How Did Writing Evolve? Rare Liberian Script Created By 8 Illiterate Men Gives Answers

A team of researchers at the Max Planck Institute in Germany recently conducted a study in which they showed that writing very quickly becomes 'compressed' for efficient reading and writing.

A rare Liberian script created by eight illiterate men (Photos: The British Library)

New Delhi: More than 5,000 years ago in the Middle East, the world's very first invention of writing took place. Writing was subsequently reinvented in China and Central America. 

Almost all human activities, from education to political systems and computer code, rely on this wonderful technology called writing.

Despite writing's impact on daily life, little is known about how writing evolved in its earliest years. Moreover, the first traces of writing are fragmentary or missing altogether.

A team of researchers at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, recently conducted a study in which they showed how writing very quickly becomes 'compressed' for efficient reading and writing. 

The study was published in the journal, Current Anthropology.

The researchers studied a rare African writing system, called Vai Syllabary . Since the early 19th century, the system, devised for the Vai language, has fascinated outsiders.

The Vai Script Of Liberia

In a statement issued by the Max Planck Institute, Dr Piers, the lead author of the study, who is now at the University of New England, Australia, said that the Vai script of Liberia was created from scratch in about 1834 by eight completely illiterate men who wrote in ink made from crushed berries. 

The script was always taught informally from a literate teacher to a single apprentice student, according to Vai teacher Bai Leesor Sherman, the statement said. 

The Vai script still remains popular, so much so, that it is used to communicate pandemic health messages.

Kelly said the researchers thought the script may tell them something important about how writing evolved over short spaces of time, because of its isolation and the way it has continued to develop up until the present day. 

He said it is famously hypothesised that letters evolve from pictures to abstract signs. However, there are several abstract letter-shapes in early writing.

Instead, the researchers predicted that signs will start off as relatively complex and then become simpler across new generations of writers and readers, according to Kelly.

Manuscripts in the Vai language from archives in Liberia, the United States, and Europe were studied.

The researchers analysed year-by-year changes in the script's 200 syllabic letters, and traced the entire evolutionary history of the script from 1834 onwards, the study said. 

How Vai Script's Syllabic Letters Became Visually Simpler

The authors found that the letters really became visually simpler with each passing year, by applying computational tools for measuring visual complexity.

Kelly said the original inventors were inspired by dreams to design individual signs for each syllable of their language. 

One sign represents a pregnant woman, another is a chained slave, and others are taken from traditional emblems, he said. 

Kelly explained that the signs became simpler, more systematic, and more similar to one another, when they were applied to writing spoken syllables, and taught to new people.

Ancient writing systems over much longer time scales also exhibit such patterns of simplification, the study said.

Kelly explained that visual complexity is helpful when creating a new writing system. This is because visual complexity generates more clues and greater contrasts between signs, which helps illiterate learners.

The complexity fades away because it later gets in the way of efficient reading and reproduction, Kelly said.

Illiterate inventors in other regions of West Africa reverse-engineered writing for languages spoken in Mali and Cameroon, the study said. 

Meanwhile, new writing systems are still being invented in Nigeria and Senegal.