Research: text vs pictures, part 0

Self-tutoring about display communication: the tutor shares some ideas.

In the 1970s and 80s, when I was in school, books for early readers typically had, more or less, a picture per page. As reading advanced, pictures thinned out. A novel had perhaps a few illustrations, perhaps none. The message I received: text is the true communication; pictures are used until text can be understood.

Looking at ancient records, the same trend holds: humans started with cave drawings, then advanced to written records. Literacy, in fact, is a defining dimension of civilization.

The ancient civilizations, especially those that endured hundreds or thousands of years, had one element in common: wisdom. They may not have been democratic or technological the way we are today, but their understanding of people was every bit as good as ours now, and likely better. How do we know? Any civilization that was grand, with structures and a writing system, existed in a fertile area that other people wanted. To hold such a place wasn’t easy, and couldn’t be done with force alone. No international law protected such a civilization; if an enemy could conquer them, it did.

So, if a picture is worth a thousand words, why did those civilizations develop writing systems?

I’ll continue about the idea of text:)