With development of the public relations in people there was a need to save information and to count various objects. Emergence of the letter and account which developed through many centuries became result of this process.
Emergence of writing
Development of writing came in the direction from concrete to abstract. Originally for information transfer the so-called subject letter was used. The example of a similar method of communication is a nodular letter of the American Indians. Also the first entries could be made in the form of images.
The pictography became the next stage of development of writing. Images of objects became simpler and became more and more schematical, i.e. pictograms. Later there were also ideograms - images of abstract concepts or actions. The letters given a look did not display pronunciation of words but only their sense. Also on pictographic records it is impossible to restore a grammatical system of language. The pictographic letter was used during the early period of development of Sumer and Chinese cultures and also Indians of Mesoamerica.
Hieroglyphics became the next logical stage of development of pictography. Widely known example of early development of the hieroglyphic letter is an Ancient Egyptian writing. The Egyptian signs nearby left from pictograms and in many respects remained similar to the image of the concepts designated by them. However even in early hieroglyphics the important feature of this stage of development of the letter - a hieroglyph dvukhsostavnost appeared. A part of a hieroglyph was responsible for sense of the word, and the second part indicated feature of its pronunciation. In a similar way also modern Chinese writing is arranged - even if you do not know a concrete hieroglyph, you can assume its value on a key, and feature of reading - on a phonetic element.
In the Japanese writing the hieroglyphs which came from China are combined with two local syllabic alphabets. Alphabets serve for addition to hieroglyphs of the grammatical terminations and also for writing of foreign words.
After hieroglyphics the mankind invented the syllabic letter. Within this type of the letter only pronunciation of a word is transferred. Unlike alphabets, in syllabic alphabets there is no clear split into letters. At them there can be separate vowels, but the majority a symbol correspond to syllables. The example of modern syllabic writing can be met in Arabic.
The European and also some Asian languages are based on the alphabetic letter.
The alphabet became a final stage of development of writing. One of the first alphabets became Phoenician. In the alphabetic letter to the majority of sounds there corresponds the separate letter.
Development of the account
The person needed a lot of time not only for learning to write, but also to master the account. It became necessary to consider in process of development of agriculture and craft. The single account was originally used. The number registered in the form of several sticks or points. Then there was a six-denary system of the account. It was known at shumer and at some other east people. Modern people continue to use this system for the account of time: 60 seconds make minute, and 60 minutes - hour. Romans used and modified the Egyptian denary numeral system. The Roman record of figures was position. Letter I meant unit, V - the five, and X - ten. But the modern system of figures appeared already at Arabs. They entered a concept of zero which gave an additional impulse to development of mathematics.