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, starting with cuneiform, ancient Egyptian and Chinese hieroglyphs, and the first alphabets, ending with modern emojis and symbols of fictional languages like Klingon. It is amazing how many different ways there are to record oral speech, and what extraordinary stories are associated with many writing systems! It is incredibly fascinating to explore various symbols - they are beautiful in themselves, even if you do not know their meanings. The narrative about the vast diversity of signs and writing systems unfolds in time and space. The book provides a general overview of the topic and, of course, cannot encompass all writing systems, as scientists believe that throughout history, humanity has created 292 such systems, and not all of them have been deciphered. Today, more than half of the writing systems that have ever existed are available on every computer. The possibilities for encoding are expanding, and more fonts are easily displayed and used on computers or smartphones. We live in a time of final victory over illiteracy - when one's own writing system can be created for every language on our planet and accessed in every corner of the world with a click of a mouse. Vitaly Konstantinov was born in 1963 in Izmail (USSR) and currently lives in Germany. He illustrates and writes books - fiction and non-fiction for children and adults. His books have been published in 36 countries and have received numerous professional awards. For middle and high school age. 2nd edition.