Ancient Era
3000 BCE – 100 CE
-Is a historical period beginning with the earliest known civilizations.
1. Writing
a. Cuneiform Script
Cuneiform, from the Latin cuneus, meaning “wedge,” is the term applied to a
mode of writing which used a wedge-shaped stylus to make impressions on a
clay surface, and also on stone, metal, and wax.
The cuneiform writing system was originated in ancient southern
Mesopotamia and the earliest texts in cuneiform script are about 5000 years
old.
b. Egyptian hieroglyphs
The Egyptian hieroglyphic script was one of the writing systems used by
ancient Egyptians to represent their language. Because of their pictorial
elegance, Herodotus and other important Greeks believed that Egyptian
hieroglyphs were something sacred, so they referred to them as ‘holy
writing’. Thus, the word hieroglyph comes from the Greek hiero means ‘holy’
and glypho means ‘writing’. In the ancient Egyptian language, hieroglyphs
were called medu netjer, ‘the gods’ words’ as it was believed that writing
was an invention of the gods.
The script was composed of three basic types of signs:
Logograms representing words
Phonograms representing sounds
Determinatives placed at the end of the word to help clarify its
meaning.
2. Alphabet
a. The Phoenician Alphabet
The Phoenician alphabet developed from the Proto-Canaanite alphabet,
during the 15th century BC. Before then the Phoenicians wrote with a
cuneiform script. The earliest known inscriptions in the Phoenician alphabet
come from Byblos and date back to 1000 BC.
The Phoenician alphabet was perhaps the first alphabetic script to be
widely-used – the Phoenicians traded around the Mediterraean and beyond,
and set up cities and colonies in parts of southern Europe and North Africa –
and the origins of most alphabetic writing systems can be traced back to the
Phoenician alphabet, including Greek, Etruscan, Latin, Arabic and Hebrew, as
well as the scripts of India and East Asia.
3. Drama
Drama is the clear-cut mode of narrative, commonly fictional, served in
performance.
The theatre of ancient Greece, the fountainhead of the entire Western
dramatic tradition. The earliest Greek drama is thought to have developed
during the 6th century BC from imitative religious magic associated with the
worship of Dionysus.
The golden age of Athenian Drama (the 5th and 4th centuries BC) saw
the emergence of the genres of Tragedy and Comedy and the production of
the great works of Aeschylus (c. 525–456 BC), Sophocles (c. 496–406 BC),
and Euripides (c. 484–406 BC). Aristophanes (c. 448–385 BC) was the
greatest comic playwright. The most important development of the later 4 th
century was the emergence of the New Comedy of Menander. Although the
Athenian tradition was in serious decline by about 300 BC, its influence had
already spread to other parts of the Mediterranean world.
The first Greek plays were performed in a circular dancing area known
as an orchestra.
4. Paper
The word “paper” is etymologically derived from papyrus, Ancient Greek for
the Cyperus papyrus plant. Papyrus is a thick, paper-like material produced
from the pith of the Cyperus papyrus plant which was used in ancient Egypt
and other Mediterranean societies for writing long before paper was used in
China.
In the Americas, archaeological evidence indicates that a similar bark-
paper writing material was used by the Mayans no later than the 5 th century
AD. The paper is created by boiling and pounding the inner bark of trees,
until the material becomes suitable for art and writing.
PRE-HISTORIC ERA
The Prehistoric age : Prehistory is the period of human activity between the
use of the first stone tools. The beginning of human communication dates
back to ancient cave paintings, drawn maps, and writing.
3 MAIN PREHISTORIC AGES
CHRONOLOGICAL AGES
ECONOMIC AGES
CHRONO-CULTURAL
a. Paleolithic
b. Mesolithic
c. Neolithic
d. Catholithic
Example Forms of media:
Cave paintings
Cave paintings also known as parietal art, are painted drawings on cave
walls or ceilings, mainly of prehistoric origin, beginning roughly 40,000 years
ago in Eurasia. The exact purpose of the Paleolithic cave paintings is not
known.
Clay tablets in Mesopotamia
Clay tablets were used as a writing medium, especially for writing cuneiform.
Over a thousand of years, Mesopotamian scribes recorded daily events,
trade, astronomy, and literature on clay tablets.
Papyrus in Egypt
The papyrus plant is a reed that grow in marshy areas around the Nile river.
In ancient Egypt, the wild plant was used for a variety of uses, and specially
cultivated papyrus, grown on plantations, was used to make the writing
material.
Acta diurna in Rome
Acta Diurna were daily Roman official notices, a sort of daily gazette. They
were carved on stone or metal and presented in message boards in public
places like the forum of Rome.
Codex in Mayan region
Mayan codices are folding books written by the pre-Columbian Maya
civilization in Maya hieroglyphic script on Mesoamerican paper, paper made
from the inner bark of certain trees.
Bamboo Inscription
It originated in china. And they use it as the main media for documents
during prehistoric era.
Horn
During the prehistoric era, they used horns to capture attention or to call
everybody’s attention if there are important messages that everyone needs
to hear.
Petroglyphs are images created by removing part of a rock surface by
incising, picking, carving, or abrading, as a form of rock art.
