Page:A Study of the Manuscript Troano.djvu/23



One of the ablest of living ethnologists has classified the means of recording knowledge under two general headings—Thought-writing and Sound-writing. The former is again divided into two forms, the first and earliest of which is by pictures, the second by picture-writing.

The superiority of picture-writing over the mere depicting of an occurrence is that it analyzes the thought and expresses separately its component parts, whereas the picture presents it as a whole. The representations familiar among the North American Indians are usually mere pictures, while most of the records of the Aztec communities are in picture-writing.

The genealogical development of Sound-writing begins by the substitution of the sign of one idea for that of another whose sound is nearly or quite the same. Such was the early graphic system of Egypt, and such substantially to-day is that of the Chinese. Above this stands syllabic writing, as that of the Japanese, and the semi-syllabic signs of the old Semitic alphabet; while, as the perfected result of these various attempts, we reach at last the invention of a true alphabet, in which a definite figure corresponds to a definite elementary sound.

It is a primary question in American archaeology. How far did the most