Clay Tablet in Mesopotamia

Pre-Industrial Age
Pre-industrial society refers to social attributes and forms of political and cultural organization
that were prevalent before the advent of the Industrial Revolution, which occurred from 1750
to 1850. Pre-industrial is a time before there were machines and tools to help perform tasks en
masse. Pre-industrial civilization dates back to centuries ago, but the main era known as
the Pre-Industrial Society occurred right before the industrial society. Pre-Industrial societies
vary from region to region depending on the culture of a given area or history of social and
political life. Europe is known for its feudal system and Medieval era.
Cave Paintings
The minimum age for (the outline of the hand) is 39,900 years old, which makes it the oldest
hand stencil in the world,” said Dr Aubert.
“Next to it is a pig that has a minimum age of 35,400 years old, and this is one of the oldest
figurative depictions in the world, if not the oldest one,” he told BBC News.
There are also paintings in the caves that are around 27,000 years old, which means that the
inhabitants were painting for at least 13,000 years.
In addition, there are paintings in a cave in the regency of Bone, 100 km north of Maros. These
cannot be dated because the stalactite-like growths used to determine the age of the art do not
occur. But the researchers believe that they are probably the same age as the paintings in
Maros because they are stylistically identical.
The discovery of the Indonesian cave art is important because it shows the beginnings of
human intelligence as we understand it today.
Clay Tablet In Mesopotamia

Over the last seven thousand years, and continuing today, traditional pieces of folkloric art
(from carpets to clothes) are being produced that continue these ancient signs. The lozenge,
the X, the E, the b, the D, the M, the circle, the angle, the tree, the spiral, the angle, the cross,
the rosette, short parallel lines are highly productive and persistent motives attesting to the
Neolithic Script. Some researchers argue that there were devastating invasions of new
populations from the steppes while others have hypothesized the imposition of new dominant
elites. Around 5,500 years ago, a social upheaval eclipsed this and other elements of the
advanced culture of the Danube Civilization. Close to Tartaria, a small rural Transylvanian village
of 5,000 inhabitants some kilometers from the well-known site of Turdaş, Nicolae Vlassa (an
archaeologist at the Cluj Museum) in 1961, unearthed three clay tablets, covered with strange
signs, together with a small cache of offerings, accompanying the charred bones of a mature
human, estimated to be 35-40 years old.
Whilst Tartaria signs have not lost their popularity over the millennia as decorative motives, it
remains the case that in rural tradition they are not purely ornamental elements but allusive
expressions of religious ideas, codes associated with magic powers and basic symbols relating
to the divinity and its epiphanies.
Powerful geometric motives continue to be transmitted from mother to daughter, as Ioana
Crişan witnesses herself as she inherited the beautiful collection by the mother who inherited
from her own the mother. That Neolithic-Chalcolithic Script also inherits this marked
preference for abstraction and schematization in the decorative design of folkloric art.
These three small, inscribed tablets started a debate that is challenging the conventional
wisdom of European prehistory, because they have been dated from around 6.500 years ago. ¹
Some scholars argue they date even earlier at 7,300 years old. ² More prudent researchers,
date the stones to 6,000-5,800 years ago. In any case, the astonishing question is doing the
South-eastern Neolithic Europe develop its own script before Sumeria and Egypt?
Given the context of the finding, the tablets from Tartaria are probably amulets or votive
tablets. The clay is grey-reddish and crystallized, to the point of looking like tuff. Careful
observation and analysis are needed to ascribe to them their potential value as a written
document as they contain much more than ascertained from a cursory examination.
Technical analysis of the Transylvanian tablets that the inscriptions are not simple signs or
randomly distributed insignia, rather the inscriptions are characters from some type of writing
system. There are three reasons for this conclusion.
In the majority of the cases, the Danube Script had a linear organization, a feature shared with
other pre-classic writings (Minoan Linear A, Cypriot-Minoan and Cypriot Syllabic).³
Today, village life and its visual art and folk memory, has the capacity to reveal the heritage
from Neolithic times through the importance of Tartaria signs, created thousands of years ago
but of continued authenticity.
Firstly, it is easy to find similar signs also on other artefacts of the Danube civilization,
pointing to the fact that the characters of the Danube Script follow precise standard shapes and
that scribes made use of an inventory.
Finally, whilst the inscriptions have varied patterns (in horizontal, vertical or circular rows), this
variety has a clear structure, evidenced by the specific sequencing of the signs. As Crişan’s
article documents, in some Balkan-Carpathian rural areas, the Danube Script characters
occasionally revived to enjoy a popularity they originally possessed in the early period of
Danube civilization.
Papyrus in Egypt
The papyrus of Egypt is most closely associated with writing – in fact, the English word ‘paper’
comes from the word ‘papyrus’ – but the Egyptians found many uses for the plant other than a
writing surface for documents and texts. Papyrus was used as a food source, to make rope, for
sandals, for boxes and baskets and mats, as window shades, material for toys such as dolls, as
amulets to ward off throat diseases, and even to make small fishing boats. This symbol is a
bouquet of papyrus (associated with the Delta of Lower Egypt) bound with a lotus (the symbol
of Upper Egypt).
Acta Diurna in Rome
Acta Diurna introduced the expression “publicare et propagare”, which means “make public
and propagate.” This expression was set in the end of the texts and proclaimed a release to
both Roman citizens and non-citizens.
The Acta Diurna to some extent filled the place of the modern newspaper and of the
government gazette.
Codex in the Mayan Region (5th Century)
They reviewed “all known research on the manuscript,” analyzing it “without regard to the
politics, academic and otherwise, that have enveloped the Grolier,” the team wrote in its study
“The Fourth Maya Codex.” But a meticulous new study of the codex has yielded a startling
conclusion: The codex is both genuine and likely the most ancient of all surviving manuscripts
from ancient America.
The Grolier Codex, an ancient document that is among the rarest books in the world, has
been regarded with skepticism since it was reportedly unearthed by looters from a cave in
Chiapas, Mexico, in the 1960s.
Stephen Houston, the Dupee Family Professor of Social Science and co-director of the Program
in Early Cultures at Brown University, worked with Michael Coe, professor emeritus of
archeology and anthropology at Yale and leader of the research team, along with Mary Miller of
Yale and Karl Taube of the University of California-Riverside.
The paper, published in the journal Maya Archaeology, fills a special section of the publication
and includes a lavish facsimile of the codex.
Printing Press Using Wood Blocks (220 AD)
As a method of printing on cloth, the earliest surviving examples from China date to before 220
AD, and woodblock printing remained the most common East Asian method of printing books
and other texts, as well as images, until the 19th century.
Woodblock printing is a technique for printing text, images or patterns used widely
throughout East Asia and originating in China in antiquity as a method of printing on textiles
and later paper.

Clay Tablet in Mesopotamia

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Pre-Industrial Age

Clay Tablet In Mesopotamia

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