The development of writing was one of the great human
inventions. It is difficult (51) many people to imagine
language without writing; the spoken word seems intricately tied to the
written (52) . But children speak
(53) they learn to write. And millions of people in the world
speak languages with (54) written form. Among these people
oral literature abounds, and crucial knowledge (55) memorized
and passed (56) generations. But human memory is short-lived,
and the brain’s storage capacity is finite. (57) overcame
such problems and allowed communication across the miles (58)
through the years and centuries. Writing permits a society
(59) permanently record its poetry, its history and its
technology. It might be argued (60) today we
have electronic means of recording sound and (61) to produce
films and television, and thus writing is becoming obsolete. (62)
writing became extinct, there would be no knowledge of electronics
(63) TV technicians to study; there would be, in fact, little
technology in years to (64) . There would be no film or TV
scripts, no literature, no books, no mails, no newspapers, no science. There
would be (65) advantages: no bad novels, junk mails,
poison-pen letters, or "unreadable" income-tax forms, but the losses would
outweigh the (66) . There are almost as
(67) legends and stories on the invention of writing as there
are (68) the origin of language. Legend has it that Cadmus,
Prince of Phoenicia and founder of the city of Thebes, (69)
the alphabet and brought it with him to Greece. In one Chinese fable
the four-eyed dragon-god T’sang Chien invented writing. In (70)
myths, the Babylonian god Nebo and the Egyptian god Thoth gave humans
writing as well as speech.