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WRITING
WRITING
A Mosaic of New Perspectives
Elena L. Grigorenko, Elisa Mambrino, David D. Preiss

editor s
Psychology Press
New York London

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Contents
Preface...............................................................................................................................................ix
Editor Bios .....................................................................................................................................xvii
Contributors ....................................................................................................................................xix
PART I The Origins of Writing
Chapter 1 Tokens as Precursors of Writing ..................................................................................3

Denise Schmandt-Besserat
Chapter 2 The Cultural Evolution of Written Language and Its Effects: A Darwinian
Process From Prehistory to the Modern Day ............................................................. 11
Andy Lock and Matt Gers
Chapter 3 Language, Literacy, and Mind: The Literacy Hypothesis.......................................... 37

David R. Olson
PART II Writing and Human Development
Chapter 4 The Interrelationship of Child Development and Written Language Development.......47

Jaclyn M. Zins and Stephen R. Hooper
Chapter 5 What Writing Is and How It Changes Across Early and Middle Childhood
Development: A Multidisciplinary Perspective ......................................................... 65
Virginia W. Berninger and Lucile Chanquoy
Chapter 6 The Writing Brain of Normal Child Writers and Children With Writing

Disabilities: Generating Ideas and Transcribing Them
Through the Orthographic Loop ................................................................................ 85
Todd L. Richards, Virginia W. Berninger, and Michel Fayol
PART III Working Memory and Expertise in Writing
Chapter 7 The Development of Writing Expertise ................................................................... 109

Ronald T. Kellogg and Alison P. Whiteford
v
vi Contents
Chapter 8 Writing and Working Memory: A Summary of Theories and Findings.................. 125
Thierry Olive
Chapter 9 Towards a Dynamic Approach of How Children and Adults Manage

Text Production ........................................................................................................ 141
Michel Fayol, Jean-Noël Foulin, Séverine Maggio, and Bernard Lété
Chapter 10 Descriptive Writing .................................................................................................. 159

David L. Coker, Jr.
PART IV The Teaching of Writing

Chapter 11 Development of Ideational Writing Through Knowledge Building:
Theoretical and Empirical Bases ............................................................................. 175
Maria Chuy, Marlene Scardamalia, and Carl Bereiter
Chapter 12 Creative Writing as an Assessment of Content ........................................................ 191

Judi Randi, Tina Newman, and Linda Jarvin
Chapter 13 Improving the Writing Skills of College Students ...................................................209

Carolyn R. Fallahi
Chapter 14 Second Language Writing Processes Among Adolescent and Adult Learners ....... 221
John S. Hedgcock
PART V Creativity and Emotions in Writing

Chapter 15 Themes in the Lives of Creative Writers .................................................................. 243
Jane Piirto
Chapter 16 The Creative Writer and Mental Health: The Importance

of Domains and Style ............................................................................................... 259
James C. Kaufman, Janel D. Sexton,
and Arielle E. White
Chapter 17 Seeing, Connecting, Writing: Developing Creativity and Narrative

Writing in Children .................................................................................................. 275
Mei Tan, Judi Randi, Baptiste Barbot, Cyra Levenson, Linda Friedlaender,
and Elena L. Grigorenko
Chapter 18 The Role of Affect in Students’ Writing for School................................................. 293

Peter Smagorinsky and Elizabeth Anne Daigle
Contents vii
PART VI Disorder of Written Language: Diagnostic Criteria,

Prevalence, and Biological Bases
Chapter 19 Neuropsychology of Writing .................................................................................... 311

Alfredo Ardila
Chapter 20 Written Expression as a Neuropsychological Nexus: A Working

Clinical Theory ........................................................................................................ 325
Elisa Mambrino
Chapter 21 The Effect of Language and Orthography on Writing Disabilities and the
Necessity for Cross-Linguistic Research ................................................................. 345
Jodi Reich and Elena L. Grigorenko
Chapter 22 A Model of Writing Chinese Characters: Data From Acquired Dysgraphia and
Writing Development ............................................................................................... 357
Man-Tak Leung, Sam-Po Law, Roxana Fung, Hoi-Ming Lui, and
Brendan S. Weekes
PART VII Group Testing and Assessment of Skill and

Competence in Writing
Chapter 23 Large-Scale Online Writing Assessments: New Approaches Adopted in the

National Assessment of Educational Progress ......................................................... 371
Jihyun Lee and Lazar Stankov
Chapter 24 Design of a College-Level Test of Written Communication: Theoretical and

Methodological Challenges ...................................................................................... 385
Jorge Manzi, Paulina Flotts, and David D. Preiss
PART VIII Testimonials
Chapter 25 Burning Down the House: Ethics and Reception in Poetry Translation .................. 401
Randall Couch
Chapter 26 Bringing Redemption to the World: A Translation Sampler .................................... 413

John Felstiner
Chapter 27 A Narrator’s Testimony: Between Reading, Writing, and Displacements ............... 427
Andrea Jeftanovic
viii Contents
Chapter 28 The Story Behind My Being a Writer ...................................................................... 437

Gilbert J. Rose
Chapter 29 Twelve Hundred Publications Later: Reflections on a Career of Writing in

Psychology................................................................................................................449
Robert J. Sternberg
Author Index.................................................................................................................................459
Subject Index ................................................................................................................................ 475
Preface
The goal of this book is to reflect upon the phenomenon of writing from multiple perspectives,
coalescing in a developmental approach to writing. Here, we collect and unite a set of chapters
devoted to different issues of writing and, as each participating author (or group of authors) con-
tributes to the volume from his or her own field of expertise, we see how new integrative themes
emerge. Our motivation in creating this book originated in our awareness that efforts to connect
research on writing with issues of human development, broadly understood, have been scarce. We
hope that this book will make a contribution so that these efforts become plentiful.
Notwithstanding the scarcity mentioned above, writing research has always been linked to
developmental questions. In fact, by focusing on the transition from novice to expert, two highly
influential models of the writing process have originated as quintessentially developmental models
(Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1987; Hayes, 1996; Hayes & Flower, 1986), although these models are
not alone in addressing writing from a developmental point of view; there are other development-
oriented models (Ferreiro & Teberosky, 1982; Kellogg, 2008; Mccutchen, 2006; Olson, 1994, 1996,
2002). This and other research has shed light on the cognitive processes involved in writing and
the ways these processes crystallize and mature as writing ability develops. Unfortunately, unlike
reading, writing has received limited attention. A specific reason for such treatment of writing may
be theoretical. As a discipline, psychology has put more emphasis on studying processes involved
in handling existing information, such as perception, rather than on studying processes involved in
producing new information, such as creativity. This bias is manifested in studies of text and related
processes, where an emphasis on reading over writing dominates (Graesser, Wiemer-Hastings, &
Wiemer-Hastings, 2001). Up until recently, in fact, most research on writing has remained confined
within the context of a specialized field; however, this situation has been changing and this volume
captures these changes. Writing has become much more central to the fields of psychology and edu-
cation than it was even a few years ago.
To elaborate on this point, let us briefly discuss the standing of writing as a source and indicator
of individual differences in human performance. Although writing is a paradigmatic example of
scholastic activity, and tests of abilities and aptitudes were originally conceived to capture skills that
are academically salient, writing tasks have not commonly been included in these tests. In fact, read-
ing comprehension tasks are typically used to gauge levels of crystallized intelligence (Mackintosh,
1998). Measurement considerations may have been central to such an exclusion of writing from
traditional batteries of abilities and aptitudes. Possibly, test makers believed that ratings of writing
products are too subjective to use as indicators of abilities and aptitudes. While reading comprehen-
sion can be accessed via multiple choice questions capturing how existing information is processed,
the assessment of writing necessarily involves the generation of something new—a bit of writing—
and, thus, its assessment is more expensive and less reliable. Indeed, trained raters are required to
judge these bits of writing to evaluate them quantitatively, and even well-trained raters may produce
discrepant (i.e., “unreliable”) judgments. Interestingly, and possibly signaling a change in attitude
toward writing as a means of assessing abilities and aptitudes, novel assessment devices have reha-
bilitated writing as a predictor of academic ability and achievement (Jeffery, 2009). It has been dem-
onstrated, in fact, by years of routine admissions processes in most universities in the United States
that there is no better stand-alone measure of academic promise than a good essay.
The role of writing in educational settings is part and parcel of its larger role in human develop-
ment. Although cultural influence on language development is contested by some (Pinker, 1994),
there is no doubt that the development of script in the history of human civilization is one of the
most visible signs of the impact of culture on human development, and the mastery of script by a
ix
x Preface
child is one of the most important signs of that child’s socialization into humanity and its intellec-
tual treasures (Meng et al., 2005; Preiss & Sternberg, 2005). Similarly, Goody (1987) and Olson
(1994) see the acquisition of writing as the principal basis for the development of abstract thinking.
In today’s world, schooling and literacy acquisition are intertwined and, consequently, the impact of
schooling, at least in its initial stages, can be more or less equated with the impact of learning how to
read and write. Thus, because the teaching and learning of writing are intimately linked to school-
ing, studying cognitive skills related to writing sheds light on cognitive consequences of schooling
in general (see, for instance, essays in Olson & Torrance, 1996). But writing is informative not
only because it is one of the main products of schooling. The acquisition of writing exemplifies the
acquisition of any culturally mediated skill (e.g., spoken language, reading, math, and science) and
understanding the sources of individual differences in writing will enhance the understanding of
these differences in cognition as a whole.
Finally, a developmental view of writing will not be complete if it does not take into consid-
eration the emotional consequences of writing. There is, indeed, an intimate connection between
the practice of writing and emotion, as demonstrated by research on “writing as therapy” and the
tormented lives of many creative writers. Interestingly enough, not all genres are equal with regard
to their impact on the emotions. Research on writing as a type of therapy, as well as research on
creative writing, has not been integrated with cognitive research on writing to date. We believe that
the integrative perspective on writing exemplified in this volume will minimize the demarcations
between these different “researches” and unify them. To make a step toward such unification, dif-
ferent approaches to studying the emotional dimensions of writing, including personal testimonies
of expert writers, are given a special place in this collection.
The questions addressed in this volume are
• What are the origins of writing and how do they relate to human development?
• How does writing relate to human development?
• What are the challenges faced by writers on their road to developing writing expertise?
• What is special about creative writing, and what is the role of emotions in writing?
• What is the nature of written language disorders and what are their biological bases?
• What are the procedures to assess writing as a skill and a competence?
• What do writers say about their own development as specialists in particular genres of
writing?
These questions are addressed by a group of contributors who represent different professions
and disciplines within specific professions, different points of view, different languages, and differ-
ent cultures. These multiple differences create the mosaic nature of this volume. We, in turn, have
attempted to organize and shape these pieces into an integrated, coherent picture of writing that is
holistic and informative.
The first section of this volume deals with the cultural origins of writing and how they relate
to human development. The first chapter of the section, by Denise Schmandt-Besserat, describes
tokens—the system of counters that preceded and led to writing, and their appearance in early farm-
ing communities in about 7500 BC. She describes the evolution of this system over four thousand
years, its transmutation into various precursors of writing, and finally, the emergence of numerals
and phonetic signs. The chapter shows how the identification of tokens as the origin of writing chal-
lenged the previous pictographic theory of writing’s emergence. The second chapter, by Andrew
Lock and Matt Gerts, discusses whether the history of writing systems can be regarded as an evo-
lutionary process and whether literacy has consequences for human cognitive abilities. The authors
first consider the convergence of prehistoric developments that guaranteed the creation of the social
“problem space” in human societies that allowed the possibility of writing to emerge. They then
argue that many features of the history of writing are best seen as examples of a cultural evolution-
ary process and explain how writing has in a very real sense transformed our cognitive abilities.
Preface xi
Closing the section, David R. Olson argues that writing heightens the writer’s awareness of the
implicit properties of language. This awareness is expressed through new concepts for referring to
words spoken, what is meant by them, what they imply, of what they are composed, and the like.
According to Olson, writing achieves this effect by distancing the thoughts of the writer from the
fixed, objective form it takes when written down. Olson describes this effect by saying that writing
puts language “within quotation marks.”
The second section of the volume discusses writing in the context of human development. The
first chapter of this section, by Jaclyn M. Zins and Stephen R. Hooper, integrates writing research
with known principles of typical child development, an exploration that has received limited atten-
tion in the past. The chapter then provides a link between critical developmental milestones from
infancy through adolescence and their relationship to written language functions. The authors give
an overview of written language problems, describe evidence-based interventions for writing dis-
orders, and outline the developmental demands associated with these interventions. The second
chapter of the section, by Virginia W. Berninger and Lucile Chanquoy, presents selected models of
writing and reviews representative findings on the development of writing-related skills—handwrit-
ing, spelling, and text production—during early childhood. Emergent changes in writing develop-
ment during the early and middle school years are also described to illustrate how new writing
systems are constructed from prior ones as young writers encounter new developmental tasks. In
the last chapter of the section, Todd L. Richards, Virginia W. Berninger, and Michel Fayol explain
that writing is not the opposite of reading and clarify the ways in which writing differs from read-
ing. They discuss important general principles drawn from research based on studying the effects
of individuals’ loss of previously acquired writing functions, following brain disease or injury, on
normal adult writing. They also discuss how the developing brain acquires writing in both normally
developing child writers and children with writing disabilities. They summarize findings from a
series of five brain imaging studies and present an evidence-based theory of change related to the
development of spelling, a transcription process that supports text generation during the cognitive–
language translation process.
The third section deals with the issue of expertise and the way expert writers learn how to
deal with the cognitive load involved in writing tasks. In the first chapter of the section Ronald
T. Kellogg and Alison P. Whiteford discuss the cognitive aspects of composing extended written
texts. The authors note that serious composition poses unique cognitive challenges and propose
that gaining expertise as a writer takes nearly two decades and extensive practice. They begin
by defining the concept of writing expertise, then document the cognitive demands of written
composition, followed by a presentation of the three major stages of writing skill development. In
closing, the authors focus on the relationship between deliberate practice and writing skill devel-
opment, then discuss the pedagogical implications of their work. The next chapter, by Thierry
Olive, provides a summary of models and findings on the role of working memory in writing.
The chapter underlines the cognitive demands writing places on working memory, as well as
highlights the nature of these demands. In so doing, the author discusses the role of working
memory in writing by summarizing experimental findings. In closing, the author proposes some
ideas for future research on the involvement of working memory in writing. Next, Michel Fayol,
Jean-Noël Foulin, Séverine Maggio, and Bernard Lété investigate the development and dynamic
of written composition and the inverse relationship between two key temporal parameters: pause
duration and writing speed. The chapter proposes an on-line approach to studying these factors
and discusses experimental studies that chart the evolution of on-line composing in individuals
from eight years through adulthood. In the last chapter of the section, David L. Coker discusses
the importance of descriptive writing across genres, including literature, scientific, and proce-
dural writing. The chapter covers features specific to descriptive writing, how children’s writing
competency in this area develops, quantitative analyses of descriptive writing data, assessment
techniques specifically designed for descriptive writing, as well as descriptive writing and its
relationship to social cognition.
xii Preface
The fourth section is focused on the teaching of writing. In the first chapter of the section,
Maria Chuy, Marlene Scardamalia, and Carl Bereiter focus on ideational writing. They propose
that ideational writing does not belong in writing or language arts classes at all but should be car-
ried out in subject matter courses where writing is instrumental to knowledge creation. They then
present an educational approach termed “knowledge building” that gives writing this instrumen-
tal role, and they report evidence supporting the claim that substantial improvement in ideational
writing can be achieved from students’ efforts to create and improve knowledge and ideas that are
of value to their community. In the second chapter of the section, Judi Randi, Tina Newman, and
Linda Jarvin review and discuss how teachers use student writing to assess students’ understand-
ing of content. Examples are drawn from writing assessments in language arts, math, and social
studies in a variety of teachers’ classrooms, including experienced teachers participating in the
Yale PACE Center Evaluation of Teaching for Successful Intelligence (TSI) curriculum and student
teachers in the first author’s teacher preparation program. The authors make the case that creativ-
ity must be evaluated in writing products intended to assess students’ understanding of content. In
the following chapter, Carolyn R. Fallahi explores writing at the college level and how to improve
instruction of this skill that is so essential in academia as well as in the work place. She points out
that there exists published anecdotal evidence for methods of improving writing in college-age
students. However, evidence-based strategies for improving writing are infrequently seen in the lit-
erature. Drawing upon the research available, she explains how students can gain an understanding
of practical methods that may improve college-level writing and develop advanced writing skills.
Next, John S. Hedgcock explores the richly diverse L2 writer, using a “literacy-as-social-practice”
approach in his chapter. Hedgcock reviews the last two decades of L2 writing research and theory,
noting the strides that have been achieved since the 1990s as the field advances toward a more
coherent framework for understanding L2 writers, L2 texts, and contexts for L2 writing. He empha-
sizes the uniqueness of L2 writers, their written products, and the settings in which they learn, in
order to understand processes of L2 writing and the complexity of developing L2 writing skills.
The first chapter of the fifth section is written by Jane Piirto and deals with creative writing
and emotion. This chapter considers creative writers, that is, writers of poetry, fiction, creative
nonfiction, scripts, and songs. To understand creative writers, Piirto presents the Piirto Pyramid of
Talent Development. The themes discussed in this chapter are organized according to the five suns
of the Piirto Pyramid: (1) the “sun of home”; (2) the “sun of community and culture”; (3) the “sun
of school”; (4) the “sun of chance”; and (5) the “sun of gender.” Piirto presents a lengthy study of
17 themes in the lives of 160 contemporary U.S. writers, based on biographical, autobiographical,
and interview material. Next, James C. Kaufman, Janel D. Sexton, and Arielle E. White review
two predominant yet conflicting lines of thought about the creative writer and mental health: the
“mad genius” approach and the “writing as therapy” approach. They note that these two concepts,
both extensively researched, seem to be diametrically opposite. In their chapter they outline both
approaches, then discuss some possible areas of overlap with the intention of resolving these two
seemingly inconsistent points of view. In the third chapter of the section, Mei Tan, Judi Randi,
Baptiste Barbot, Cyra Levenson, Linda Friedlaender, and Elena L. Grigorenko describe a visual
literacy-based view of children’s development of narrative skills and creativity in writing. First,
the authors present the defining characteristics of creative narrative writing, as produced by adults,
and identify the processes and cognitive abilities involved. They then describe how the prevalent
cognitive models of writing have influenced the teaching of writing at the primary level, and go on
to outline their own model of writing instruction and an accompanying intervention that links the
development of visual and verbal skills. Data and interviews from a pilot study of this intervention
provide examples of children’s productions for analysis and discussion. These examples support
the possibility that a multi-modal approach to writing development may substantially help children
develop skills in seeing, describing, and interpreting, leading in turn to descriptive, original nar-
ratives that are rich in meaning for both writer and readers. Concluding this fifth section, Peter
Smagorinsky and Elizabeth Anne Daigle outline some considerations that could inform research
Preface xiii
on the role of emotion in writing. They follow up by reviewing possible lines of inquiry that could
aid research efforts designed to reveal how affective experiences during composing contribute to
writers’ production of texts and the social action manifested through their writing. Although the
relationship between writing and emotion has typically viewed emotion in terms of writing patholo-
gies, the studies reported here find that writing dispositions and behaviors may also arise from more
positive emotional states. The authors detail findings from case studies conducted in this line of
inquiry, which suggest possible areas of inquiry that may benefit the larger goal of understanding
writing in all its cognitive, emotional, social, and cultural complexity.
The sixth section of the book focuses on the atypical development of writing. In the first chapter of
the section, Alfredo Ardila discusses the brain substrate of writing and writing disturbances associ-
ated with brain pathology. His analysis of writing disturbances observed in cases of brain pathology
or agraphias supports the assumption that there are three major types of agraphias corresponding
to the impairment of fundamental abilities that the chapter explores. The author also introduces
contemporary neuroimaging studies to illustrate the patterns of brain activation observed during
writing. Given that the brain control required for using computers is partially different from that
needed for handwriting, the author anticipates that new agraphia syndromes will become evident in
the future. In the next chapter, Elisa Mambrino presents her conceptual framework or working clini-
cal theory of writing, which uses a process approach that she developed in her work as a licensed
psychologist. The framework features neurocognitive, social cognitive, and object relational factors
that can be used to help conceptualize an individual’s relative strengths and weaknesses in writ-
ing performance. In the following chapter, Jodi Reich and Elena L. Grigorenko illustrate that the
world’s languages make use of a variety of writing systems and that specific properties of these
writing systems, as well as their relationship to spoken language, impact the manifestation of writ-
ing disability. They assert that more research is needed on writing disability generally, but also that
it is imperative that this research include a diverse range of languages. The authors summarize the
writing disability research already completed, highlighting the observations that studies in lan-
guages other than English are exceedingly rare, and that there are few formal definitions of writing
disability. Following David Share’s argument (2008) that English is an “outlier” from which it is not
possible to develop a universal theory of reading acquisition, this paper provides examples that illus-
trate how cross-linguistic research on writing disability is an essential component for understanding
the underlying nature of writing disability for children worldwide. Closing the section, Man-Tak
Leung, Sam-Po Law, Roxana Fung, Hoi-Ming Lui, and Brendan S. Weekes provide a description
of the fundamental differences between Chinese and alphabetic writing systems and the internal
structure of Chinese characters. The authors review related research and present patterns of dis-
sociation and other forms of writing errors obtained from Chinese adult dysgraphic clinical cases.
Also included are results of a recent study that examined the development of writing in terms of the
unit of writing, and the internal structure of the orthographic representation of Chinese characters,
based on data collected in Hong Kong from students in grades 1 through 6.
Part seven of the book deals with group assessment of writing; it has two chapters. In the first
chapter, Jihyun Lee and Lazar Stankov outline some of the major characteristics of the current
practice of large-scale writing assessment by reviewing the case of the National Assessment of
Educational Progress (NAEP). They present the most important new features of the upcoming 2011
NAEP writing assessments, covering the writing construct, content, evaluation criteria, and issues
surrounding the introduction of computer-delivered assessment. Changes in the upcoming NAEP
writing assessments reflect important issues as defined by the nation’s leading writing and assess-
ment experts. Lee and Stankov consider these issues in the context of the writing assessment lit-
erature and conclude with a discussion of the contributions that the NAEP writing assessment has
made to the research on writing and large-scale assessment in general. The second chapter of the
section, by Jorge Manzi, Paulina Flotts, and David Preiss, discusses the theoretical and method-
ological challenges involved in the design of a College-Level Test of Written Communication in
Chile, where awareness of students’ deficits in writing communication skills has prompted many
xiv Preface
institutions to implement writing assessment initiatives either as a graduation requirement or for

diagnostic purposes. Specifically, since 2003, at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, the
authors have been working on developing a test of written communication, the passing of which is
required for students to graduate. The goal of the test is to assess those linguistic skills that guar-
antee adequate performance in written Spanish communication. The authors present the theoretical
framework that inspired this assessment and discuss how it relates to other initiatives of writing
assessment. To conclude, they discuss the main results of one of the rounds of assessment, contex-
tualizing these results in the contemporary literature on writing assessment.
To close the volume, we present a number of testimonials from writers working within differ-
ent genres. A few lines explaining why we have asked two translators to provide accounts of their
work are merited here. Presumably, the derivative character of translation is what prompts scholars
to exclude it from the domain of writing research. In effect, many view translation work as a sub-
sidiary of the source work, and the activity of translators as consisting of pouring content from an
old vessel into a new one. This view considers translation to be significantly less creative than the
activity of the author who produced the original. Based on their “second hand” relation to novelty,
translators are seen as reproducers or copyists of somebody else’s work, or, at least, not as deserving
of the same public acknowledgement as performers of analogous activities. As insightfully noted
by Hofstadter (1997), nobody will gain public acclaim for her work as a translator except perhaps in
very specialized audiences. Yet, as Hofstadter points out, the work of translation could be compared
to that of musical performers. In both cases, artist and translator create and re-create in a similar
way, but the creative load imposed on the translator is no lighter than that imposed on musical
performers. Paradoxically, still, musical performers get significantly more credit for their skills
than translators. As a way of giving translation the credit it deserves, we have asked two outstand-
ing translators—Randall Couch and John Felstiner—to describe their work. Since both translators
work on representing poetry, their testimonials nicely describe the kinds of decisions poets have
to make when performing their art. In addition, we have invited a young Chilean novelist, Andrea
Jeftanovic, to share with readers a first-hand account of the life of a novelist. In so doing, she dis-
cusses authors that have influenced her work, the production of her novels, as well as her relation to
the literary domain. We believe that her chapter will nicely complement those chapters of this book
on creative writing that rest mostly on North American authors’ biographies. The section closes
with two testimonials from two authors whose writings are not in a literary genre but in an academic
one. First, Gilbert J. Rose explores the role that writing and creativity played in his upbringing in
a family of independent thinkers, his training at two psychoanalytic institutes, and in his career
as an analyst and book author. His books, which tend to overlap art and psychoanalysis, represent
a departure from standard psychoanalytic fare. He describes how his interests as an independent
analyst and book author intertwined to provide the freedom and insight that allowed him to build a
career as a very specialized kind of writer. This testimony is followed by that of Robert J. Sternberg,
who presents a vivid portrait of his writing life as one of the most prolific authors in contemporary
psychology. Sternberg proposes that writing is a substantive part of the scientific process. For him,
writing was never the “end” of the process. He usually began writing somewhat early in the research
process, largely because he found writing far more than simply a tool for reporting research, but as a
way of shaping his thinking about the research. He then discusses how his writing practices evolved
during his life in school, college, graduate school and then during the different stages of his work
as an academic.
In concluding we want to make evident our book’s practical aspiration as well. The diversity and
richness of writing relates to different forms of abilities, competencies, and expertise. Consequently,
many psychologists, educators, and others are interested in exploring the ways in which writing
develops, and in what manner this development can be fostered, but they lack a handy source of
information to satisfy their various interests. We believe this book will provide them with relevant
perspectives and information.
Preface xv
Finally, we want to acknowledge both funding sources and people without whom this project
would never have been realized. Elena L. Grigorenko acknowledges the support of the following
research grants from the U.S. National Institutes of Health: HD052120, DC007665, and TW008274.
David Preiss acknowledges the support of the Center for Research on Educational Policy and
Practice, grant CIE01-CONICYT and grant number 1100580 from FONDECYT–CONICYT. For
the latter, our special gratitude goes to Rhea Paul for triggering the idea for this volume, Mei Tan
for her editorial help, and Cheri Stahl for her crucial skill in organizing the volume, tracking the
versions of the chapters, and preparing the manuscript for Taylor & Francis.
Elena L. Grigorenko
Elisa Mambrino
David D. Preiss
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Books.
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variability. Assessing Writing, 14(1), 3–24.
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Editor Bios
Dr. Elena L. Grigorenko received her Ph.D. in general psychology from Moscow State University,
Russia, and her Ph.D. in developmental psychology and genetics from Yale University, U.S.A.
Currently, Dr. Grigorenko is an Associate Professor of Child Studies, Psychology, and Epidemiology
and Public Health at Yale, and Adjunct Professor of Psychology at Columbia University and Moscow
State University (Russia). Dr. Grigorenko has published more than 300 peer-reviewed articles, book
chapters, and books. She has received multiple professional awards for her work and received fund-
ing for her research from the NIH, NSF, DOE, USAID, Cure Autism Now, the Foundation for Child
Development, the American Psychological Foundation, and other federal and private sponsoring
organizations.
Dr. Elisa Mambrino is a licensed psychologist who received her Ph.D. in School Psychology from
Columbia University Teachers College. In the course of this doctoral program, which is accredited
by the American Psychological Association (APA), Dr. Mambrino completed an APA-accredited
Pre-doctoral Internship in Clinical Neuropsychology and Rehabilitation Psychology at Mount Sinai
Hospital and Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. She then completed both the Marie
Kessel Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons
and a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Yale University School of Medicine’s Child Study Center.
Dr. Mambrino also has a Master of Science degree from the Columbia University Graduate School
of Journalism.
David D. Preiss is an Associate Professor at the Escuela de Psicología of the Pontificia Universidad
Católica de Chile. He received his Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from Yale University, which he
attended as a Fulbright Scholar. At the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, he is affiliated with
the Measurement Center MIDE UC and the Center for Research on Educational Policy and Practice.
His research includes topics such as culture and instruction, creativity and writing processes, and
the cognitive consequences of technology. He co-edited with Robert J. Sternberg Intelligence and
Technology: The Impact of Tools on the Nature and Development of Human Abilities (Erlbaum,
2005) and Innovations in Educational Psychology: Perspectives in Teaching, Learning and Human
Development (Springer Publishing Company, 2010). David Preiss’ research initiatives have been
funded by diverse grants from agencies and programs such as FONDECYT, FONDEF, FONIDE
and Fundación Andes. In addition to his academic publications, David Preiss has also published five
books of poetry, and his poems have been included in a number of anthologies of Chilean poetry.
xvii
Contributors
Alfredo Ardila John Felstiner
Florida International University Stanford University
Miami, Florida Palo Alto, California
Baptiste Barbot Paulina Flotts

Yale University Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
New Haven, Connecticut Santiago, Chile
Carl Bereiter Jean-Noël Foulin

University of Toronto Université de Bordeaux
Toronto, Ontario, Canada Bourdeaux, France
Virginia W. Berninger Linda Friedlaender

University of Washington Yale Center for British Art
Seattle, Washington New Haven, Connecticut
Lucile Chanquoy Roxana Fung

Université de Nice-Sophia Antipolis The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Nice, France Hong Kong, SAR
Maria Chuy Matt Gers

University of Toronto Victoria University of Wellington
Toronto, Ontario, Canada Wellington, New Zealand
David L. Coker Jr. Elena L. Grigorenko

University of Delaware Yale University
Newark, Delaware New Haven, Connecticut
and
Randall Couch Moscow State University
Arcadia University Moscow, Russia
University of Pennsylvania and
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Columbia University
New York, New York
Elizabeth Anne Daigle
The University of Georgia John S. Hedgcock
Athens, Georgia Monterey Institute of International Studies
Monterey, California
Carolyn R. Fallahi
Central Connecticut State University Stephen R. Hooper
New Britain, Connecticut University of North Carolina School
of Medicine
Michel Fayol Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Université Blaise Pascal Clermont-Ferrand &
CNRS Laboratoire de Psychologie Sociale Linda Jarvin
et Cognitive Paris College of Art
Clermont-Ferrand, France Paris, France
xix
xx Contributors
Andrea Jeftanovic Tina Newman

Universidad de Santiago de Chile Yale Child Study Center
Santiago, Chile New Haven, Connecticut
James C. Kaufman Thierry Olive

California State University at San Bernardino Université de Poitiers & CNRS
San Bernardino, California Poitiers, France
Ronald T. Kellogg David R. Olson

Saint Louis University University of Toronto
Saint Louis, Missouri Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Sam-Po Law
Jane Piirto
The University of Hong Kong
Ashland University
Hong Kong, SAR
Ashland, Ohio
Jihyun Lee
National Institute of Education David D. Preiss
Nanyang Technological University Pontificia Universidad Católica
Singapore de Chile
Santiago, Chile
Bernard Lété
Université de Lyon Judi Randi
Lyon, France University of New Haven
New Haven, Connecticut
Man-Tak Leung
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University Jodi Reich
Hong Kong, SAR Yale University
Cyra Levenson
Yale Center for British Art Todd L. Richards
New Haven, Connecticut University of Washington
Seattle, Washington
Andy Lock
Massey University
Gilbert J. Rose
Palmerston North, New Zealand
Gardiner Program for Psychoanalysis and
the Humanities
Hoi-Ming Lui
Yale University School of Medicine
The University of Hong Kong
Hong Kong, SAR
Séverine Maggio Marlene Scardamalia

Université Blaise Pascal University of Toronto
Clermont-Ferrand, France Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Elisa Mambrino Denise Schmandt-Besserat

Private practice The University of Texas at Austin
Greenwich, Connecticut Austin, Texas
Jorge Manzi Janel D. Sexton

Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile The Johns Hopkins University
Santiago, Chile Baltimore, Maryland
Contributors xxi
Peter Smagorinsky Brendan S. Weekes

The University of Georgia University of Sussex
Athens, Georgia Falmer, United Kingdom
Lazar Stankov Arielle E. White

National Institute of Education California State University at San Bernardino
Nanyang Technological University San Bernardino, California
Singapore
Alison P. Whiteford
Robert J. Sternberg Saint Louis University
Oklahoma State University Saint Louis, Missouri
Stillwater, Oklahoma
Jaclyn M. Zins
Mei Tan The University of North Carolina at
Yale University Chapel Hill
New Haven, Connecticut Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Part I
The Origins of Writing
1 Tokens as Precursors
of Writing
Denise Schmandt-Besserat
Writing was invented independently three different times in three different areas on our planet: in
the Near East, China, and Mesoamerica. The Near Eastern cuneiform script, created ca. 3200 BC in
ancient Mesopotamia, present-day Iraq, was the first. It is also the only writing system the origins of
which can be traced deep into prehistory (Schmandt-Besserat, 1996). This chapter presents tokens,
the system of counters that preceded and led to writing. In particular, it discusses the appearance of
tokens in early farming communities about 7500 BC, the evolution of the system over 4000 years,
its transmutation into writing in the first cities, and finally, the use of abstraction to create numerals
and phonetic signs. Finally, the chapter shows how the identification of tokens as the origin of writ-
ing challenged the previous pictographic theory.
THE ORIGIN OF TOKENS

The domestication of plants and animals about 8000 BC transformed ancient Near Eastern society,
altering its way of life, economy, and symbolism. Unlike the Paleolithic hunters and gatherers, who
were nomadic, the first Neolithic farmers settled down in permanent villages. Leadership changed.
Whereas Paleolithic bands were headed by skillful hunters, village leaders were the managers of a
redistribution economy. They pooled together contributions from the community in order to redis-
tribute the goods for the benefit of all. Counting became a necessary skill to compute the communal
resources and manage the collective flocks and granaries. In order to fulfill these tasks, tokens were
created to count and account for staple foods, in particular animals and quantities of cereals.
That the creation of tokens coincided with the beginning of agriculture is well established by
the modern archaeological excavation techniques and C-14 dating. In particular, in Syrian as well
as Iranian archaeological sites, the earliest tokens are repeatedly recovered together with the first
evidence of cereal cultivation ca. 7500 BC. Collections of tokens excavated in sites of the seventh to
fourth millennium BC document how the system spread over the entire Near East from Palestine to
Turkey and from Syria to Iran and its evolution over 4000 years, until it was supplanted by writing
in cities of the late fourth millennium BC.
THE TOKEN SYSTEM

The tokens were modeled in clay in many shapes. The earliest examples assumed mostly geometric
forms such as cones, spheres, cylinders, ovoids, disks, and tetrahedrons (Figure 1.1). The arbitrary,
simple, and striking geometric shapes proved key to the success of the system because they were
easy to identify, to remember, and to replicate. Moreover, the surface of the clay tokens could be
easily marked with lines, dots, or attached pellets for additional information.
The use of clay as a raw material can also be credited for the widespread diffusion of tokens.
Because clay is easy to model when moist, the manufacture of tokens was simple. It merely consisted
of pinching a small lump between the fingers, with no tool or skill necessary. Sun drying or baking
in the fireplace made the counters hard and their shape permanent. Furthermore, because clay is
3
4 Writing: A Mosaic of New Perspectives
FIGURE 1.1 Tokens from Tepe Gawra, present day Iraq, ca. 4000 BC. Cone, sphere, and flat disk are three
measures of cereals: small, larger, largest. Tetrahedron is a unit of work (one man/one day). (Courtesy the
University Museum, the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.)
common and easy to collect around river banks, ponds, and water holes, the system could be passed
on from one village to another and from one culture to the other. Lastly, the tokens were small,
measuring about 1–3 cm across, and therefore the quantities of clay required to make the necessary
counters were minimal. In sum, the accessibility of the material, the simplicity of manufacture,
and the geometric format of the tokens were responsible for the rapid adoption of the system in the
Neolithic agricultural economies of the ancient Near East and its continuity over many centuries.
TOKENS AS SYMBOLS FOR COMMUNICATION

The tokens represented a new symbolic system for communication. Each token shape was a symbol
for one particular unit of goods. For example, a cone represented a small measure of grain (equivalent
to a liter); a sphere stood for a large measure of grain (equivalent to a bushel); a cylinder for an animal
of the flock (either a sheep or a goat); and an ovoid for a jar of oil. The earliest token assemblages of
the eighth millennium BC included a mere dozen shapes, which seemingly represented all the com-
modities managed at the time. The objects served as a code to store, manipulate, and exchange all
the economic information necessary for the Neolithic redistribution economy. Anyone initiated with
the meaning of the token shapes could understand and translate into words the specific accounts of
goods represented by a given set of the counters. Seen from the twenty-first century, the great limita-
tion of the system was, of course, that the tokens could only communicate economic information,
namely numbers of units of given merchandise. They were unable to convey any other kind of data.
TOKENS AS SYMBOLS FOR ACCOUNTING

Tokens made accounting possible. They represented a notable advance compared to the previous
notched bones or sticks. The Paleolithic tallies merely indicated the number of units of a single
unspecified commodity, but the tokens of many shapes, each designating a specific unit of mer-
chandise, made it possible to keep track of multiple goods simultaneously. When necessary, new
token shapes could be created to record additional types of goods. Another great advantage of using
counters for accounting was to make a complex budget visible. The number of tokens representing
amounts of goods signaled at a glance which of the commodities were abundant and which were
scarce. Furthermore, the counters made it possible to keep track of present, as well as past or future,
transactions, such as debts or pledges.
Tokens as Precursors of Writing 5
TOKENS AS SYMBOLS FOR COUNTING

Tokens also influenced counting. The system was based on one-to-one correspondence, that is to
say, one small measure of grain was shown by one cone, two by two cones, and so on, which is the
simplest and also the most rudimentary form of counting. On the other hand, the multiple shapes
of tokens denote “concrete counting,” an archaic counting system characterized by using differ-
ent number words—numerations—to count each type of commodity. Numerical expressions such
as “twin, triplet, quadruplet” referring to children of the same birth, or “solo, duo, trio, quartet”
referring to numbers of musicians, give an idea of the concept of concrete counting. For example,
the term “duo,” like a concrete number, fuses together two concepts: two and musician, without
the capacity of separating them. Concrete counting prevented units of different kinds from being
computed together. Also, the special numerations were limited to one to ten or a dozen concrete
numbers so that, for example, when more than nine animals were in the group, counting switched
to a nonspecific group term such as “a flock” or “a herd.”
There can be no doubt that the use of tokens enhanced counting by facilitating the chunking of
units of the same kind of goods to build larger numbers or “sets.” For instance, animal counting
included two tokens: a cylinder and a lenticular, disk standing respectively for “one animal” and “a
flock” (10 sheep or goats). Because the large units were also used in one-to-one correspondence,
they stretched the ability to count beyond the usual 10 or 12 units of a simple concrete numeration.
For instance, three lenticular disks stood for “three flocks,” probably “30 animals.” This paved the
way to the systematic creation of larger numbers and arithmetic. On the other hand, it is evident that,
during the prehistoric period, the five common measures of grain represented by tokens in the shape
of a cone, a sphere, a large cone, a large sphere, and a flat disk did not represent precise quantities,
but stood for informal daily life containers such as a cup, a basket, and a granary. Furthermore, these
were neither standardized nor conceived as numerical units, that is, as multiples of one another.
TOKENS AND STATE FORMATION

The tokens remained unchanged for 4000 years. In 3500 BC, when Mesopotamian and Elamite set-
tlements grew into towns and cities, in present day Iraq and Iran, the temple and palace economies
were still managed solely with the token system. But, about 3300 BC, the creation of the state signi-
fied a new level of complexity for accounting, when the contributions of goods in kind became man-
datory taxes. As the number of goods levied by the state increased, additional token shapes were
created. Consequently, new tokens of triangular, rectangular, oval, and parabolic shapes appeared,
many of them covered with sets of incised lines or impressed dots (Figure 1.2). Among the new
registered products were domestic and imported raw materials such as wool and metal; processed
FIGURE 1.2 Tokens from Susa, present day Iran, ca. 3300 BC. Starting above from left to right: one gar-
ment, one ingot of metal, one jar of a particular oil, one ram, one measure of honey, one garment. (Courtesy
Musée du Louvre, Départment des Antiquités Orientales, Paris, France.)
foods like bread, oil, beer, honey, and trussed ducks; and goods manufactured in urban workshops,
such as textiles, garments, rope, mats, carpets, tools, furniture, jewelry, and perfume.
The collection of tokens recovered in the Sumerian city of Uruk numbers as many as 250 shapes,
compared to the dozen forms typical of Neolithic assemblages. This suggests that, by the late fourth
millennium BC, the complex token system was handled by specialists. The manufacture of tokens
was also more elaborate. The clay used to model the late fourth millennium tokens was finely pre-
pared and free of inclusions. They were well fired, exhibiting an even pink color throughout their
thickness. Some of the shapes were quite elaborate, featuring objects such as jugs, tools, furniture,
and animal heads in miniature size.
ENVELOPES TO STORE TOKENS

After the middle of the fourth millennium BC, the city-state administration became concerned with
storing accounts of tokens featuring debts, probably unpaid taxes. Envelopes were created to hold
securely the tokens representing the amount due until it was paid. The envelopes were hollow clay
balls, some 5–9 cm across. Tokens were placed inside the cavity and the opening was closed with a
patch of clay (Figure 1.3). The envelopes were practical since they could be quickly made and could
hold tokens for any length of time. More importantly, the clay surface was ideal to imprint seals
indicating the parties involved—debtors as well as the responsible officers of the state administra-
tion. These Near Eastern seals were small stone artifacts carved in negative with a unique pattern,
which served as identification of offices as well as individuals. Each of the some 150 envelopes
recovered had from one to four seals carefully impressed over their entire surface, ensuring that no
tampering could occur. The envelopes proved useful and became popular throughout the Near East,
as illustrated by the specimens still holding tokens recovered in Turkey, Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Iran,
and as far south as Saudi Arabia.
FROM TOKENS TO WRITING

The envelopes set the token system onto a new course that, after a series of rapid transformations,
finally climaxed with the invention of writing. The first major change took place about 3300 BC,
when the envelope was used to carry new information. After affixing the seals, the accountants
imprinted on the surface of the envelopes the tokens to be enclosed inside. As a result, a cone left
a wedge-shaped mark and a sphere a circular one. In other words, the three-dimensional tokens
FIGURE 1.3 Envelope and its token content, ca. 3300 BC, from Susa, Iran. The lenticular disks and cor-
responding large circular signs each stand for “a flock” (10 animals). The cylinders and corresponding thin
wedges represent 33 of one animal (sheep or goat). (Courtesy Musée du Louvre, Département des Antiquités
Orientales, Paris, France.)
held inside the envelopes were reduced to two-dimensional signs on the outside of the envelope
(Figure 1.4). This simple invention, only meant to conveniently make visible the content of an
envelope without opening it, turned out to be a remarkable new communication system. It was the
invention of writing.
FROM ENVELOPES TO TABLETS

About 3200 BC, the complicated system of hollow envelopes featuring tokens inside and their corre-
sponding impressions outside was simplified. Tokens became imprinted on solid clay balls—tablets
(Figure 1.5). The wedges and circular signs standing for cone and sphere tokens no longer dupli-
cated actual tokens but had become independent entities. They constituted a script. But, although
FIGURE 1.4 Impressed tablet from Godin Tepe, Iran, ca. 3100 BC. The circular signs stand for one large
measure of grain, the wedges for one small measure of grain. (Courtesy Cuyler Young Jr., Royal Ontario
Museum, Toronto.)
FIGURE 1.5 Incised tablet, from Godin Tepe, Iran, ca. 3100 BC. The impressed signs are numerals. The
circular signs stand for 10 and the wedges for 1. The signs on this incised tablet represent 33 measures of oil
(10 × 3) + (1 × 3). (Courtesy Cuyler Young Jr., Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto.)
the form of the symbols had changed, the written signs were semantically identical to their token
prototypes. Like tokens, each sign stood for one unit of a particular commodity. Also like tokens,
the signs were used in one-to-one correspondence: two wedges represented two small measures of
grain and three circular markings stood for three bushels of grain. Finally, like the token system,
the early written texts dealt exclusively with goods. In 3200 BC, writing consisted of a repertory of
logograms, each conveying the concept of one specific unit of goods.
NUMERALS
About 3100 BC the images of some tokens started to be drawn on the tablets with a stylus, instead
of being pressed into the clay. The new incised technique had the advantage of representing more
accurately the outline of tokens and their various markings. But far more than the shape of signs
was changed. The incised signs were no longer repeated in one-to-one correspondence to indicate
the number of units of goods. Instead, they were preceded by numerals—signs expressing one,
two, three, and so on abstractly. For the first time, the concepts of oneness, twoness, threeness were
abstracted from the goods counted and the signs to express “one,” “two,” or “three” became applica-
ble to multiple commodities. Surprisingly, no new signs were created to express numerals. Instead,
the units of grain, which continued to be impressed, took a new numerical meaning. According
to the context, the impression of a cone stood either for a small measure of grain or for “1.” The
impression of a sphere meant either a bushel of grain or “10.” In sum, by 3100 BC, the scribes dealt
with two kinds of signs: (1) incised logograms denoting commodities, and (2) impressed numerals
indicating the number of units of goods.
PHONETIC SIGNS
About 3000 BC, a tighter state administration required that the personal names of the individuals
who either gave or received the goods be listed on the tablet. To fulfill this new rule, signs were
invented that stood for sounds: phonograms. The new characters were sketches of things easy to
draw that stood for the sound of the word they evoked. The drawing of a man’s head stood for “lu”
and that of a mouth for “ka,” the sounds of the words for “man” and “mouth” in the Sumerian lan-
guage. The syllables composing an individual’s name were written in a rebus form. For example,
the modern name Lucas could have been written with the two signs mentioned above, “lu-ka.”
The invention of phonograms established a first connection between writing and human speech.
Thereafter, the Mesopotamian script included three types of signs: (1) logograms standing for units
of goods; (2) numerals indicating the number of units of goods; and (3) phonograms transcribing the
name of the donor or recipient of the stipulated goods.
WRITING BEYOND ACCOUNTING

In 2800 BC, the scribes still dealt exclusively with economic matters. They performed three types of
operations: (1) they registered the goods entering and leaving the temple or palace; (2) they recorded
land donations; and (3) they compiled on tablets the signs necessary for their profession. About
2700–2600 BC, writing finally reached beyond accounting to perform a new funerary function. At
the court of the Sumerian kings of Ur the scribes inscribed short texts on precious objects destined to
be placed in a tomb, next to the body of a deceased individual. The inscriptions featured a personal
name such as “Meskalamdug” wrought on a gold bowl, or a name plus a title, “Puabi, Queen,” carved
on a lapis lazuli seal. The Sumerian belief that the name of a deceased ancestor was to be uttered
at regular intervals in order to survive as a ghost in the underworld may explain the funerary texts.
Meskalamdug’s name, couched in gold, a metal impervious to time, suggests that writing a name
phonetically was deemed equivalent to a perpetual utterance to guarantee survival in the netherworld.
THE TAKEOFF OF WRITING

The concern for the afterlife led to modeling writing after speech. About 2600–2500 BC, statues
of men with the hands folded in the attitude of prayer bore an inscription on their shoulder, such as
“Ur-Kisila, the priest of Sin of Akshak, son of Nati, priest of Sin, presented this statue” (Schmandt-
Besserat, 2007, p. 78). These texts were particularly significant because they included a series of
personal names and were therefore mostly phonetic. As in the example above, they stipulated an
individual’s name, the name and title of his father, and even, in some instances, the name of a god
or temple to which the statue was dedicated. Also significant was the fact that some inscriptions
ended with a prayer “for life” (in the netherworld), which was modeled upon speech. The plea was
formulated in a sentence with subject (individual’s name), verb (presented), complement (statue),
indirect object (god’s name), and circumstantial complement (for life) following the syntax of spo-
ken language. The combination of the systematic use of phonograms and the building of sentences
according to the syntax of spoken language was the true takeoff of writing. The short funerary texts
proved to be the gateway to literature. About 2400 BC, Eannatum, the Sumerian king of the city of
Lagash, was able to boast his divine birth and his victories on the battlefield in a lengthy text carved
on a stone stele. By 2000 BC writing was used for historical, religious, legal, scientific, and liter-
ary texts, including poetry. By that time the scribes had probably long forgotten the modest token
system origin of writing.
THE PICTOGRAPHIC THEORY

When Egyptian and Chinese and Aztec manuscripts reached Europe in the eighteenth century, their
hieroglyphic and pictographic texts were a discovery that struck everyone’s imagination. Based on
these archaic scripts, William Warburton (1738), bishop of Gloucester, promptly concluded that
all writing systems must have derived from pictures. His so-called pictographic theory prevailed
until the middle of the twentieth century (Gelb, 1963, p. 62) and continues to be cited in popu-
lar books. Warburton’s idea, however, started to be eroded by each of the great decipherments,
from Champollion in 1822 to Ventris in 1953, who determined that Egyptian, Linear B, and also
the Chinese and Maya, used phonograms from their very beginning. In other words, the signs
that seemed to be mere pictures in fact stood for a sound rather than for the object represented.
The archaeological excavations at Uruk in 1930–1931 further strained the pictographic theory
by unearthing the early fourth millennium Mesopotamian tablets that bore signs in the shape of
impressed wedges, circles, ovals, and triangles that were anything but pictographic. Finally, the
envelopes holding tokens served as a “Rosetta stone,” revealing the true evolution of tokens to
writing.
In fact, it could be argued that the early Mesopotamian tablets were pictographic because the
logograms inscribed on the late Uruk tablets of 3000 BC were incised pictures of tokens, and the
numerals were impressed images of tokens. However, the first signs of writing were not the pictures
of bushels of grain and sheep and goats, as envisioned by Warburton. They were the pictures of
tokens symbolizing these goods in the previous accounting device.
CONCLUSION
The ancient Near East offers an extraordinary wealth of artifacts illustrating the 5500 years that
separated the first tokens of 7500 BC from the Sumerian tablets written in the classical cuneiform
script in 2000 BC. Eight thousand tokens ranging from 7500 to 3000 BC show that the origin of
writing was in accounting. 150 envelopes and 250 impressed tablets document the transmutation
of tokens into signs. 8000 incised pictographic tablets attest to the invention of abstract numerals
and of phonetic writing. Thirteen objects of the cemetery of Ur and 87 statues provide the evidence
for the adoption of writing for a funerary function. Finally, innumerable stone monuments and
cuneiform tablets of the Sumerian, Akkadian, and Neo-Sumerian period illustrate how writing
emulated more and more successfully the syntax of spoken language. The ancient Near East is
unique in providing the full documentation of the serendipitous evolution of writing to its most
ancient roots.
REFERENCES
Gelb, I. J. (1963). A study of writing. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
Schmandt-Besserat, D. (1996). How writing came about. Austin, TX: The University of Texas Press.
Schmandt-Besserat, D. (2007). When writing met art. Austin, TX: The University of Texas Press.
Warburton, W. (1738). Divine legation of Moses, London: Fletcher Gyles.
2 The Cultural Evolution
of Written Language
and Its Effects
A Darwinian Process From
Prehistory to the Modern Day
Andy Lock and Matt Gers
INTRODUCTION
Two questions have often polarized the literature devoted to the emergence of writing systems:
Can the history of writing systems be regarded as an evolutionary process? And does literacy have
consequences for human cognitive abilities? In this chapter we first consider the mosaic of prehis-
toric developments that underwrite the creation of a social “problem space” in human societies that
enable the possibility of writing. We then provide an “imaginative history” as to how this possibility
was realized. From this general overview we turn to the two questions, arguing first that many fea-
tures of this history of writing are best seen as examples of a cultural evolutionary process. Finally,
we address the cognitive question, explaining how writing has in a very real sense transformed
our cognitive abilities. This is particularly the case when one appreciates that cognitive systems
are properly seen as being constituted by brain, body, and world—writing constitutes part of an
extended human mind. Of necessity, ours is merely an overview and contributors to Goetzmann
and Rouwenhorst (2005) and to Houston (2004) provide further detailed and nuanced treatments.
THE CONTEXT OF THE ORIGINS OF WRITING

Writing lies somewhere in between “a system of human intercommunication by means of conven-
tional visible marks” (Gelb, 1963, p. 12), and “the graphic counterpart of speech” (Diringer, 1968,
p. 8). Writing systems have a time depth of around 5000 years. In order for writing to be possible,
both visual (iconic) and auditory (symbolic) systems must be in place (Robertson, 2004). The pre-
conditions for the emergence of writing thus include an appropriate cognitive suite, that is, the
abilities needed to be able to write; relevant technologies, that is, the tools, marking materials, and
surfaces on which to make marks; and social organizational structures that generate a motivation
to make durable marks, at the most basic level of representing objects or status for particular social
purposes, prior to coding speech at the most abstract level.
The abilities that underwrite reading and writing appear to have deep evolutionary roots. Apes,
particularly bonobos (e.g., Segerdahl, Fields, & Savage-Rumbaugh, 2006) who have been taught
to communicate via arbitrary symbol boards, demonstrate an ability to “read,” that is, to use icons
as symbolic markers and thus converse, albeit in basic ways, with their trainers. Monkeys show a
similar ability in assigning numerical values to arbitrary shapes so as to perform basic numerical
judgements (Diester & Nieder, 2010), and even pigeons are able to form concepts (for reviews see
11
Lock & Colombo, 1999; Roitblatt, 1987). Anatomical adaptations of the human upper respiratory
tract towards the unique modern configuration are in place amongst early or archaic H. sapiens
cranial fossils, and suggest that speech was possible somewhere around 200,000–400,000 years b.p.
(see Lock & Peters, 1999, for a review).
If we assume that indigenous Tasmanians, who spoke a modern form of language, possessed
their language at the time Tasmania was separated from the Australian mainland around 10,000 b.p.
(rather than somehow invented it subsequent to their isolation), then the use of modern, grammatically
organized, symbolic languages is at least that old (Cowley & Dixon, 1981; see also Mulvaney &
Kamminga, 1999, pp. 339–340: “Although there are reasons to believe that Tasmanian and south-
eastern mainland languages were related to each other before the creation of Bass Strait, all that
linguists are able to say about the modern languages is that their sound system is not particularly
different.”)
While there is no direct evidence for grammatical, symbolic language prior to this, the original
human colonization of Australia occurred around 70,000 b.p., when Australia was still sepa-
rated by sea from the nearest land that contemporary humans lived on by about 110 km. Some
form of maritime technology was almost certainly involved in establishing a viable population in
Australia, and it is difficult to imagine being able to coordinate a human group to plan an expedi-
tion and build a boat without some form of language (Davidson & Noble, 1992). Some form of
language, then, at least predates writing by a long period, and was almost certainly in place by
50,000 b.p.
The same holds for visual media. “Classical” European cave art dates back to 40,000 b.p. It
is during this early Upper Paleolithic period that the full ensemble of characteristically modern
human activities emerges: finely made tools, both of stone and “new” materials such as bone and
antler; parietal art and carving; beads and jewelry; burial; long-distance movement of goods, prob-
ably through trading between groups; composite tools such as ladders, spears, and fishing nets;
and so on. While scattered reports of earlier examples of “artistic” and “symbolic” works (e.g.,
Henshilwood, 2007; Mcbrearty & Brooks, 1999, point to much earlier, isolated examples of many
of these typically modern activities in the African record), it is somewhere between 50,000 and
30,000 b.p. in Europe that all of the characteristically modern behavioral suites are simultaneously
found, a period aptly termed “the creative explosion” by Pfeiffer (1982). The technological skills for
creating or recording representational visual signs were, like language, thus established well before
the two were combined into script-based media.
The historical achievement of literacy was a very rare event. Western maritime cultures obtained
first-hand global knowledge of the planet by the end of the eighteenth century. By then, very few
places, for example, the Malvinas/Falkland Islands, the Galapagos Islands, Ascension Island,
Bermuda, and the Seychelles, had been found to be uninhabited at first contact. Some of these
“desert” islands, such as the Pacific islands of Pitcairn, Christmas, and Norfolk, have since been
shown to have been inhabited previously in prehistoric times. Being remote did not imply being
“empty” of humans: Hawai’i, Easter Island, and New Zealand are all remote, but all were inhabited
by humans by the time of the original Western explorations. All these cultures were illiterate, but
otherwise “modern” in the sense we have just outlined. However, their socio-political structures
were also less elaborated than those of the urban cultures of the explorers. This is a prima facie
indication that the construction of writing technologies is intimately bound to changes in the forms
of human socio-cultural organization.
The emergence of the modern ensemble of activities at around 50,000–40,000 b.p. in Europe
is marked by a simultaneous reorganization of social life, thereby creating new possibilities that
could bootstrap the foundational potentialities of cognitive life. Social life prior to this transition
may be inferred to have moved away from its earlier character towards more modern forms, but
is still not fully modern. There is some evidence for the use of fire, and perhaps cooking, as early
as 700,000 b.p. at Zhoukoudian (Stringer, 1985), but there is no substantive evidence for hearths,
storage pits, or architecture. There is some evidence for true hunting, if only of smaller mammals
The Cultural Evolution of Written Language and Its Effects 13
(Binford, 1985; Shipman & Rose, 1983), even if scavenging were still a major source of animal
remains. Particular sites appear to have been used for particular activities (e.g., de Lumley, 1975;
Freeman, 1975; Keller, 1973). The picture here is complex to interpret, and the evidence is scanty.
Gamble concludes his review of this period by noting that:
It leaves an overwhelming impression of spontaneous, highly episodic behavior where stone tools were
made to do the job in hand before being dropped and their makers moving on. … What is lacking … is
any indication for such modern practices as detailed planning, widespread contracts, or elaborate social
display. There is no physical evidence of storage, raw materials all come from within a radius of 50 km,
and usually less than 5 km of the sites where they were used and any form of art, ornament, jewellery,
or decoration is entirely absent (Gamble, 1993, pp. 138–9, 143).
After the transition at 50,000–40,000 b.p., the evidence indicates changes in social organization in
two directions.
First, there is an increasing spatial and temporal extension that elaborates and sustains extended
kinship networks, communication beyond face-to-face encounters, and exchange of information
beyond the here and now, the organization of logistical economic strategies, and the extension of
the time depth of adaptation to environmental fluctuations (Whallon, 1989, p. 451). The everyday
world of informed human experience became “bigger” in both space and time. In this sense, then,
natural human memory became challenged, with the consequence that human groups who could
encode, recall, utilize, and communicate all this additional shared information more effectively
than other groups would have a marked advantage. Second, there is intensification in the organiza-
tion of the immediate social environment. Built shelters and semipermanent “villages” are found
after 40,000 b.p., not before (see, for example, Gamble, 1986).
At first sight it might seem paradoxical, but these two changes reinforce each other with respect
to the effects they can have in elaborating a linguistically mediated awareness of the world. Both
increasingly break the commonalities of shared knowledge between an individual and others: on the
one hand in the meeting of “strangers,” and on the other, in the “creation” of strangers through the
implicit demarcation of the “public” and “private” within the permanent society (see, for example,
Wilson, 1989, for a fuller discussion). Property is accumulated, and there is more to keep track
of; property is exchanged and bartered, and equivalent values thus need to be established and
remembered.
In both instances, information becomes more valuable, and information in an oral culture is
inherently fragile, and thus difficult to retain both within an individual’s lifetime and across gen-
erations. Speech is transient, unmediated memory is unreliable, and here is shadowed the potential
importance of any permanent system of retaining clues to what is known about both the natural
world and the socio-cultural world that is being created as it is lived. Marking the world as a way of
organizing activities and keeping track of them is thus a major factor in the slow shift toward writ-
ing. Barton and Hamilton (1999) list six activities that were precursors to the eventual construction
of writing systems:
1. Expressive and ritualistic markings of cave paintings and carvings: The interpretation of
Palaeolithic cave art is notoriously difficult, if not impossible. What we can note is that in
the classical European period of cave art (as well as Australian rock art) there is a marked
degree of realism between the image and the object it represents. It is very easy, for exam-
ple, to unmistakeably distinguish horses from bison in the Lascaux cave. Ibex, deer, mam-
moths, and so on are all clearly recognizable. Much cave art is very inaccessible in deep
caves, and would have needed an arduous expedition to both create and subsequently view.
As Bahn and Vertut (1988, p. 110) note, the flickering flame of a torch that was needed to
see them has the effect of making the animals portrayed in these locations appear to move.
Reaching the site after a long subterranean crawl through dark tunnels and then being con-
fronted with hordes of realistic, flickering images must have been a powerful experience,
and likely accompanied by a narrative that would leave a lasting impression. Despite the
problems of interpretation, it does seem likely that visual image and narrative were inter-
twined in these situations, presaging the storytelling ability that writing possesses.
2. Tallying: A widespread prearithmetic system of keeping track of time and objects, based
on a one-to-one correspondence between marks and items. Marshack (1972) considers that
quite early (30,000 b.p.) on, French bone artifacts may have acted as rudimentary lunar
calendars.
3. Property markings and totems: Visual signs reflect the need to identify interpersonal
relations and property. Prehistoric examples are rare, but jewelry has a deep time depth,
and is a clear way of symbolically conveying status and wealth. Flags, brands, tattoos, and
so on contain incipient properties of writing in that conventional images convey abstract
information directly.
4. Tokens: Tokens are very close to tallies and property marks, and are quite late develop-
ments (10,000 b.p.) associated with a level of political and economic organization in which
trade is well developed and surpluses need to be kept track of whilst in storage. We will
discuss these further, as they may well have been pivotal in the development of early cunei-
form systems of writing.
5. Mnemonic devices: Practically all the items listed here function as mnemonic devices, tally-
ing being an example of an externalized memory system. Some of the more complex items,
however, show a great degree of sophistication. A prime example is the Montgaudier baton
(10,000 b.p.; Figure 2.1), an engraved antler segment from well inland in southwest France.
The baton depicts particular spring plants, notably a flower which can be identified.
In addition, in this view, a bull and cow seal are depicted, along with a male salmon with
the characteristic hooked bottom jaw it develops having begun its spawning run upstream
from the Atlantic. The salmon’s run coincides with seals congregating on beaches for their
breeding system, both occurring in spring. The baton can thus be “read” as containing the
message: “When these plants appear it is time to journey down river to the sea for good
hunting.”
6. Pictographic or purely ideographic sequences (narratives): Boone (1994) provides a num-
ber of examples from an Aztec codex showing a journey from a homeland, with travel
depicted by footprints connecting the start of the journey (on the left) to its destination (on
the right; Figure 2.2). Similar examples were common among native North Americans,
and are still in use today in kitset construction manuals and so on.
While all these examples that predate modern systems of literacy bear a relation to reading and
writing, in that they provide frameworks for recording information and the suggestive outlines of
narrative, none of them attempt to represent speech. They can be translated into speech, but that
speech is not indicated in the text. In this sense, these early systems can be thought of as having
an existence independent of any particular language: the message of the Montgaudier baton can be
recovered by a German, Italian, French, or Chinese speaker. There thus arise two questions: First,
why might any social group go beyond these functional systems, that is, why might anyone want to
code speech? Second, how was it done?
FIGURE 2.1 The Montgaudier baton (10,000 b.p.).

FIGURE 2.2 An Aztec codex.
We suggest the answer to the first question is quite simple: nobody set out with this intention.
Writing emerged as an unintended consequence of other recording practices. This answer is sug-
gested from two sources. On the one hand it is difficult to gain any tractable handle on why humans
living a predominantly hunter-gatherer lifestyle would ever want to write speech down. We tend
to forget that we are dealing not just with a preliterate group of cultures, but pretheoretical ones at
the same time. What use could writing have been? The other source is the record itself, which we
turn to in the next section. Basically, writing systems have a haphazard historical origin and arise
as a consequence of aiming to do other things, out of which the possibility of writing down speech
bootstrapped itself into existence, and then, as socio-cultural structures changed, found various
uses in political systems that had themselves not existed at the start of the process. Herein lies an
important point.
In hindsight, it might seem obvious that a visual system for keeping track of ideas should be para-
sitic on speech. Speech, we suggest, has attained its remarkable role in human activity because the
link between sound and meaning for fluent speakers has a remarkable immediacy that comes easily
in ontogeny. An English speaker hears what another is saying quite directly. He or she hears “sense.”
This is quite different when confronted with someone speaking a different language one is not fluent
in: he or she then hears “noise.” This phenomenological equation of sound and meaning provides
a now obvious design parameter for a writing system to exploit: provide a representational system
for speech sounds, and the meaning of them will take care of itself. A representational system that
attempts to represent meaning by some other route misses out on this preexisting synergy between
sound and meaning. But, this obvious “solution” was a long time coming, and in one sense, gives
the appearance of being opaque to human access. However, the issue is also that, at the outset, the
problem of representing precise narratives was trivial for early societies, and a nonproblem neces-
sarily does not motivate the creation of its solution.
The problems facing early societies were concrete rather than abstract. In these situations, visual
images are more effective, as is easily appreciated today when confronted with wanting to match a
particular shade of paint: it is far more effective to use sample color cards for selecting a match than
trying to describe exactly what shade of blue one is interested in. The principle applies in the case
of, for example, the Montgaudier baton. Preserving the image of the particular plant that indicates
the sealing season is more effective than formulating a precise description of that plant, or any other
way of keeping track of a season. The problem of recording precision has to arise in increasingly
precise ways and contexts before any solution to it will be assayed.
AN IMAGINATIVE HISTORY OF WRITING SYSTEMS

Recent research (Houston, 2004, and contributors therein) indicates that we must be wary of the
grand narratives of earlier accounts of the origins of writing that see it as a gradual elaboration
down a single path from a single origin (e.g., Gelb, 1963; 1980) towards a more and more efficient
“technology,” of which the alphabet is the pinnacle, and from which a wondrous transformation of
the human intellect has inexorably followed. The actual situation is more complex than this.
As with any system that is elaborated over time, there are local vagaries and unpredictable devel-
opments that spin off down trajectories that have their own momentum. The structure of a particular
language, for example, may predispose it towards one way of representing it rather than another,
with the Japanese character system being well suited to the syllabic structural characteristics of
the Japanese language, and “better” for it than an alphabetic system. Similarly, languages that use
tone to grammatical effect would tend to a representational system that marked tone more precisely
than the way English handles it with just two abstract symbols—! and ?. Again, social factors play
a large role in how literacy is used, or even restricted. For example, keeping any literate system dif-
ficult to master because of the benefits that accrue to those who have the ability to learn it can be a
factor in maintaining a valuable monopoly that self-interestedly resists any motivation to make the
system “easier.” The same is true for any theory that holds alphabetic literacy to be a magic bullet
that transforms human cognitive abilities: it is more the case that any possibilities that might accrue
from literacy depend on the social practices that literacy is used for. Writing a shopping list or read-
ing a train timetable are quite different activities as compared to writing a philosophical treatise,
and they are embedded in different social practices.
That said, we believe there is merit in putting forward an “imaginary history” of the develop-
ments that led to the construction of writing systems, particularly the alphabetic one adopted by
Indo-European cultures. The merit is that it provides a broad-brush picture from which some gener-
alizations are possible. We take the view here that while “just-so” stories have a shady reputation in
the evolutionary literature, the fact of the matter is that the actual course traversed in the invention
of writing is itself a just-so accomplishment. That is, what actually happened could have been quite
different, and it is important to be aware that the course that was followed was just one possible
variation on a common set of themes.
A number of important points will emerge from our imaginary history. First, the prime function
that writing has today—to graphically represent speech—was not the problem space it emerged
from. Prewriting activities and notations such as those we noted in the previous section were aimed
at countering the vagaries of unmediated human memory, to keep track of “things,” such as rough
calendrical information that is important to a way of life. Writing down speech was not the problem
that early notation systems were looking to solve, but access to this adaptive space emerged as a
result of very different intentions.
Second, this quality of the emergence of qualitatively different and new activities is an impor-
tant characteristic of the historical path towards writing speech down. Capturing speech requires a
quite sophisticated mental operation in an abstract problem space rather than a concrete one. This is
similar to the problem at the root of symbolically mediated mathematical skills: creating an abstract
notion of quantities or numbers. In fact, third, there is an intimate relation between mathematical
and writing skills, with the latter emerging from the former, and the emergence of mathematical
problems creates a mind space that enables written literacy. Fourth, these problem spaces arise as
unintended consequences of social practices, problems that are co-opted in other modalities to
bootstrap solutions to previously unimagined purposes with far-reaching consequences.
TOWARDS WRITING
Tally sticks date back to before 10,000 b.p. (Marshack, 1972). They are protonumerical, in that they
are usable without any abstract notion of number, relying on a concrete one-to-one correspondence
between mark and object. It is when economies became more important to the functional organiza-
tion of prehistoric societies that artifacts appear that can be interpreted as constituting the origins of
the mathematical and writing systems used today. Subsequently, two additional factors will need to
be mixed into our account: urbanization and institutional religion.
The basic explanatory framework has been set out by Schmandt-Besserat (1978, 1980, 1981,
1982, 1996; see also Chapter 1 in this volume). Schmandt-Besserat’s claim is that around 10,000 b.p.
in the Near East people began to trade over quite long distances. In order to not be cheated by
intermediaries, a man trading five cows over a long distance would put five small clay models of
cows inside containers called bullae, and then seal them up. Part of the contract was that the person
delivering the cows to their final destination would take a container with them and deliver it in its
unbroken state. On arrival, the new owner could break open the container and check that the num-
ber of items consigned for transport had been delivered.
A trade system can get more complex once a “merchant” establishes a storehouse. People can
keep records with these bullae as to what they have in stock, who owes whom what, and so on. But,
the problem with the original system is that it is necessary to keep breaking the bullae to find out
what is inside them. The solution? Stamp impressions of the contents into the wet clay of the bul-
lae when the items are enclosed in it. Add a stamp for your name, and cover the entire surface of
the bulla with these marks to make sure that no one can make a little hole in it and take any of the
tokens out of it so as to cheat the system. Some examples of tokens are shown in Figure 2.3. There
were probably many variations that did not persist or spread. Notice how many of them are begin-
ning to be quite abstract, in that it is difficult to guess what commodities they represent. This is an
important step, for where the count stones are symbols for objects, the impressions are symbols for
symbols.
This is all a bit cumbersome, so flatten out a piece of clay and impress two-dimensional pictures
of the original models into it. Stop making the pictures realistic, by beginning to stylize them for
speed of writing, the style being dictated by the form of the impressing tool, the stylus. The result is
familiar: lots of cuneiform marks impressed into clay tablets (Figure 2.4).
One can visualize the process. At first the innovation flourished because of its convenience: anyone could
read what tokens [count stones] a bulla contained without destroying the envelope and its seal impressions.
What then happened was virtually inevitable, and the substitution of two dimensional portrayals of the
tokens for the tokens themselves would seem to have been the crucial link between the archaic recording
system and writing (Schmandt-Besserat, 1978, p. 47).
FIGURE 2.3 Sumerian bullae from third millenium BC.

FIGURE 2.4 Two-dimensional cuneiform.
While this scenario is hypothetical, it gains some credence from the similarities between the
form of the three-dimensional tokens and the two-dimensional written symbols of early Sumerian
writing (see Gaur, 1984, for examples). At the same time, a coordination is set up between the writ-
ten sign, the object it represents, and the word in the language for it, such that a link is made at the
level of symbol standing for symbol : pictogram/count token : pictogram/word. Now, pictograms
are well suited to represent objects which (1) have a visible form, (2) a lasting duration, and (3) can
be reproduced in drawing. But language provides a means for communicating further aspects of
reality: (1) qualities, (2) abstract ideas and positions, (3) movements and conditions, (4) complex
facts and relations, and (5) “operative units” (prefixes, suffixes, articles, demonstratives, etc.). Thus,
a new problem situation is set up, to be dealt with only when social conditions raise the problem of
representing and conveying information that speech can already encode beyond the practical sphere
of accounting.
When this became desirable, ideographic systems reacted in general through using certain kinds
of analogy which “abstract and transfer features of the primary writing form, i.e., the ideograms”
themselves (Ehlich, 1983, p. 111):
Thus the problem solution consisted in systematically guiding the reader’s association (with a certain
degree of arbitrariness): Guiding the reader’s associating aims towards standardized identification pat-
terns which enable the reader (a) to recognize the pictogram or ideogram does not stand for what it
directly represents and (b) to choose, in an appropriate way, a related alternative (Ehlich, 1983, p. 112).
One solution was to combine pictograms, for example, so that “bread” plus “mouth” represents
“eating.” An alternative was to rely on analogy, such as to represent “cool” by water running from
a pitcher, or “the south” by a lily that grows there. A further solution space that could be tried is to
indicate the sound of the intended word.
TOWARDS REPRESENTING SPEECH

The first attempts to include sound marking made the representational system very complicated.
For example, supposing one were at a point where one had a picture symbol that originally stood
for “god,” but which could now mean “heaven” or “religion” as well. How might one know which
meaning was intended? It is possible to rely on the context to enable the solution, but this has
problems (discussed next). One of the first ad hoc solutions was to add a second pictogram or symbol
to the first, a symbol that suggested which idea was meant in the following way: original + gate =
god; original + hat = heaven; and original + rope = religion. Thus, the second symbol gives a clue
as to the sound needed to read between the three possibilities the reader is confronted with. This
makes reading even simple things a bit like doing a cryptic crossword in a newspaper, and is neither
a very transparent nor easily mastered system. But, it at least gives access to the idea that one could
write down the spoken language sounds that represent ideas and objects, rather than trying to rep-
resent those things directly. The dawning of this possibility brings closer what we now think of as
writing in the West: an encoding of speech sounds.
However, unambiguously encoding speech is not a simple task. People nowadays are so used to
reading that it often appears to them intuitively obvious that the words written as “keep,” “kool,”
and “kat” all start with the same sound, represented by the consonantal letter “k.” But, in actu-
ality, the “k” sound comes out differently when each of these words is said, because its place
of articulation in our mouths is determined before it is produced by the shape our mouths have
already assumed to pronounce the following vowel. In fact, it is only possible to think in terms of
speech having vowels and consonants because someone invented these categories, and did so after
a number of historical false starts. It is a theoretical insight of the first order, but not one without
precedent.
The first move was to represent each syllable, so that each of the following, bah, bay, beh, bee,
bih, bi, bo, boo, buh, and so on, was written differently. This might code speech effectively, but it
makes the number of symbols one needs to learn extremely large. At the same time this is also to
shy away from the problem that “speech” is only really standardized when it is written down: we all
say the “same” word quite differently because of our accents. New Zealand children are regularly
baffled, for example, as to why what sounds like “igz” is written as “eggs.” One solution to all this
is to simplify the system as much as possible. Have one symbol for all the above “b”s, and leave out
the hard words anyway, on the assumption that it will do. Nw tht cn mk fr qut dffclt tsk. But this is
just about manageable unless the writer wants to be really clear and specific in what he or she wants
to say—and why might he or she want to do that? There might not be a need to be specific in a
small-scale society that trades in high degrees of common, shared background knowledge, since the
contextual knowledge needed to guide reading is widely distributed amongst members of society. In
fact, it is only necessary to be specific in the text itself when trying to encode what everyone doesn’t
know. It would, then, be a problem in trying to work out from inherited scriptures what God actually
said one should and shouldn’t do.
In the end, through modifications introduced for the writing of Semitic languages, a full alpha-
betic system was eventually put in place by the Greeks. The alphabet relies on the making of an
abstract, theoretical distinction between consonants and vowels, a distinction that is not available in
speech as it is spoken. The skill necessary to do this was itself something that emerged, in this prob-
lem space, out of confronting possible solutions to practical socio-economic problems. Alphabetic
writing makes reading easier, in the sense that there are a reduced number of symbols to learn that
can explicitly code meaning.
Changizi and Shimojo (2005) argue that ease of reading was the primary force driving changes
in writing systems. This ease of reading meant more people could become literate, and different
available accounts of events could be inspected visually, with the written medium acting as the
memorial record, open to public scrutiny, rather than everyone having to rely on their own memory
of what someone had said or done. Not only can “history” be set straight, a task Herodotus began,
but so can the statements made in the present, as Aristotle showed in his analyses of the relations
pertaining between different statements. It has been claimed that we owe his invention of the syl-
logism and the bases of modern systems of logical inference to writing:
The kinds of analysis involved in the syllogism and in the other forms of logical procedure are clearly
dependent upon writing (Goody & Watt, 1963, p. 345).
FROM COUNTING TO FINANCE

The long-distance trade that Schmandt-Bessaret proposes as a motivation for the bullae system to
be devised goes beyond just counting: it represents a contract between people. Contracts are codifi-
cations of obligations. Obligations can be handled face-to-face in small-scale societies by a human
memory system honed to the needs of a system of reciprocal altruism and cheater detection (e.g.,
Cosmides, 1989). With the advent of urbanization, unmediated memory is no longer sufficient. At
its height, about 5000 b.p., the walled Sumerian city of Uruk had around 10,000 inhabitants. The
economy appears to have been based on animal husbandry and agriculture, with supplementary
fishing and hunting. There were numerous specialized trades supporting these activities. A number
of problem spaces result from this form of social organization.
First, the amount of food needed to sustain such a geographically concentrated population pro-
duces a new set of logistics. Both raw (e.g., meat, fish, vegetables) and processed foods (e.g., bread)
are inherently perishable (refrigeration was way off in the Sumerian future, though preservation
through pickling and curing was certainly possible at that time). Food needed to be distributed on
a regular basis, and the potlatch system that sufficed for smaller-scale societies would clearly not
work. Some other form of redistribution was required. Second, while a system of reciprocal altru-
ism can work amongst a small-scale society in which everyone knows each other, human memory
can in no way cope with the obligations created in a “friendship group” of 10,000. Some way of
keeping track of obligations was required.
Third, in small-scale societies without a division of labor, everyone can do everything necessary
for the maintenance of social life: favors could thus be repaid in kind. But in a large-scale, differen-
tiated social organization this is not possible. Some formalized exchange system is needed. A barter
system is one solution, but this becomes complicated in a society in which food is perishable while
manufactured goods are substantial, and perishable food becomes of value only if (1) there is more
of it than meets the needs of its producer, and (2) there is an artifact that enables its transport.
For example, suppose one has three cows and one dependent child. Three cows produce far more
milk than two people can consume. The surplus has no value unless either the milk can be put in a pail
and transported to somewhere that it can be exchanged (for a pail, perhaps; so how much milk, which
is perishable, would a pail maker want to “sell” or “hire” a pail, which is permanent, given that he
can’t store milk for very long, either), or the milk can be turned into cheese, which has a longer shelf
life. Consequently, with the emergence of cities and urban life there simultaneously arise problems
involving time (perishability versus permanence), space (distribution), how the two are to be conflated
in value that can be transferred across different items, and how to keep track of all these dealings.
Fourth, once subsistence items become commodities, they constitute valuable property. This
needs to be defensible and recordable. Defense requires nonproductive groups devoted to these
tasks: a military to protect the collective wealth and accountants to reckon individual wealth. Both
these groups need to be supported. What is a soldier worth in terms of milk or fish? A potter or
pail maker? An accountant, even? And that is before we get to lawyers, whose social institution
represents a shift from a defense of property by force to one based on codified agreement enforced
by authority. The form of social organization we are imagining here is clearly ripe for the invention
of money: an abstract symbolic reckoning of the value of individual commodities. And recall how
value is tied in with (at least) the properties of commodities (which necessarily have a temporal
component, varying with distributional technologies; the value of crayfish in New Zealand was
minimal prior to the ability to fly them to Tokyo in 24 hours from catch to market). Time, as has
been observed, is money.
Clearly, there are incredible intellectual problems involved in solving the above issues. The prac-
tical issue appears to have been solved in Uruk through using the temple as a redistributive center
that kept the records of transactions using bullae and extracted a “tax” that enabled the upkeep of
this administrative system and the administrative authority, that is, the king, as a representative
of divine authority, and the militia and lawyers who could protect the system from internal and
FIGURE 2.5 The Warka or Uruk Vase from the temple of the Sumerian goddess Inanna in the ancient city
of Uruk, dated to 3200-3000 BC. The three tiers of carving begin with local vegetation, and then a parade of
sheep and oxen. The middle tier portrays naked priests carrying offerings. The top tier is a full scene in which
the goddess is presented with tributes.
external threats by force if necessary. How to capture this system and explain it to the city dwellers?
A proto-writing system is useful (see Figure 2.5).
But we also need to bring in a fifth emerging problem space and its solution: how to deal with
the socially constructed conflation of time and space into the symbolic representation of value as
money. Put simply, money “value” can be accumulated (to equal wealth), because symbols are not
perishable in the same way as meat, fish, and vegetables are, but substantial in the way live animals
are, especially when symbolized by weights of silver. The natural tendency for animal numbers to
grow in a pastoral society through reproduction appears to be the analogical basis for the develop-
ment of interest that could be earned on money.
For example, if one kept 20 sheep for a year, one could expect to have, say, 30 sheep at the end of
the year. If living wealth could increase, there is no reason why inanimate tokens of symbolic wealth
could not. There are linguistic clues that this expectation analogically underwrites the invention of
monetary interest (though the actual situation is far more convoluted than we are imaginatively
portraying here; see Hudson, 2000). Thus “pecuniary” is rooted in the Latin “pecus,” meaning
flock; “capital” from the Latin “caput,” a head of livestock; “interest” in Greek was “tokos,” in Latin
“faenus”; and “mas” in Sumerian. All of these are terms for young animals, calves, and birth.
Interest thus came to be charged on money, and money existed because people believed it did,
and were able to legally enforce this belief in established practice. Thus it became necessary
to learn how to calculate interest. There exist from this period numerous cuneiform tablets
used in teaching these calculations. One example, the tablet identified as VAT 8528, asks (see
Neugebauer, 1969; also Muroi, 1990)
If I lent one mina of silver at the rate of 12 shekels (1/60 of a mina) per year, and I received in repayment,
one talent (60 minas) and 4 minas. How long did the money accumulate?
The answer is 5 years, and appears to be worked out on the basis of an understanding of powers
to the base two, a form of logarithms (Lewy, 1947; Nemet-Nejat, 1993). Here, then, is a clear exam-
ple of how social organization can create problem spaces that bring together literacy, numeracy,
and teaching devices—abstract ideas and symbolic operations—into social practices and cognitive
operations that would otherwise be impossible to either imagine or accomplish.
In our imaginary history, we see these developments as all intertwined. That is, it is within this
nexus that writing gains its impetus, and through an incremental and piecemeal process of dealing
with new problem spaces that are bootstrapped into existence, literacy and numeracy feed back into
the present to provide the means for their further development.
THE EVOLUTION OF WRITING SYSTEMS

Having sketched a trajectory of how writing systems emerged, we can now turn to the question of
cultural evolution. Can we regard the elaboration of writing systems to be an evolutionary process?
Many authors argue that human culture, at least in many instances, evolves by Darwinian natural
selection (e.g., Cavelli-Sforza & Feldman, 1981; Boyd & Richerson, 1985; Richerson & Boyd, 2005;
Dennett, 1995; Mesoudi et al., 2006; Shennan, 2009). Those who study writing systems have argued
whether or not writing is a case in point. Some fiercely reject the idea (e.g., Barton & Hamilton, 1999;
Houston, 2004). Others have been more sympathetic (e.g., Trigger, 2004; Changizi & Shimojo, 2005;
Skelton 2008). At times debate has been ill-conceived because of confusion over what the notion of a
writing system “evolving” actually entails. There are at least three distinct theses intended when it is
suggested that writing systems evolved: First, it may merely be meant that culture changes over time.
This sort of evolution is surely trivially true. Second, it might be meant that some goal-oriented or
progressive process is at work. Third, and as it is conceived in this chapter, cultural evolution is at
least in some instances a Darwinian process. That is, culture evolves when there is descent of cul-
tural traits, with modification, modulated by a process of selection.
DARWINIAN CULTURAL EVOLUTION

It certainly appears that we can construct an explanation for the transition from the preconditions
for writing described at the beginning of this chapter, through to the emergence of writing proper,
which is driven by the fact that writing is good for our survival. Our lineage’s visual-iconic sys-
tem and auditory-symbolic system were pushed, in conjunction with available technologies, by the
evolutionary problems of coordinating individual social and economic activities in an increasingly
complex milieu. The writing systems that emerged look like mechanisms for solving these prob-
lems. Evolutionary mechanisms of this sort are known as adaptations.
However, in order to assert that some piece of culture has evolved in Darwinian fashion we either
must be able to identify cultural replicators (Dawkins, 1976; Hodgson & Knudsen, 2010) or we must
be able to demonstrate that the population of cultural things in question exhibits the right sort of
variation and inheritance pattern and that selective pressures are in operation. To quote Godfrey-
Smith (2009), a Darwinian population is one that exhibits, “variation in character, which leads to
differences in reproductive output (differences in how much or how quickly individuals reproduce),
and which is inherited to some extent” (p. 39). Reproductive output in cases of cultural evolution
pertains to the spread of cultural artifacts or traits, not necessarily to human reproductive success.
In the case of writing systems this could be reproduction of characters, scribal hands, even whole
systems. The “individuals” can be pieces of material culture.
Four preliminary points are important: First, it is not necessary that all cultural features evolve
according to Darwinian principles in order that some cultural features arise through this process.
Second, Darwinian evolution of culture does not entail some linear or necessary march from sav-
agery to barbarism to civilization as described by outdated and Eurocentric arguments such as
Tylor’s (1871). Third, Darwinian cultural evolution does not mean that culture must transform
toward some goal, optimal, or ideal. Darwinian evolution does not necessitate the normative notion
of “progress.” Sterelny (2007) describes some particularly vivid examples of cultural evolution
resulting in disaster. Also, Dawkins (1976) outlines the game-theoretic mechanisms by which popu-
lations may hit on evolutionarily stable traits that lead inevitably to extinction.
Fourth, contemporary evolutionary theory has been enriched by the concept of niche construc-
tion (Odling-Smee, Laland, & Feldman, 2003). The basic idea here is that as reproducing entities
evolve, so do their environments. Thus, as an organism evolves, it changes the environment from
one in which it was absent to one in which it is present. The presence of an organism itself can
provide a possible niche, which acts as the selective environment for another organism. In this
way, once plants evolve, they provide an environment in which herbivorous animals become pos-
sible, and specify what characteristics those herbivores need to exhibit to fill those niches. What is
selected “naturally” may thus be based on random mutations in a genetically reproducing system,
but the form that is selected is by no means random. In this sense, then, we can talk about learn-
ing as a potentially evolutionary system, in which an array of novel responses to a situation might
be generated by an animal, from which useful ones are winnowed out by “natural” selection and
retained. Some cultural change likewise fits this characterization while at the same time not relying
on genetic mechanisms. It is in this sense that many nowadays use the term “Darwinian evolution”
as a descriptive and explanatory framework.
We propose that writing systems have evolved from precursor systems and traits in stepwise
fashion according to general principles of variation and selection. This evolution has been of the
writing technologies themselves and this evolution is independent of, though intimately tied to, any
evolution of human agents or human psychology.
Any Darwinian account of a cultural trait must provide some description of the actual processes
that instantiate the role of the abstract Darwinian mechanisms. So an account of the mechanism
producing a supply of variation (e.g., scribe copying error, human creativity, etc.) must be coupled
with an account of the inheritance mechanism (e.g., master-apprentice teaching, hybrid learning con-
strained by environmental context, rote learning of texts, etc). We can then link a generalized theory
of selection to a specific account of the selective pressures on the technology of interest (e.g., human
psychological preferences, the supply of raw materials, political or social norms, etc). Darwinian the-
ory may then provide an ultimate explanation for the persistence of the suite of “proximate” causes.
BUILDING THE ANCESTRAL TREE

Many features of writing systems suggest immediate parallels with evolving systems. It is estimated
that more than 10% of cuneiform texts are lexical texts, or instructions for future scribes to learn
and use the system accurately (Cooper, 2004). Genes, of course, have a host of associated cellular
copying machinery, which they need in order to be perpetuated. The fact that writing systems are
inherited in a fashion that means they are necessarily recorded in external media and are highly
conservative makes them good candidates for evolutionary analysis. Evolution does not necessar-
ily proceed in gradualistic or one-directional fashion. We often see stepwise bursts of rapid change
(Gould, 2002). This is apparent, too, in the history of writing (Houston, 2004, p. 6).
Trigger (2004) provides a diagram (reproduced as Figure 2.6) showing the historical relatedness
of various scripts. Inspection of these relationships immediately suggests the sort of patterning seen
in biological “family trees” (or “phylogenies”) of organic relatedness. Furthermore, languages and
Cherokee
2000
North Indian scripts

South Indian scripts
Manchu
Kurdish
Vai
Honku1
Mongol
Khmer
Roman scripts
Aztec-Mixtec
Hebrew
Ethiopic
1500
Tangut
Armenian
Cyrillic
Uyghur
Coptic
Arabic
Japanese
1000
Maya
Korean
Runic
Greek
Ogam
Sogdian
Epl-Olmec
500
West Iranian
Nabatean
Aramaic
Meroitic
Babylonian/Assyrian
AC
BC Brahmi
Zapotec
Phoenician
Chinese
Old South Arabian
500
Olmec(old)
Urartian
Ancient Egyptian
Elamito
1000
Northern linear
Ugaritic
Hittito
1500
Hurrian
Proto-Semitic
Akkadian
2000
Sumerian
Logosyllabic with heavy reliance on syllabary
2500
Proto-Cupeiform
3000
Semasiologographic recording
Logoconsonantal
3500
Alphasyllabary
Consonantary
Phonographic scripts
Logographic
Logosyllabic
Unclassified
Logophonic scripts
Alphabet
Syllabary
Indirect influence
FIGURE 2.6 Historical relations between scripts. This figure represents the origins and radiations of the
various written scripts. Note that writing originated independently in several locations. What followed was a
surge in number and variety of scripts analogous to the diversification observed when new organisms emerge
and adapt to a suite of different niches. Note in particular that the burst of alphabetic scripts appears to coin-
cide with the extinction of logosyllabic scripts, and this may hint at evidence of competition. (Reprinted with
permission of Cambridge University Press.)
writing systems are intimately linked. It has been shown that human languages evolve by natural
selection and are amenable to analysis using evolutionary tools (see Gray, 2005). Writing systems
therefore seem like another ideal candidate for explanation in the same fashion. What needs to be
established is that there is in fact descent, with modification and natural selection.
Phylogenetic Systematics
Evolutionary phylogenetic systematics is a methodology developed to analyze biological lineages
and to establish evolutionary relationships. We can collect data about traits. Different traits can then
be systematically inspected and their differences categorized. For example, monkeys have tails,
humans do not; this is a trait difference. Systematic trait differences can be analyzed using algo-
rithmic methods to generate “family trees,” or cladograms, and scientifically test the conclusions
of traditional paleontological methods. Phylogenetic systematics is now becoming popular for the
analysis of cultural change over time and has been applied to such lineages as Iranian woven arti-
facts (Tehrani & Collard, 2009) and to compare the coevolution of European cutlery (Riede, 2009).
It also has a significant history of use in the analysis of language (see, e.g., Gray, 2005).
When using phylogenetics we must select taxa. Taxa are groups of things taken to be units of
interest. These could be organisms, populations, or species, for example. Whether the relations
between scripts suggested by Trigger (2004) actually exist can be formally tested using this tool
from evolutionary biology.
Ensuring that a script survives necessitates teachers and apprentices (Houston 2004). Scripts are
inherited through teaching and learning and the nuances of particular scribes supply a source of
variation into the machinery of script transmission. Skelton (2008) applies phylogenetic systematics
to written language. Because evolutionary variation happens at the level of the various users of a
writing system, Skelton chooses scribal hands for his taxa in investigating the origins of Linear B.
Linear B was a writing system used to keep economic records on clay tablets on the Greek main-
land and on Crete between 1450 and 1200 BCE. Skelton notes that palaeographic techniques, in
which differences in sign form are used to judge how closely two writing traditions are related, have
Hagia triada linear A

19 Zakros linear A
Pylose 91
RCT 124-B
RCT 124-R
29 Knossos 101
36 KN V52
59 Knossos 103
57 80 Knossos 115
40 Khania 115
Knossos 117
Knossos 112a
Knossos 118
Knossos 141
30 Mycenae 51
90 52 45 Mycenae 61
11 Mycenae 57
12 22 Thebes 304
31 Thebes 305
Mycenae 52
32 13
Thebes 303
38 Pylos 26
82 Pylos 32
72 Pylos 1
79 Pylos 2
<5 82
70 Pylos 3
71 68 Kafkania pebble
49 38 Pylos 23
18 Pylos 21
90
Pylos 12
Pylos 43
Pylos 41
My Ui 2
36 Knossos 104
Knossos 111
RCT 124-S
Pylos 13
Khania linear A
Tree length = 291.80323, CI excluding uniformative characters = 0.4794
HI excluding uniformative characters = 0.5206, retention index (RI) = 0.6462
Rescaled consistency index (RC) = 0.3190
FIGURE 2.7 The most parsimonious phylogenetic reconstruction of Linear B.

been employed in discussions of the evolution of Linear B. However Skelton then adapts phylogenetic
systematics to evaluate this paleographic evidence. Taking the nuances of scribal hands as data and
applying the algorithms of phylogenetic systematics he infers the relations between scribal hands.
Overall Skelton finds that when the data are analyzed with criterion for finding the optimally
parsimonious phylogenetic tree (Figure 2.7), the tree produced is largely consistent with the histori-
cal context of Linear B. This includes lending support to the theory that two scribal hands found
at Pylos predate other materials from that site. The optimally parsimonious tree is the tree relation
between different scribal hands that posits the least evolutionary changes to move from an ancestral
trait to a more recent one (i.e., novel traits are gained the least number of times).
For the most part, all taxa from a particular site group together, and branching occurs in the order of
the archaeological dates of each site … analysis supports the hypothesis that Hands 13 and 91 date to
an earlier time period than the rest of the material from Pylos (Skelton, 2008, p. 171).
The fact that phylogenetic systematic analysis agrees with the archaeological hypotheses suggests
that these two methods of investigation are arriving at similar conclusions. This is inconsistent with
claims that evolutionary analysis of writing systems is a poor way to explain these processes.
It seems that writing systems are inherited and during the process of descent they may be modi-
fied in various ways. On the one hand phylogenetic analysis assumes descent with modification, but
the quantitative strength of the fit of the most parsimonious tree can lend support to the hypothesis
of inheritance in particular cases.
SELECTION AND FITNESS

Without natural selection descent with modification is not Darwinian evolution. Selection plays a
dominant and central role in all abstract conceptions of Darwinian processes. Evolution is all about
the interaction between an individual or population and its environment. From the genes’ point of
view (a perspective on evolution famously popularized by Dawkins, 1976) the selective pressures
come from the nature of rival genes, the organisms in the environment, particulars of ecology and
habitat, and the supply of particular resources. From the point of view of a writing system, selective
pressures occur due to particulars of the human visual apparatus and human psychology, the nature
of material culture, the existence of nurturing or hostile political or social contexts, and competi-
tion from rival writing systems. Even those who oppose the notion of evolution in writing systems
can’t help but use telling language in this context, “as syllabic systems interact with the structure of
the spoken language they are trying to capture they adapt themselves through a variety of devices”
(Barton & Hamilton, 1999, p. 793, emphasis added).
Natural selection is neutral as to how variation in writing systems arises. Whether by mistakes
by scribes, artistic flair, or systematic planning, if a characteristic of a writing system enhances
the likelihood that that system will be inherited, then it is retained over time. We already alluded
to the unintended consequences reinforcing writing systems in the previous section, Building the
Ancestral Tree. It is likely, also, that clearer pictogram combinations, for example, would tend to
persist. What we need to do is to provide a rich and detailed story of how selection has shaped writ-
ing systems over time. There are many potential selective mechanisms operating that may tend to
direct the evolution of writing systems, or favor one system over another. These include the writing
surface, how much space there is, what can be recorded, how easy it is to make the marks, the con-
text, how entrenched the system is economically or politically, the time taken to learn the system
(are there hundreds of signs or merely a handful?), how many users there are, and so on.
Also, there is the issue of the efficiency of recording and the ease of reading. “Writing systems
are under selective pressure to be easy to read and write, but there are reasons to think that the
principal pressure is for ease of reading” (Changizi & Shimojo, 2005, p. 272). This is because writ-
ten texts are often read over and over again, but only written once. Changizi and Shimojo describe
fundamental characteristics of the human visual system, which they argue have been part of the
drive causing the evolution of scripts. Writing systems interact with the human visual system and
over time variations and innovations in scripts that make them easier to read will tend to persist.
Efficiency is a key feature in reading ease (and some scripts are more efficient than others). But, as
Changizi and Shimojo demonstrate, it is not true that the optimally efficient scripts are the most
readable. So scripts settle on to an evolutionary “fitness peak” (which is constrained by existing
entrenchments in the script) where efficiency aligns with nuances of human vision.
We also see what may well be large-scale selection and extinction in writing systems. For example,
it certainly looks like the significant radiation of northern linear scripts from 500 BC to 500 AD coin-
cides with the extinction of proto-cuneiform derived logosyllabic scripts (see Figure 2.6). Whether this
was causal, and whether it was due to competition and fitness differences, is hard to confirm.
Contemporary evolutionary theory is a rich mix that respects development, the effect of con-
structed niches and contexts on evolutionary trajectories, the possibility of multiple channels of
inheritance, and many mechanisms of selection and the generation of variation. What we have is
a theoretic framework guiding us to seek explanations of the mechanisms of inheritance and the
generation of variation, with supplementary appeal to natural selection as “ultimate” explanation of
the persistence of this richness of proximate mechanisms.
AN EVOLUTIONARY “GOOD TRICK”

Descent with modification permits the inheritance and accumulation of culture. Writing systems
may be learned by subsequent generations and then altered or added to; thus, we can get “ratchet
effects” in culture and rapid accumulation of novel cultural items (Tomasello, 1999). But writing
systems also become a part of the developmental environment of subsequent generations. Children
born into a world partly constituted by accumulating and somewhat diverse writings experience
a novel developmental context in each generation. It seems likely that the very presence of some
primitive signs and writings, which arose through variation, inheritance, and natural selection, also
provided the basis for a cognitive developmental ratchet. We discuss this in the next section.
Such ratchet effects are worth remembering when trying to understand whether the origins of
writing led to dramatic social, economic, and cognitive change, or whether writing systems were
the result of such change (Barton & Hamilton, 1999, p. 808). The answer is probably both. Writing
systems arising from necessity drive changes in the developmental context, which then drives fur-
ther elaboration of writing and social changes, thus providing heritable variation for selection to act
upon. There are important synergies between evolution and development.
It seems almost inevitable that writing systems of some sort will evolve out of the precursor
technologies and psychological traits we described in “The Context of the Origins of Writing,”
given a few general principles of variation, inheritance, and the selective challenges described in
the previous section, “Selection and Fitness.” Evolutionary theory would seem to predict that some
method for keeping track of complex, adaptively important information across time and space
would emerge. Writing in this sense is an evolutionary “good trick” (Dennett, 1995).
DOES WRITING LEAD TO COGNITIVE CHANGE?

At the outset we suggested that there are two questions that often polarize the literature. We have
argued that the emergence of writing is indeed appropriately seen as a case of Darwinian evolu-
tion, and we now address the issue of whether the origins of writing signaled a cognitive change.
Human minds have clearly been evolving in parallel with the evolution of writing systems. But, it
will become clear in this section that human cognitive evolution may result from the evolution of
technologies like writing and does not always depend on genetic evolution.
Vygotsky (1962) argued that language influences the higher psychological processes. If this is
so then there seems to be “an a priori case for assuming that subsequent changes in the means and

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WRITING

Elena L. Grigorenko, Elisa Mambrino, David D. Preiss

New York London

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

International Standard Book Number: 978-1-84872-812-7 (Hardback)

PART I The Origins of Writing

Chapter 1 Tokens as Precursors of Writing ..................................................................................3

Chapter 3 Language, Literacy, and Mind: The Literacy Hypothesis.......................................... 37

PART II Writing and Human Development

Chapter 4 The Interrelationship of Child Development and Written Language Development.......47

Chapter 6 The Writing Brain of Normal Child Writers and Children With Writing

PART III Working Memory and Expertise in Writing

Chapter 7 The Development of Writing Expertise ................................................................... 109

Chapter 9 Towards a Dynamic Approach of How Children and Adults Manage

Chapter 10 Descriptive Writing .................................................................................................. 159

PART IV The Teaching of Writing

Chapter 12 Creative Writing as an Assessment of Content ........................................................ 191

Chapter 13 Improving the Writing Skills of College Students ...................................................209

PART V Creativity and Emotions in Writing

Chapter 16 The Creative Writer and Mental Health: The Importance

Chapter 17 Seeing, Connecting, Writing: Developing Creativity and Narrative

Chapter 18 The Role of Affect in Students’ Writing for School................................................. 293

PART VI Disorder of Written Language: Diagnostic Criteria,

Chapter 19 Neuropsychology of Writing .................................................................................... 311

Chapter 20 Written Expression as a Neuropsychological Nexus: A Working

PART VII Group Testing and Assessment of Skill and

Chapter 23 Large-Scale Online Writing Assessments: New Approaches Adopted in the

Chapter 24 Design of a College-Level Test of Written Communication: Theoretical and

PART VIII Testimonials

Chapter 26 Bringing Redemption to the World: A Translation Sampler .................................... 413

Chapter 28 The Story Behind My Being a Writer ...................................................................... 437

Chapter 29 Twelve Hundred Publications Later: Reflections on a Career of Writing in

institutions to implement writing assessment initiatives either as a graduation requirement or for

Baptiste Barbot Paulina Flotts

Carl Bereiter Jean-Noël Foulin

Virginia W. Berninger Linda Friedlaender

Lucile Chanquoy Roxana Fung

Maria Chuy Matt Gers

David L. Coker Jr. Elena L. Grigorenko

Andrea Jeftanovic Tina Newman

James C. Kaufman Thierry Olive

Ronald T. Kellogg David R. Olson

Séverine Maggio Marlene Scardamalia

Elisa Mambrino Denise Schmandt-Besserat

Jorge Manzi Janel D. Sexton

Peter Smagorinsky Brendan S. Weekes

Lazar Stankov Arielle E. White

THE ORIGIN OF TOKENS

THE TOKEN SYSTEM

TOKENS AS SYMBOLS FOR COMMUNICATION

TOKENS AS SYMBOLS FOR ACCOUNTING

TOKENS AS SYMBOLS FOR COUNTING

TOKENS AND STATE FORMATION

ENVELOPES TO STORE TOKENS

FROM TOKENS TO WRITING

FROM ENVELOPES TO TABLETS

WRITING BEYOND ACCOUNTING