Homework Assignment "They Wrote On Clay"

a. Describe the four ideas you found most interesting in the article.

1. The Sumerians were nomads (wanderers) and did not live in or even know what houses were, and they did not grow wheat like other people did at that time.
2. No man could have ever written a single letter of an alphabet unless they knew of or were familiar with some kind of functioning writing system. I've never thought about that before, that if someone was not familiar with any writing system then they could have easily made marks or scratches that resembled letters or words, and they had no idea what they were really writing.
3. It's amazing how the Sumerians combined sounds to express an idea. Different signs made different sounds and they joined these sounds together to portray an idea of thing that was difficult to represent.
4. The Babylonian scribes developed a writing system that did not contain an alphabet. Years later, they refused to make changes to their system of writing. That's crazy because almost all alphabets and writing systems have evolved so much over time, because people wanted a change. But the Babylonians saw it differently.

b. Find at least two articles on the web related to the topic of cuneiform writing. List the URL's.

1. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/146558/cuneiform#tab=active~checked%2Citems~checked&title=cuneiform%20--%20Britannica%20Online%20Encyclopedia
2. http://www.funsci.com/fun3_en/tablets/tab.htm
3. http://www.crystalinks.com/cuneiformtablets.html

c. List the key words/concepts you found in this article.
Pictographic
Symbols
Ideographs
Signs
Hieroglyphic