1380: Why Sumerians Rotated their Script Sep 21, 2018

Writing developed independently in three places independently: Mesopotamia, Mesoamerica, and China, but only alphabets developed from the Sumerians. This process of continuous abstraction from images was described in the Word Facts Video released today, but part of the reason that the symbols look more abstracted was because they were turned 90º. The reason for this was that it was originally written up-to-down, but to avoid smudging the clay, it was shifted right-to-left. However, while the scribes found this easier, those who had learned to read up-to-down struggled with this, and so the scribes simply wrote the letters sideways, to that both parties could work more efficiently.
Watch the rest here: https://youtu.be/dntJLHmkfhw

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