section_path: History
section_name: History
paragraph_text: History
  
  Communication history studies how communicative processes evolved and interacted with society, culture, and technology. Human communication has a long history and the way people communicate has changed considerably over time. Many of these changes were triggered by the development of new communication technologies and had various effects on how people exchanged ideas. New communication technologies usually require new skills that people need to learn to use them effectively.
  
  In the academic literature, the history of communication is usually divided into ages based on the dominant form of communication in that age. The number of ages and the precise periodization are disputed. They usually include ages for speaking, writing, and print as well as electronic mass communication and the internet. According to communication theorist Marshall Poe, the dominant media for each age can be characterized in relation to several factors. They include the amount of information a medium can store, how long it persists, how much time it takes to transmit it, and how costly it is to use the medium. Poe argues that subsequent ages usually involve some form of improvement of one or more of the factors.
  
  According to some scientific estimates, language developed around 40,000 years ago while others consider it to be much older. Before this development, human communication resembled animal communication and happened through a combination of grunts, cries, gestures, and facial expressions. Language helped early humans to organize themselves and plan ahead more efficiently. In early societies, spoken language was the primary form of communication. Most knowledge was passed on through it, often in the form of stories or wise sayings. This form does not produce stable knowledge since it depends on imperfect human memory. Because of this, many details differ from one telling to the next and are presented differently by distinct storytellers. As people started to settle and form agricultural communities, societies grew and there was an increased need for stable records of ownership of land and commercial transactions. This triggered the invention of writing, which is able to solve many problems that arose from using exclusively oral communication. It is much more efficient at preserving knowledge and passing it on between generations since it does not depend on human memory. Before the invention of writing, certain forms of proto-writing had already developed. Proto-writing encompasses long-lasting visible marks used to store information, like decorations on pottery items, knots in a cord to track goods, or seals to mark property.
  
  Most early written communication happened through pictograms. Pictograms are graphical symbols that convey meaning by visually resembling real-world objects. The use of basic pictographic symbols to represent things like farming produce was common in ancient cultures and began around 9000 BCE. The first complex writing system including pictograms was developed around 3500 BCE by the Sumerians and is called cuneiform. Pictograms are still in use today, like no-smoking signs and the symbols of male and female figures on bathroom doors. A significant disadvantage of pictographic writing systems is that they need a large amount of symbols to refer to all the objects one wants to talk about. This problem was solved by the development of other writing systems. For example, the symbols of alphabetic writing systems do not stand for regular objects. Instead, they relate to the sounds used in spoken language. Other types of early writing systems include logographic and ideographic writing systems. A drawback of many early forms of writing, like the clay tablets used for cuneiform, was that they were not very portable. This made it difficult to transport the texts from one location to another to share information. This changed with the invention of papyrus by the Egyptians around 2500 BCE and was further improved later by the development of parchment and paper.
  
  Until the 1400s, almost all written communication was hand-written, which limited the spread of written media within society since copying texts by hand was costly. The introduction and popularization of mass printing in the middle of the 15th century by Johann Gutenberg resulted in rapid changes. Mass printing quickly increased the circulation of written media and also led to the dissemination of new forms of written documents, like newspapers and pamphlets. One side effect was that the augmented availability of written documents significantly improved the general literacy of the population. This development served as the foundation for revolutions in various fields, including science, politics, and religion.
  
  Scientific discoveries in the 19th and 20th centuries caused many further developments in the history of communication. They include the invention of telegraphs and telephones, which made it even easier and faster to transmit information from one location to another without the need to transport written documents. These communication forms were initially limited to cable connections, which had to be established first. Later developments found ways of wireless transmission using radio signals. They made it possible to reach wide audiences and radio soon became one of the central forms of mass communication. Various innovations in the field of photography enabled the recording of images on film, which led to the development of cinema and television. The reach of wireless communication was further enhanced with the development of satellites, which made it possible to broadcast radio and television signals to stations all over the world. This way, information could be shared almost instantly everywhere around the globe. The development of the internet constitutes a further milestone in the history of communication. It made it easier than ever before for people to exchange ideas, collaborate, and access information from anywhere in the world by using a variety of means, such as websites, e-mail, social media, and video conferences.