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THE EVOLUTION OF SYMBOLS IN EARLY CULTURES
Mohira Djumabayeva Anvardjanova
Andijon State Institute of Foreign Languages
mohibird1@gmail.com (+998)88 520 4554
Guloyim Tolibjonova Hurshidbekovna
gulitolibzonova@gmail.com
Annotation: This article is devoted to the rise of early communicative
symbols in ancient civilizations. Also, the use of colors, shapes and symbols for
human self-realization and information exchange in early societies is described and
analyzed in this article. It is argued that symbols played an important role in shaping
the basic concepts of humanity, such as language, culture, religion, personality and
memory. This study outlines the importance of early symbols in the progress of
human civilization.
Key words: symbols, writing system, communication, ancient civilizations,
communicative symbols.
Introduction:
From pigments to printing presses, symbols changed humans' lives and
provided new ways to communicate with constantly changing world.
Ancient people used color, words, signs and sound to produce the artifacts
you see now. Humans could plan, record information, and communicate to each
other which helped them to survive as climates fluctuated strongly and this could
become life-threatening.
Using colors was the necessity of communication in ancient civilizations. By
350 000 years ago, our ancestors marked objects and probably their skin with bright
pigments. Colors were used as symbols by which people identified themselves and
their group. Humans may have first used ocher either as an adhesive or a pigment,
and later to make artistic drawings and different paintings. Flattened areas on these
pieces of pigment are signs of grinding or rubbing, telling us that they were held and
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used roughly like chunky crayons. This suggests that how it was well thought out.
A civilization is a complex society that creates agricultural surpluses,
allowing for specialized labor, social hierarchy, and the establishment of cities.
Developments such as writing, complex religious systems, and centralized political
power have been suggested as identifying markers of civilization, as well. When we
see these changes occur, we should stop and ask, "Did humans institute these
practices because they were beneficial, or were they forced on them?" Historians
debate this question, trying to determine whether civilization was a bottom-up or
top-down development. Most likely, it was a bit of both.
Main part:
In the Neolithic and Bronze Age British Isles, rock art was produced across
various parts of the islands. Petroglyphic in nature, the majority of such carvings are
abstract in design, usually cup and ring marks, although examples of spirals or
figurative depictions of weaponry are also known. Only one form of rock art in
Europe, this late prehistoric tradition had connections with others along Atlantic
Europe, particularly in Galicia.
1.
Typical cup and ring marks at Weetwood Moor, in the English county
of Northumberland.
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2.
A replica of an unusual cup-and-ring-marked stone from Dalgarven,
North Ayrshire, Scotland.
The study of rock art in the British Isles was largely initiated by amateur
researchers rather than academics or other archaeologists.
Surviving examples of rock art in the British Isles are believed to represent
only a small sample of that which had been produced in the Neolithic and Bronze
Ages. Many examples of petroglyphs would have eroded, thereby being lost to
contemporary scholarship.[l] In other samples, images might have been painted onto
rock, or marked onto less permanent surfaces, such as wood, livestock or the human
div, thereby also failing to survive into the present.
Sumer (/lsu:mar/) is the earliest known civilization, located in the historical
region of southern Mesopotamia (now south-central Iraq), emerging during the
Chalcolithic and early Bronze Ages between the sixth and fifth millennium BC. Like
nearby Elam, it is one of the cradles of civilization, along with Egypt, the Indus
Valley, the Erligang culture of the Yellow River valley, Caral-Supe, and
Mesoamerica. Living along the valleys of the Tigris and
Euphrates Rivers, Sumerian farmers grew an abundance of grain and other
crops, a surplus that enabled them to form urban settlements. The world's earliest
known texts come from the Sumerian cities of Uruk and Jemdet Nasr, and date to
Ta'limning zamonaviy transformatsiyasi
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197
between c. 3350 - c. 2500 BC, following a period of proto-writing c. 4000 - c. 2500
BC.
The word symbol comes from the late Middle French masculine noun
symbol, which appeared around 1380 in a theological sense signifying a formula
used in the Roman Catholic Church as a sort of synonym for 'the credo'; by
extension, in the early Renaissance it came to mean 'a maxim' or 'the external sign
of a sacrament'; these meanings were lost in social contexts. It was during the
Renaissance in the mid-16th century that the word took on the meaning that is
dominant today, that of a natural fact or object evoking by its form or its nature an
association of ideas with something abstract or absent'; this appears, for example, in
François Rabelais, Le Quart Livre, in 1552.[1] This French word derives from Latin,
where both the masculine noun symbolus and the neuter noun symbolum refer to "a
mark or sign as a means of recognition."[2] The Latin word derives from Ancient
Greek: oÓußOÀOV, from a verb meaning 'put together', 'compare', alluding to the
Classical practice of breaking a piece of ceramic in two and giving one half to the
person who would receive a future message, and one half to the person who would
send it: when the two fit perfectly together, the receiver could be sure that the
messenger bearing it did indeed also carry a genuine message from the intended
person.[3] A literary or artistic symbol as an "outward sign" of something else is a
metaphorical extension of this notion of a message from a sender to a recipient. In
English, the meaning "something which stands for something else" was first
recorded in 1590, in Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene.
Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs were the formal writing system used in
Ancient Egypt for writing the Egyptian language[1][2]. Hieroglyphs combine
ideographic, logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with more than 1 ,000
distinct characters.[3][4]. The later hieratic and demotic Egyptian scripts were
derived from hieroglyphic writing, as was the Proto-Sinaitic script that later evolved
into the Phoenician alphabet. [5] Egyptian hieroglyphs are the ultimate descent of
the Phoenician alphabet, the first widely adopted phonetic writing system.
Moreover, owing in large part to the Greek and Aramaic scripts that descended from
Ta'limning zamonaviy transformatsiyasi
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198
Phoenician, the majority of the worlds living writing systems are descendants of
Egyptian hieroglyphs—most prominently the Latin and Cyrillic scripts through
Greek, and the Arabic and Brahmic scripts through Aramaic.
The Indus script, also known as the Harappan script and the Indus Valley
script, is a collection of symbols produced by the Indus Valley Civilisation. Most
inscriptions containing these symbols are extremely short, making it difficult to
judge whether or not they constituted a writing system used to record a Harappan
language, any of which are yet to be identified.[3] Despite many attempts,[4] the
"script" has not yet been deciphered. There is no known bilingual inscription to help
decipher the script,[5] which shows no significant changes over time. However,
some of the syntax (if that is what it may be termed) varies depending on location.
Yin and yang (English: /jrn/, /jaen/), also yinyang or yin-yang, is a concept
that originated in Chinese philosophy, describing an opposite but interconnected,
self-perpetuating cycle. Yin and yang can be thought of as complementary and at the
same time opposing forces that interact to form a dynamic system in which the whole
is greater than the assembled parts and the parts are important for the cohesion of
the whole.
In the Neolithic and Bronze Age British Isles, rock art was produced across
various parts of the islands. Petroglyphic in nature, the majority of such carvings are
abstract in design, usually cup and ring marks, although examples of spirals or
figurative depictions of weaponry are also known. Only one form of rock art in
Europe, this late prehistoric tradition had connections with others along Atlantic
Europe, particularly in Galicia.
Typical cup and ring marks at Weetwood Moor, in the English county of
Northumberland
A replica of an unusual cup-and-ring-marked stone from Dalgarven, North
Ayrshire, Scotland. The study of rock art in the British Isles was largely initiated by
amateur researchers rather than academics or other archaeologists.
Surviving examples of rock art in the British Isles are believed to represent
only a small sample of that which had been produced in the Neolithic and Bronze
Ta'limning zamonaviy transformatsiyasi
19-to’plam 1-son may 2025
199
Ages. Many examples of petroglyphs would have eroded, thereby being lost to
contemporary scholarship.[l] In other samples, images might have been painted onto
rock, or marked onto less permanent surfaces, such as wood, livestock or the human
div, thereby also failing to survive into the present.
Sumer (/lsu:mar/) is the earliest known civilization, located in the historical
region of southern Mesopotamia (now south-central Iraq), emerging during the
Chalcolithic and early Bronze Ages between the sixth and fifth millennium BC. Like
nearby Elam, it is one of the cradles of civilization, along with Egypt, the Indus
Valley, the Erligang culture of the Yellow River valley, Caral-Supe, and
Mesoamerica. Living along the valleys of the Tigris and
Euphrates rivers, Sumerian farmers grew an abundance of grain and other
crops, a surplus that enabled them to form urban settlements. The world's earliest
known texts come from the Sumerian cities of Uruk and Jemdet Nasr, and date to
between c. 3350 - c. 2500 BC, following a period of proto-writing c. 4000 - c. 2500
BC.
The word symbol comes from the late Middle French masculine noun
symbol, which appeared around 1380 in a theological sense signifying a formula
used in the Roman Catholic Church as a sort of synonym for 'the credo'; by
extension, in the early Renaissance it came to mean 'a maxim' or 'the external sign
of a sacrament'; these meanings were lost in social contexts. It was during the
Renaissance in the mid-16th century that the word took on the meaning that is
dominant today, that of a natural fact or object evoking by its form or its nature an
association of ideas with something abstract or absent'; this appears, for example, in
François Rabelais, Le Quart Livre, in 1552.[1] This French word derives from Latin,
where both the masculine noun symbolus and the neuter noun symbolum refer to "a
mark or sign as a means of recognition."[2] The Latin word derives from Ancient
Greek: oÓußOÀOV, from a verb meaning 'put together', 'compare', alluding to the
Classical practice of breaking a piece of ceramic in two and giving one half to the
person who would receive a future message, and one half to the person who would
send it: when the two fit perfectly together, the receiver could be sure that the
Ta'limning zamonaviy transformatsiyasi
19-to’plam 1-son may 2025
200
messenger bearing it did indeed also carry a genuine message from the intended
person.[3] A literary or artistic symbol as an "outward sign" of something else is a
metaphorical extension of this notion of a message from a sender to a recipient. In
English, the meaning "something which stands for something else" was first
recorded in 1590, in Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene.
Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs were the formal writing system used in
Ancient Egypt for writing the Egyptian language[1][2]. Hieroglyphs combine
ideographic, logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with more than 1 ,000
distinct characters.[3][4]. The later hieratic and demotic Egyptian scripts were
derived from hieroglyphic writing, as was the Proto-Sinaitic script that later evolved
into the Phoenician alphabet. [5] Egyptian hieroglyphs are the ultimate descent of
the Phoenician alphabet, the first widely adopted phonetic writing system.
Moreover, owing in large part to the Greek and Aramaic scripts that descended from
Phoenician, the majority of the worlds living writing systems are descendants of
Egyptian hieroglyphs—most prominently the Latin and Cyrillic scripts through
Greek, and the Arabic and Brahmic scripts through Aramaic.
The Indus script, also known as the Harappan script and the Indus Valley
script, is a collection of symbols produced by the Indus Valley Civilisation. Most
inscriptions containing these symbols are extremely short, making it difficult to
judge whether or not they constituted a writing system used to record a Harappan
language, any of which are yet to be identified.[3] Despite many attempts,[4] the
"script" has not yet been deciphered. There is no known bilingual inscription to help
decipher the script,[5] which shows no significant changes over time. However,
some of the syntax (if that is what it may be termed) varies depending on location.
Yin and yang (English: /jrn/, /jaen/), also yinyang or yin-yang, is a concept
that originated in Chinese philosophy, describing an opposite but interconnected,
self-perpetuating cycle. Yin and yang can be thought of as complementary and at the
same time opposing forces that interact to form a dynamic system in which the whole
is greater than the assembled parts and the parts are important for the cohesion of
the whole.
Ta'limning zamonaviy transformatsiyasi
19-to’plam 1-son may 2025
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Conclusion:
Ultimately symbols have always played a key role in humans' world
understanding and communication. Beginning with prehistoric pigments and ending
with complex writing. Moreover, symbols gave shape to humans' thoughts and
beliefs.
Even before written language humans used colors to mark objects and
themselves for signaling identity. It's also used to know shifting climates and
environments.
Symbols not only helped ancient people survive and thrive but also laid the
foundation for language, culture, religion, identity, and memory, shaping the course
of human civilization.
LIST OF USED LITERATURE:
1.
Beckensa//, Stan (2002). Prehistoric Rock Art in Cumbria: Landscapes and
Monuments. Stroud: The History Press. ISBN 978-0752425269.
2.
Evans, Edward (2004). Archaeology from Art: Exploring the Interpretative
Potential of British and Irish Neolithic Rock Art. Oxford: British Archaeological
Reports. ISBN 978-1841713557.
3.
Seymour; Michael (2004). "Ancient Mesopotamia and Modern Iraq in the
British Press, 1980—2003". Current Anthropology. 45 (3): 351 -368.
doi.•10.1086/383004. ISSN 0011-3204. JSTOR 10.1086/383004. S2C/D
224788984.Arc hived from the original on 30 April 2022. Retrieved 30 April 2022.
