The Disappearance of Writing Systems: Perspectives on Literacy and Communication.

• Author: Yakubovich, Ilya
• Position: Book review

The Disappearance of Writing Systems: Perspectives on Literacy and Communication. Edited by JOHN BAINES; JOHN BENNET; and STEPHEN HOUSTON. London: EQUINOX PUBLISHING, 2008. Pp. xviii + 378, illus. $95. [Distributed in North America by David Brown Book Co., Oakville, Co.]

There are two basic approaches to the study of the history of writing, which can be broadly labeled as "evolutionary" and "sociological." The first approach, dominant in the research of the early- and mid-twentieth century, finds its cumulative expression in A Study of Writing by Ignace J. Gelb (2nd ed., Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1963). That author poses a rhetorical question: "Ms writing progressing as it passes along the course of evolution marked by the logographic, syllabic, and alphabetic stages?" and answers enthusiastically "Yes, it is progressing!" Pursuing the logical implications of this claim, one can affirm, for example, that Mesopotamian cuneiform fell out of use because the competing alphabetic systems were easier to learn, easier to write, and probably easier to read as well.

In the last years, however, the tide has shifted in favor of the "sociological" approach, which emphasizes external factors affecting the evolution of writing. The reasons for this shift were both the changing cultural setting and the availability of new empirical evidence. On the one hand, much of the earlier "evolutionary" discourse was couched in supremacist phraseology, which has become unacceptable for modern anthropologists. On the other hand, the account in terms of competition among writing systems proved to be explanatorily inadequate in a number of cases. For example, the decipherment of Maya glyphics brought the realization that this indigenous writing system of Mesoamerica had begun to disintegrate long before the conquistadors introduced the alphabetic Roman script to the area.

The paper that sets up the methodological framework for the book under review is "The Last Writing: Script Obsolescence in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Mesoamerica" by Stephen Houston, John Baines, and Jerrold Cooper (Comparative Studies in Society and History 45 [2003]:430-79). This joint paper systematically pursues the comparison between the obsolescence of scripts and language death. Just as modern linguists refrain from qualitative judgments about languages in conflict, so Houston et al. do not discuss the intrinsic properties of ancient scripts that might lead to their obsolescence. They...