02:44:07,560
That legacy is still powerful today.

2165
02:44:11,560 --> 02:44:14,840
In this cafe in a district of Cairo,

2166
02:44:14,840 --> 02:44:19,800
a group of young people are using
Latin letters to write Arabic words.

2167
02:44:21,360 --> 02:44:25,280
This new way of writing a language
that has always been written

2168
02:44:25,280 --> 02:44:28,640
using the Arabic script
is called Franco.

2169
02:45:00,120 --> 02:45:03,560
The beginning of the Franco Arab
was the Arab gamers.

2170
02:45:03,560 --> 02:45:05,720
They didn't have the Arabic keyboard

2171
02:45:05,720 --> 02:45:08,520
so the Arab gamers just invented
the Franco Arabic.

2172
02:45:37,280 --> 02:45:39,600
I just don't like to use it.

2173
02:45:39,600 --> 02:45:42,600
I really love talking in Arabic,
writing in Arabic.

2174
02:45:42,600 --> 02:45:46,760
This is, like, me,
this is who I came from,

2175
02:45:46,760 --> 02:45:49,880
and the whole thing is about...

2176
02:45:49,880 --> 02:45:53,600
I don't like talking in
Franco Arabic. It's so weird.

2177
02:45:53,600 --> 02:45:57,160
It really destroys my culture.

2178
02:45:58,640 --> 02:46:01,560
The desire to use computers
pushed young Egyptians

2179
02:46:01,560 --> 02:46:03,680
into using a Latin script.

2180
02:46:05,120 --> 02:46:08,360
And something similar
is happening in China,

2181
02:46:08,360 --> 02:46:13,120
where technology threatens to do
what even Chairman Mao could not -

2182
02:46:13,120 --> 02:46:17,560
persuade the Chinese people to
embrace the use of Latin letters.

2183
02:46:19,360 --> 02:46:23,640
They are the basis of the successor
to Latinxua Sin Wenz,

2184
02:46:23,640 --> 02:46:26,840
another phonetic script
called pinyin.

2185
02:46:48,560 --> 02:46:50,920
For young Chinese especially,

2186
02:46:50,920 --> 02:46:54,560
using the Latin alphabet
has become second nature.

2187
02:47:40,960 --> 02:47:44,640
As a simple phonetic system,
pinyin is attractive,

2188
02:47:44,640 --> 02:47:48,840
but it poses a threat to
traditional Chinese writing.

2189
02:47:56,840 --> 02:47:59,880
At school, children learn
how to write Chinese characters

2190
02:47:59,880 --> 02:48:02,480
by repetition,
which builds muscle memory.

2191
02:48:03,560 --> 02:48:06,760
But, in the adult world,
thanks to computers,

2192
02:48:06,760 --> 02:48:10,000
writing by hand is becoming
a rare occurrence

2193
02:48:10,000 --> 02:48:13,520
and so muscle memory starts to fade.

2194
02:50:24,360 --> 02:50:28,840
The seductions of technology are
leading even highly educated Chinese

2195
02:50:28,840 --> 02:50:32,000
to forget how to write
their ancient script.

2196
02:50:35,520 --> 02:50:37,760
Could what's happening today
in China

2197
02:50:37,760 --> 02:50:39,920
be the future of writing everywhere?

2198
02:50:39,920 --> 02:50:43,720
With new ways of creating text
becoming ever more popular,

2199
02:50:43,720 --> 02:50:46,840
will there soon be any need
to learn to write at all?

2200
02:50:52,840 --> 02:50:56,400
The Chinese artist Xu Bing
has explored the future

2201
02:50:56,400 --> 02:51:00,040
and the past of writing
in two remarkable works.

2202
02:51:01,120 --> 02:51:04,520
The Book from the Ground is
a project in which Xu Bing

2203
02:51:04,520 --> 02:51:08,560
created a pictographic script
from emojis and icons

2204
02:51:08,560 --> 02:51:12,880
and then wrote a short novel
entirely in his new script.

2205
02:51:19,120 --> 02:51:22,360
His work explores the idea
that modern life

2206
02:51:22,360 --> 02:51:27,520
has finally allowed the creation
of a universal script of images.

2207
02:51:37,720 --> 02:51:41,600
The story, a comic tale of the day
in the life of an office worker,

2208
02:51:41,600 --> 02:51:43,520
can be understood by anyone,

2209
02:51:43,520 --> 02:51:46,080
regardless of what language
they speak,

2210
02:51:46,080 --> 02:51:49,760
because the icons are designed
to be universally recognisable.

2211
02:51:51,600 --> 02:51:54,640
But The Book from the Ground
suggests that a world

2212
02:51:54,640 --> 02:51:59,560
of perfect communication is also
a world of cultural uniformity.

2213
02:52:36,560 --> 02:52:39,800
This connection between script
and culture

2214
02:52:39,800 --> 02:52:43,240
is also the theme of Xu Bing's
most famous work,

2215
02:52:43,240 --> 02:52:45,200
The Book from the Sky.

2216
02:53:20,840 --> 02:53:23,560
The Book from the Sky
consists of thousands

2217
02:53:23,560 --> 02:53:25,640
of traditional wood block prints,

2218
02:53:25,640 --> 02:53:29,800
but the characters that Xu Bing
carved were all made up by him

2219
02:53:29,800 --> 02:53:31,840
and have no meaning.

2220
02:54:43,880 --> 02:54:48,640
We think of writing as a means of
communicating what we want to say.

2221
02:54:48,640 --> 02:54:53,560
Looked at in this way, all that
really matters is efficiency.

2222
02:54:55,360 --> 02:54:58,760
But there has always been
more to script than language.

2223
02:55:00,800 --> 02:55:05,040
For 5,000 years, scripts themselves
have been a repository

2224
02:55:05,040 --> 02:55:08,120
of cultural and religious identities

2225
02:55:08,120 --> 02:55:10,800
that cannot easily
be put into words.

2226
02:55:13,160 --> 02:55:18,120
This is the hidden power
and value of script,

2227
02:55:18,120 --> 02:55:21,560
for when we write,
we express who we are

2228
02:55:21,560 --> 02:55:24,600
in every word and in none.

2229
02:55:25,880 --> 02:55:29,000
The Book from the Sky
says nothing...

2230
02:55:30,080 --> 02:55:35,040
..but nothing could be more
expressive of Chinese culture.