what the world would be without words: essayof 300 words
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Imagine a world without words
Among the many worlds that man did not receive as a gift from nature but created out of his own mind, the world of books is the greatest… Without the word, without the writing of books, there is no history, there is no concept of humanity. And if anyone wants to try to enclose in a small space, in a single house or a single room, the history of the human spirit and to make it his own, he can only do this in the form of a collection of books. – The Magic of the Book, Hermann Hesse
Imagine a world without the written word. Without a way to easily access and share humankind’s collective knowledge. A world where books were not a thing, where reading and writing were unknown. What would such a world look like?
Horses from the Hillaire Chamber, Chauvet Cave. Photo courtesy: French Ministry of Culture and Communication, Regional Direction for Cultural Affairs, Rhône-Alpes region, Regional Department of Archeology.
Horses from the Hillaire Chamber, Chauvet Cave.
Photo courtesy: French Ministry of Culture and Communication, Regional Direction for Cultural Affairs, Rhône-Alpes region, Regional Department of Archeology.
Through time immemorial, man has yearned to leave his mark on the world – the primitive cave drawings are proof of this undeniable need to communicate. But without words, there is so much that is unknown about that period. All we have are drawings of hunts, of communities, of small villages and tribes.
But what was life like? How often did people have to move around? What sort of shelter did they have from the elements? How did they regard the wonder of the night sky and the shining brilliance of the sun? What were the songs they sang and the stories they told? Their thoughts, dreams, longings? What did they wish for? We have no answers to these – only speculation based on the drawings they left behind, on the shards of pottery and stone arrows we find at digs.