After Class, Chapter 1

The class discussion today was very intriguing and it helped me better understand the differences between all the different rock art found by historic people. Petroglyphs are carvings in rock as opposed to pictographs which are paintings on rock. Ideographs are symbols that represent concepts and are much larger than simple things. Cuneiform is breaking down a simple drawing and eventually by doing so, this made the alphabet we all know today. After looking at actual pictures and seeing examples of petroglyphs, pictographs, ideographs, and cuneiform, I now have a much better understanding of the terms and can tell the difference between them.

Another thing we talked about was the Rosetta Stone. It is very interesting to look at and I now know the correct order of the scripts that are found on the Rosetta Stone. The top portion is hieroglyphics, the middle is demotic, and the bottom portion is Greek.

The most meaningful and interesting thing I learned from discussion today was cuneiform. I was shocked to see the break down process used to produce cuneiform. First you have an object which is then turned into a pictogram which is then turned sideways and then you get the final production which is cuneiform. When I actually saw how this was done, I was surprised how the alphabet was made by cuneiform.

One question I have from this discussion is about ideographs. I am still a little shaky about the definition for some reason. I also don't understand how people communicated with them because some of the ideographs we saw today could mean a number of different things thus making it difficult to get the point across.