Pictography is a form of graphic communication

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Man is a social being. An important element in the development of any society is communication. Today it is possible to draw information of interest to us from a variety of sources, whether it be newspapers and magazines, television and radio, or gossip told by neighbors and employees.

But how did ancient people record information about what was happening around them, what problems worried them? It is human nature to constantly look for new ways of transmitting information. And the first step towards the birth of writing was pictographic writing.

What is a pictography?

Pictography is the most primitive form of graphics, a way to communicate with each other through drawings. No one knows exactly where and under what circumstances this primitive type of writing originated, however, pictographic pictures depicted on bone, wood, stone are found everywhere: North Asia, West Africa, North America. Until our time, similar drawings have been preserved on rocks and in caves. With the help of drawings they made inscriptions on tombstones,recorded information about the conditions of exchange, about military conflicts and successful hunting.

Pictography is an ancient type of writing that conveys information about objects, actions, events, concepts and their relationships using figures, diagrams, visual images, simple images. Based on this ancient type of writing, descriptive (pictorial) writing arose.

Meaning of the word "pictography"

The word "pictography" is of Greek origin: "pictus" (pictus) - "drawing", and "grapho" (grapho) - "write". Thus, the literal translation means "I write with drawings." Indeed, this ancient way of conveying information uses pictures (pictograms) instead of letters and symbols.

Features of pictographic writing

Pictography is a universal way of communication. You do not need to have special knowledge or skills in order to at least approximately understand the meaning of the message encrypted in the drawings. People who speak different languages, and even those who cannot read, can equally easily understand this kind of primitive painting.

Pictogram, as a rule, informs about a specific phenomenon, object or action, and sometimes about a whole complex of objects and phenomena. It is not a single sound, syllable or word. Ancient people used to draw a sequence of drawings to tell about an event.

Deciphering pictographic drawings

In ancient times, pictographic writing performed a variety of functions. Because drawings areFirst of all, the flight of the author's imagination, then there were no established symbols for designating certain objects and phenomena. And at times it is quite difficult to decipher what exactly the ancient people wanted to communicate. But apparently, the individual tribes still had certain agreements about the designation of individual concepts. For example, the Eskimos of Alaska left drawings near their homes that informed random guests about the presence of food in the house: a little man with his arms outstretched to the sides said that there was no food in the house, and a little man with food brought to his mouth testified that in this can feed at home.

To better understand what pictography is, just look at examples of rock art. This drawing tells of a brave man hunting deer. He holds a bow in his hands, next to him lies a quiver with arrows.

Quite often there are images of fighting men holding axes in their hands. In many tribes, people with arms crossed on their chests denoted barter relations.

Pictography in the modern world

The visibility and ease of conveying any information in images allows the use of pictography in the modern world. Suffice it to recall road signs, where the image of a knife and fork means that there is a restaurant nearby, and a gas station means a gas station. Pictograms are also used in sports competitions, olympiads - for each sport, a little man is drawn who performs certain actions. Signboard,depicting a boot, denotes a shoe store.

Because pictography is considered a non-linguistic sign system, it is best suited to convey information that must be simultaneously understood by people of different nationalities.

What does pictography mean for modern scientists? For them, pictographic painting is a science about the methods of fixing by primitive people of objects, actions, phenomena of the surrounding world that existed even before the appearance of writing familiar to us.

Increasingly, modern designers resort to conveying information through drawings. For a designer, pictography is the art of creating a graphic image that carries a certain informational charge. With the help of just one picture (poster, logo) you can convey the meaning of both an insignificant phenomenon and a global problem of mankind.

Thus, pictography is not only the oldest pre-letter writing system, but also a method of conveying a variety of information in the modern world.