1 00:00:03,000 --> 00:00:07,080 What if there was a technology that allowed us to teleport 2 00:00:07,080 --> 00:00:11,720 the contents of our minds across time and space directly 3 00:00:11,720 --> 00:00:13,640 into someone else's brain... 4 00:00:14,640 --> 00:00:19,000 ..that worked across huge distances, that could send our thoughts 5 00:00:19,000 --> 00:00:20,840 into the future, 6 00:00:20,840 --> 00:00:23,840 yet was so simple a child could use it? 7 00:00:24,960 --> 00:00:27,920 Such a marvel, of course, already exists. 8 00:00:29,000 --> 00:00:34,040 It's not the internet or mobile phones, but an ancient technology, 9 00:00:34,040 --> 00:00:37,600 one that's at least 5,000 years old - 10 00:00:37,600 --> 00:00:39,920 the technology of writing. 11 00:00:50,120 --> 00:00:52,920 Writing is something that most of us do every day 12 00:00:52,920 --> 00:00:55,080 without stopping to think about it. 13 00:00:56,640 --> 00:00:59,280 But if you do stop and think about it, you realise 14 00:00:59,280 --> 00:01:01,600 that what you are doing is quite magical. 15 00:01:03,720 --> 00:01:07,320 You are taking the thoughts from inside your head and putting 16 00:01:07,320 --> 00:01:11,640 them out into the world in a form where another human mind 17 00:01:11,640 --> 00:01:16,880 can understand them, even if they are thousands of miles away - 18 00:01:16,880 --> 00:01:18,680 or perhaps centuries in the future. 19 00:01:21,360 --> 00:01:26,280 In this series, I want to explore this transformative technology, 20 00:01:26,280 --> 00:01:30,720 the different scripts that can turn spoken language into visual form, 21 00:01:30,720 --> 00:01:35,040 the varying methods we have used to put words on a page and the way 22 00:01:35,040 --> 00:01:39,200 that changing the way we write has changed the course of history. 23 00:01:40,760 --> 00:01:45,400 And the first question is about the origin of writing. 24 00:01:45,400 --> 00:01:48,880 Did it develop in different times, in different places? 25 00:01:48,880 --> 00:01:53,960 Or do all the scripts we see around us share a single common root? 26 00:01:55,080 --> 00:01:59,080 And, if that is the case, then where and how did it all begin? 27 00:02:00,520 --> 00:02:02,400 And who began it? 28 00:02:50,080 --> 00:02:54,240 Egypt, the Saqqara funerary complex near Cairo. 29 00:02:56,880 --> 00:03:03,280 In 2300 BC, what today looks like a hill of sand was the pyramid 30 00:03:03,280 --> 00:03:05,160 tomb of Pharaoh Teti. 31 00:03:11,160 --> 00:03:16,400 Inside the tomb, Egyptologist Yasmin El Shazly took me 32 00:03:16,400 --> 00:03:18,320 to see something extraordinary. 33 00:03:25,200 --> 00:03:26,640 Oh, wow! 34 00:03:27,760 --> 00:03:29,760 Yeah, they're pretty impressive, aren't they? 35 00:03:29,760 --> 00:03:30,840 They really are. Yeah. 36 00:03:35,160 --> 00:03:37,400 The walls of Teti's tomb were carved 37 00:03:37,400 --> 00:03:39,920 with thousands of stylised pictures... 38 00:03:41,600 --> 00:03:43,960 ..but this was not decoration. 39 00:03:45,640 --> 00:03:50,560 This is the earliest known complete text, 40 00:03:50,560 --> 00:03:52,440 ancient Egyptian text. 41 00:03:52,440 --> 00:03:53,920 Just beautiful. 42 00:03:56,760 --> 00:04:00,880 These pictures are hieroglyphs - a writing system older 43 00:04:00,880 --> 00:04:02,840 than the pyramids themselves. 44 00:04:03,920 --> 00:04:09,320 And what do they say? They are spells that help resurrect the King 45 00:04:09,320 --> 00:04:10,640 in the afterlife. 46 00:04:10,640 --> 00:04:12,840 If you know how to read them, 47 00:04:12,840 --> 00:04:16,600 you can find the King's name repeated again and again 48 00:04:16,600 --> 00:04:18,960 in every incantation. 49 00:04:18,960 --> 00:04:22,040 Oh! Oh! Rise up, O Teti! 50 00:04:22,040 --> 00:04:23,440 Take your head, 51 00:04:23,440 --> 00:04:26,240 collect your bones, gather your limbs, 52 00:04:26,240 --> 00:04:28,560 shake the earth from your flesh. 53 00:04:28,560 --> 00:04:31,200 Take your bread that rots not, 54 00:04:31,200 --> 00:04:33,720 your beer that sours not, 55 00:04:33,720 --> 00:04:37,480 stand at the gates that bar the common people. 56 00:04:37,480 --> 00:04:41,640 Rise up, O Teti, you shall not die! 57 00:04:44,160 --> 00:04:47,600 Wow! Oh, there's so much writing. Yes. 58 00:04:47,600 --> 00:04:51,040 These are all magic spells, designed to resurrect the King 59 00:04:51,040 --> 00:04:54,400 so he could live forever in the afterlife. 60 00:04:54,400 --> 00:04:56,400 The fact that his name is still there 61 00:04:56,400 --> 00:04:57,920 made him, in a sense, immortal. 62 00:04:57,920 --> 00:05:02,320 We're speaking about him right now, and the ancient Egyptians realised that, they realised 63 00:05:02,320 --> 00:05:05,200 that the written word had so much power and that, 64 00:05:05,200 --> 00:05:06,680 by writing your name, 65 00:05:06,680 --> 00:05:09,280 you became immortal, you immortalised yourself. 66 00:05:12,720 --> 00:05:15,840 Hieroglyphs are indeed magic. 67 00:05:15,840 --> 00:05:19,480 They may not raise the dead, but, like all writing, 68 00:05:19,480 --> 00:05:21,360 they allow them to speak. 69 00:05:23,200 --> 00:05:26,480 Writing is one of the few things that all societies do. 70 00:05:26,480 --> 00:05:29,520 Everybody uses a pen or a brush 71 00:05:29,520 --> 00:05:32,040 and, with that, we can express all of our thoughts, record 72 00:05:32,040 --> 00:05:33,560 all of our information, 73 00:05:33,560 --> 00:05:39,280 study the stars and compose poems and write letters to each other. 74 00:05:39,280 --> 00:05:42,360 So writing binds humanity together practically 75 00:05:42,360 --> 00:05:43,840 more than any other activity. 76 00:05:45,880 --> 00:05:48,920 Today, we take it for granted, 77 00:05:48,920 --> 00:05:51,760 but the creation of writing is the event which gave 78 00:05:51,760 --> 00:05:53,200 humanity a history. 79 00:05:55,440 --> 00:05:59,120 When you scrutinise what happened, it is actually very dramatic 80 00:05:59,120 --> 00:06:02,720 in one important sense - what we like to call 81 00:06:02,720 --> 00:06:05,720 in our department the giant leap for mankind. 82 00:06:16,800 --> 00:06:19,520 Writing always starts with pictures 83 00:06:19,520 --> 00:06:22,840 and then it becomes a little bit more complicated, and that's 84 00:06:22,840 --> 00:06:26,320 how you develop into a purely alphabetic system later on. 85 00:06:28,520 --> 00:06:31,480 How did our ancestors conceive of writing? 86 00:06:33,400 --> 00:06:35,960 How did they learn to make pictures speak? 87 00:06:37,600 --> 00:06:39,240 And how did those pictures 88 00:06:39,240 --> 00:06:41,720 eventually become the letters we use today? 89 00:06:44,120 --> 00:06:49,760 As I discovered, the answer to those questions can only be found 90 00:06:49,760 --> 00:06:52,840 in an archaeology of the human mind. 91 00:07:01,200 --> 00:07:03,560 Writing is a recent innovation. 92 00:07:06,240 --> 00:07:10,280 Our species has existed for about 300,000 years 93 00:07:10,280 --> 00:07:14,240 and, for all but the last 5,000 of them, people had to record 94 00:07:14,240 --> 00:07:17,440 and transmit vital knowledge without the aid of writing. 95 00:07:19,840 --> 00:07:21,880 Some cultures still do. 96 00:07:23,760 --> 00:07:28,600 HE VOCALISES 97 00:07:28,600 --> 00:07:31,200 In the Northern Territory of Australia, 98 00:07:31,200 --> 00:07:36,560 Yidumduma Bill Harney, an elder of the Wardaman people, is singing 99 00:07:36,560 --> 00:07:40,600 an ancient song about the creation of the world. 100 00:07:40,600 --> 00:07:46,720 HE SINGS 101 00:07:55,240 --> 00:07:58,320 All the songline trail that they made it, 102 00:07:58,320 --> 00:08:01,680 happening all the way right back from beginning of everything, 103 00:08:01,680 --> 00:08:04,560 to people to people to people all the way, 104 00:08:04,560 --> 00:08:06,840 billion years, to million years, 105 00:08:06,840 --> 00:08:08,680 and come down and 100 years and now, 106 00:08:08,680 --> 00:08:10,800 now come back to right up to us. 107 00:08:10,800 --> 00:08:13,280 And we know all the song now. 108 00:08:13,280 --> 00:08:16,560 That's why we're never sure that creating song away, 109 00:08:16,560 --> 00:08:18,280 we still got it here today. 110 00:08:22,640 --> 00:08:25,720 What kind of knowledge is in those songs? 111 00:08:25,720 --> 00:08:27,400 In a songline trail, 112 00:08:27,400 --> 00:08:30,920 the knowledge that is given you from the old people, 113 00:08:30,920 --> 00:08:33,440 you know what they call songline trail, 114 00:08:33,440 --> 00:08:35,640 naming all the different sights, 115 00:08:35,640 --> 00:08:40,440 the plants, trees, mountain, water hole, and all that. 116 00:08:41,640 --> 00:08:43,880 And so it's like a map? 117 00:08:43,880 --> 00:08:47,640 Like a map. It is a map, in your mind, but all links up. 118 00:08:47,640 --> 00:08:49,720 So break it here? Yeah, like this, 119 00:08:49,720 --> 00:08:52,160 you've got to put your fingernail on it. Yeah? 120 00:08:52,160 --> 00:08:54,880 Meeting Bill, 121 00:08:54,880 --> 00:09:00,480 I was impressed by the richness and complexity of Aboriginal culture 122 00:09:00,480 --> 00:09:05,680 handed down orally for probably tens of thousands of years 123 00:09:05,680 --> 00:09:08,960 without the need to write anything down. 124 00:09:08,960 --> 00:09:10,480 That's amazing! 125 00:09:10,480 --> 00:09:14,440 And that raised a fundamental question about writing. 126 00:09:14,440 --> 00:09:18,320 Why did our ancestors feel the need for it? 127 00:09:18,320 --> 00:09:21,320 What prompted them to start recording things, 128 00:09:21,320 --> 00:09:23,840 not for the ear, but for the eye? 129 00:09:26,680 --> 00:09:31,120 Images are important, indeed sacred in Aboriginal culture 130 00:09:31,120 --> 00:09:33,800 and, before I was allowed to see them, 131 00:09:33,800 --> 00:09:37,240 Bill needed to introduce me to the ancestors. 132 00:09:41,960 --> 00:09:47,160 HE VOCALISES 133 00:10:04,400 --> 00:10:06,280 Thank you. 134 00:10:08,440 --> 00:10:10,760 I said hi to the spiritual people, 135 00:10:10,760 --> 00:10:15,040 call out I brought this stranger to welcome them. 136 00:10:15,040 --> 00:10:18,240 I've got a young lady here, told them it's a lady, 137 00:10:18,240 --> 00:10:23,480 and he's happy. 138 00:10:23,480 --> 00:10:24,880 Thank you. 139 00:10:29,840 --> 00:10:34,520 This is Gandawag-ya, the Moon Rock. 140 00:10:34,520 --> 00:10:38,600 As we talked, it quickly became clear that Bill's way of thinking 141 00:10:38,600 --> 00:10:41,840 about images was quite different to mine. 142 00:10:41,840 --> 00:10:44,080 While we're standing here now, 143 00:10:44,080 --> 00:10:48,200 this one what I call Moon dream inside. 144 00:10:48,200 --> 00:10:52,280 And that's...that's half Moon. 145 00:10:52,280 --> 00:10:54,040 Yeah. That's it in there. 146 00:10:54,040 --> 00:10:57,600 Yeah. When he was a human, he was called Yiwalyarri. 147 00:10:57,600 --> 00:11:00,960 He's up in the sky. Yeah. 148 00:11:00,960 --> 00:11:04,160 Now he's here, in the rock. In the rock. Yeah. 149 00:11:04,160 --> 00:11:07,840 In the Wardaman creation story, 150 00:11:07,840 --> 00:11:12,840 all the plants and animals of the world were once people, 151 00:11:12,840 --> 00:11:14,760 the Wardamans' ancestors, 152 00:11:14,760 --> 00:11:18,000 wandering across a formless, muddy land 153 00:11:18,000 --> 00:11:21,640 until the creation dog let out a mighty howl. 154 00:11:23,960 --> 00:11:28,720 When he's "hooo", like this, the dog and the sound he made, 155 00:11:28,720 --> 00:11:31,040 everything changed. 156 00:11:31,040 --> 00:11:33,000 He changed our world. 157 00:11:34,760 --> 00:11:36,080 And this country now, 158 00:11:36,080 --> 00:11:39,840 where, from the soft mud, man become a rock, 159 00:11:39,840 --> 00:11:43,440 and all these people become a tree, and changed all the different 160 00:11:43,440 --> 00:11:45,840 animals, kangaroos, dingoes, 161 00:11:45,840 --> 00:11:49,200 whatever you can make, lizards, snakes and all. 162 00:11:49,200 --> 00:11:53,160 As the mud hardened, some of the ancestors passed 163 00:11:53,160 --> 00:11:57,640 into the rock, leaving traces of that moment of creation. 164 00:11:58,800 --> 00:12:02,440 They were the mud, and people come along and put their foot there. 165 00:12:02,440 --> 00:12:05,240 See? And that's what it is there. 166 00:12:05,240 --> 00:12:08,440 He was in the mud, now he's in the rock. 167 00:12:08,440 --> 00:12:11,600 The humans there, there's a dog here. 168 00:12:11,600 --> 00:12:15,080 All over, as I said. 169 00:12:17,280 --> 00:12:19,360 And that shatter off to the Moon, 170 00:12:19,360 --> 00:12:21,360 then one day all of the rock as well, 171 00:12:21,360 --> 00:12:23,520 during the creation. 172 00:12:33,400 --> 00:12:37,680 When I see an image, I naturally think of it as a representation, 173 00:12:37,680 --> 00:12:39,920 a picture of something. 174 00:12:39,920 --> 00:12:43,720 But, to Bill, these are not pictures of the ancestors - 175 00:12:43,720 --> 00:12:46,720 these ARE the ancestors gone into the rock. 176 00:12:49,120 --> 00:12:52,840 Bill's song about the ancestors is also addressed to them... 177 00:12:54,600 --> 00:12:57,040 ..but he has to rely on memory. 178 00:12:58,760 --> 00:13:01,440 These images, powerful as they are, 179 00:13:01,440 --> 00:13:04,320 cannot tell him which words to use. 180 00:13:04,320 --> 00:13:06,880 In order for images to do that, 181 00:13:06,880 --> 00:13:09,320 they would have to gain a new power - 182 00:13:09,320 --> 00:13:11,880 the power of representation. 183 00:13:11,880 --> 00:13:14,280 And write a big songline from west to east. 184 00:13:27,160 --> 00:13:32,440 Cairo's Egyptian museum is crammed with thousands of objects excavated 185 00:13:32,440 --> 00:13:34,880 from the tombs of ancient Egypt. 186 00:13:44,440 --> 00:13:48,120 One of the very oldest was discovered by Gunter Dreyer 187 00:13:48,120 --> 00:13:52,840 in the 1990s, at a dig in the city of Abydos. 188 00:13:52,840 --> 00:13:58,040 It's a clay vase, which predates the first pharaoh by many centuries. 189 00:13:59,320 --> 00:14:03,760 It was made 5,700 years ago 190 00:14:03,760 --> 00:14:06,560 and it seems to use imagery in a new way. 191 00:14:29,040 --> 00:14:31,880 Gunter believes that the vase is decorated 192 00:14:31,880 --> 00:14:34,080 with a stylised representation 193 00:14:34,080 --> 00:14:37,320 of the distinctive geography of the Nile Valley. 194 00:14:41,280 --> 00:14:44,560 Egyptians have always lived on the land immediately adjacent 195 00:14:44,560 --> 00:14:48,200 to the Nile, where irrigation ditches can bring river water 196 00:14:48,200 --> 00:14:50,080 to the fields. 197 00:14:50,080 --> 00:14:52,840 Ancient Egyptian life was largely confined 198 00:14:52,840 --> 00:14:54,800 to this narrow strip of green. 199 00:14:54,800 --> 00:14:59,560 The desert highlands on either side was where the dead were buried. 200 00:15:10,360 --> 00:15:15,680 So these lines represent something, something that is not present. 201 00:15:15,680 --> 00:15:20,560 It's a conceptual revolution in the meaning of a picture. 202 00:15:20,560 --> 00:15:25,840 And if a picture can represent a thing, it can represent a word. 203 00:15:40,320 --> 00:15:43,840 But what was it that made people want to represent words 204 00:15:43,840 --> 00:15:45,280 in visual form? 205 00:15:49,920 --> 00:15:54,640 5,000 years ago, Egypt lay at one end of a zone of cultivation 206 00:15:54,640 --> 00:15:57,080 called the Fertile Crescent. 207 00:15:57,080 --> 00:16:00,720 At the other end lay Mesopotamia, modern day Iraq. 208 00:16:03,800 --> 00:16:07,480 In both places, people had learned how to irrigate the land 209 00:16:07,480 --> 00:16:10,120 to increase food production, 210 00:16:10,120 --> 00:16:13,640 that meant that not everyone had to work the land 211 00:16:13,640 --> 00:16:16,560 and a more complex society could develop. 212 00:16:18,440 --> 00:16:23,080 Irving Finkel from the British Museum is an expert on Mesopotamia 213 00:16:23,080 --> 00:16:26,520 and the region's first civilisation, Sumer. 214 00:16:26,520 --> 00:16:28,400 To set the scene, 215 00:16:28,400 --> 00:16:32,360 it's important to understand that, in Mesopotamia, the Sumerians 216 00:16:32,360 --> 00:16:35,480 had what we call city-states, independent walled entities 217 00:16:35,480 --> 00:16:39,120 with a large population of farmers all around, administrators, 218 00:16:39,120 --> 00:16:41,360 a central temple and so forth. 219 00:16:41,360 --> 00:16:47,280 And it is in those enclaves of so-called civilisation 220 00:16:47,280 --> 00:16:51,320 that the need was, I think, first felt for some kind 221 00:16:51,320 --> 00:16:53,080 of record keeping. 222 00:16:55,040 --> 00:16:58,960 What we've got in front of us is a very small handful of pieces 223 00:16:58,960 --> 00:17:02,120 of clay with writing on called cuneiform writing. 224 00:17:02,120 --> 00:17:09,360 Yes. And we have in our department a huge collection of 130,000 or so. 225 00:17:09,360 --> 00:17:13,200 I thought, if they were all here, you'd become giddy and dizzy 226 00:17:13,200 --> 00:17:15,560 and perhaps even fall asleep. 227 00:17:15,560 --> 00:17:18,240 Overwhelmed anyway. Exactly. 228 00:17:19,240 --> 00:17:21,360 So we start with this. 229 00:17:21,360 --> 00:17:23,160 So that's the oldest of these ones. 230 00:17:23,160 --> 00:17:24,440 It is. 231 00:17:24,440 --> 00:17:26,960 Do you have an approximate date? 232 00:17:26,960 --> 00:17:30,520 It's probably about 2,900 BC, something like that. 233 00:17:30,520 --> 00:17:33,240 Wow, so 5,000 years old. Something like that. 234 00:17:33,240 --> 00:17:36,160 And the thing about it is you can see it's a very orderly piece 235 00:17:36,160 --> 00:17:39,320 of work because it's ruled into columns and these round things 236 00:17:39,320 --> 00:17:41,320 and half round things are numerals, 237 00:17:41,320 --> 00:17:45,360 and at the back there's a big total, where all the numbers are added up. 238 00:17:45,360 --> 00:17:46,840 And this is a sign for barley, 239 00:17:46,840 --> 00:17:49,040 which indicates that it's some kind of... 240 00:17:49,040 --> 00:17:51,240 You can see, that this is an ear of barley, 241 00:17:51,240 --> 00:17:53,120 in a pictographic kind of form. 242 00:17:53,120 --> 00:17:58,200 Yes. And originally the writing began in the pictographic form, 243 00:17:58,200 --> 00:18:02,080 what we call pictographic form, which means that people produce 244 00:18:02,080 --> 00:18:05,160 the scribes, produce little drawings of whatever 245 00:18:05,160 --> 00:18:09,360 they were talking about, the animals and plants and things like this. 246 00:18:09,360 --> 00:18:13,360 So it's a very primitive level of writing, but it's very ancient. 247 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.