The History of Writing: From Cuneiform to Emoji

This comic book tells the story of more than a hundred writing systems: from ancient times to the present day, beginning with cuneiform, ancient Egyptian and Chinese hieroglyphs, and the first alphabets, ending with modern emojis and symbols from fictional languages like Klingon. It is astonishing how many different ways oral speech can be recorded, and what extraordinary stories are associated with many writing systems! It is incredibly fascinating to look at all sorts of symbols - they are beautiful in themselves, even if you don't know their meanings.

The story of the vast diversity of signs and writing systems unfolds in time and space. The book provides an overview of the topic and, of course, cannot encompass all writing systems, as scholars believe that throughout its history, humanity has created 292 such systems, and not all of them have been deciphered. Today, more than half of all writing systems that have ever existed are available on every computer. The possibilities for coding are expanding, and more fonts are displayed and used on computers or smartphones without any problems. We live in an era of final victory over illiteracy - when a writing system can be created for every language on our planet and is accessible in every corner of the world with a click of the mouse.

Vitaly Konstantinov was born in 1963 in Izmail (USSR) and lives in Germany. He illustrates and writes books - both fiction and non-fiction for children and adults. His books have been published in 36 countries and have received numerous professional awards.