Brush Strokes

The characters standing for the animals pictured are a method of communication, in this case extending back thousands of years. Instead of thinking specifically of the animals pictured, I preferred to envision the genius of the first person who marked a surface of clay or papyrus or strips of bark with a pointed object or paint brush of some type, all towards the end of communicating with others.

How individual marks came to mean specific or general objects or even thoughts is an awesome process to me. This led me to research the beginnings of written communication. Surprisingly, the first site to pop up on Google was a greeting card site with a handy little time line of what probably happened when.

Around 3000 BC a Sumerian discovered the concept of marking a clay tablet with a pointed object. Whether he was tallying his sheep or communicating the fact he was traveling from Ninevah to Byblos is unknown (to me, at least).

Next, our timeline takes us to Egypt between 2500-2000 BC where an ingenious person discovered they could dry strips of reed to make papyrus and paint their hieroglyphs on this surface. (This was much more satisfactory than etching the forms in the dirt as their lofty thoughts had a tendency to wash away during the the rainy season.)

The next timeline marker using a different writing surface for communication spotlights a Chinese brushing pictograms on an animal shoulder bone some time in the 1500 ‘s (BC, that is).

Between 1500-1000 BC we move to a different part of the world as well as a different writing surface. This time we see the Aztecs who used beaten bark from tapa, (barkcloth originally from the paper mulberry tree), amate (bark paper from ficus trees), and hunn (paper made from rice) to paint their designs which I presume were forms of communication.

The Greeks come to the forefront in 600 BC when some enterprising person developed parchment by stretching sheepskin and soaking it in lime for two weeks. As a side note, vellum, made from calf or goatskin in a similar fashion to parchment was used by the Romans.

By now I can see my ideas on communication via brush strokes have veered to the surface on which the brushstrokes reside, but I must travel on to paper.

We are once again back with some ingenious Chinese who first developed paper in 200 BC made from silk shreds. Very expensive. Ah, but now we focus again on brush strokes of a sort. Believe it or not, the Chinese invented the first printing press in 593 AD.

That brings us full circle, in a way, to the idea of brush strokes or communication. Lower species of the animal kingdom communicate aurally as do human beings. But we have obviously realized the need for our communication to have a more lasting effect than interaction carried via sound wave.

Brushstrokes—communication—interaction—relationships. How do our brushstrokes affect others? A question probably worth a few moments pondering.