|
Pictograms, in turn, evolved into ideograms, graphical symbols that represent an idea. Their ancestors, the pictograms, could represent only something resembling their form: therefore a pictogram of a circle could represent a sun, but not concepts like 'heat', 'light', 'day' or 'Great God of the Sun'. Ideograms, on the other hand, could convey more abstract concepts, so that for example an ideogram of two sticks can mean not only 'legs' but also a verb 'to walk'. Because some ideas are universal, many different cultures developed similar ideograms. For example an eye with a tear means 'sadness' in Native American ideograms in California, as it does for the Aztecs, the early Chinese and the Egyptians.[citation needed] Ideograms were precursors of logographic writing systems such as Egyptian hieroglyphs and Chinese characters.[citation needed] Examples of ideographical proto-writing systems, thought not to contain language-specific information, include the Vinca script (see also Tărtăria tablets) and the early Indus script.[citation needed] In both cases there are claims of decipherment of linguistic content, without wide acceptance.[citation needed] |
About us|Jobs|Help|Disclaimer|Advertising services|Contact us|Sign in|Website map|Search|
GMT+8, 2015-9-11 22:09 , Processed in 0.168895 second(s), 16 queries .
