1188 writing: Europe Pillar edict of Emperor Asoka dating to 238 b.c.e., from Uttar Pradesh, India: an example of the earliest readable Indian script (© The Trustees of the British Museum) Scribes were a standard part of ancient Indian governments Every court of law was required to have one Kings had them for recording government business Professional scribes attended births to record the predictions for the infant made by the attending astrologer That Asoka had his edicts placed all over his kingdom in prominent places suggests that Indians were mostly literate Some writings on stone, copper, and gold have survived, while those committed to bamboo and leaves have disintegrated The Harappan script seems to have died sometime after the Aryan invasion of the 1000s b.c.e In about 500 b.c.e Brahmi script emerged, becoming a robust written language by the era of Asoka (r ca 268–ca 233 b.c.e.) The letters are beautifully graceful From the end of the Maurya Empire in 185 b.c.e to the start of the Gupta Empire in 320 c.e., Brahmi split into two or three written scripts By the end of the ancient era the scripts derived from Brahmi were being split into new scripts to suit the languages of southern India Before writing, ancient European peoples expressed their ideas visually through a variety of media Their modification of the landscape and the size and positions of monuments and tombs provided signals of group identity and territorial ownership In Scandinavia and the Alps, beginning around 5000 b.c.e but especially during the Bronze Age after 2000 b.c.e., people inscribed figures on boulders and rock outcrops to depict people, animals, and objects that had symbolic and ritual significance Pottery designs were another important medium of communication about group identity Other claims for writing in prehistoric Europe, such as the Tărtăria tablets from Romania, not stand up to scholarly scrutiny Paper made from cotton fiber was a Chinese invention that did not become widely used in Europe before 1100 c.e The main writing material used in classical antiquity, papyrus, was made from reeds grown in Egypt and was not widely available outside the Roman Empire The most common writing material used in northern Europe, therefore, was parchment This was made from animal skins The skins were not tanned as for making leather but were stretched and scraped while held tightly in a frame The parchment was typically cut into single sheets or bound into a book, or codex More permanent documents, called inscriptions, were made by carving letters into stone or metal plaques Inscriptions were sometimes made on wood, but because wood is highly perishable, they have not survived in large numbers Runes are the earliest system of writing the Germanic languages They exist only as inscriptions The runic characters appear for the first time on artifacts such as combs and jewelry dating to the middle of the second century c.e The runic letters are clearly a variation of the Latin alphabet, but they bear a close similarity to older forms of the alphabet that were used in northern Italy as early as the fift h century b.c.e., suggesting that runes might have been invented and used EUROPE BY BRADLEY SKEEN Writing was invented about 3000 b.c.e in Mesopotamia and spread from there through contacts between cultures Writing that uses the alphabet—a small number of signs representing the various distinct sounds of speech—was developed by Semitic-speaking peoples living in Egypt after 2000 b.c.e This system spread through the Near East and then to Greece From there it was adopted after 800 b.c.e by the Etruscans and Romans Writing came to northern Europe from the Roman Empire By the end of the Roman Empire (476 c.e) most societies in northwestern Europe had some familiarity with the Latin alphabet and language The Latin alphabet is the system of writing still used for English and other modern European languages Literacy was not very widespread and was limited primarily to churchmen and government officials Literacy in northern and eastern Europe came with the spread of Christianity into those areas Painted pebbles from cave of Mas d’Azil, Ariége, France, dating to 8,000–10,000 b.c.e.; the decorations, which include dots and bands, are thought to represent a kind of writing (© The Trustees of the British Museum)