The Orgins of Media

Media began through word of mouth communications between people. Word of mouth communication dates all the way back to Genesis when Adam names all of the creatures of the world. Later in Genesis world of mouth is also used when Adam and Eve speak to each other, when they speak to God, and when the serpent speaks to Eve. This was also the origin of deception in media when the serpent deceived Eve and tricked her into eating the fruit. Word of mouth is still a very important part of media today because it is the main form of communication. Almost all people on the Earth use word of mouth communication every day. Whether it is just saying hi to someone you pass on the sidewalk, or having a long deep conversation about the meaning of life, using word of mouth communication is nearly inevitable. However, sometimes it is impossible to use word of mouth communication because not everyone speaks the same language. When early humans decided to build the Tower of Babylon, that was to be tall enough to reach the heavens, God punished them by giving them different languages. The different languages made it impossible to communicate with one another and led to the abandonment of the tower. Now days people normally learn at least two languages in their life  time so that they can communicate with more people, however, it still makes communicating with other languages difficult. When word of mouth language was developed people often told stories that were passed down from generation to generation. These stories were often histories or traditions of the family that passed them down, and were passed through story-telling, singing, or chants. Eventually there came a time when someone found it necessary to find a way to better record these stories, thus the invention of writing. Writing possibly began by cave paintings, in which important events where recreated using colored paint. From there it may have developed into hieroglyphics, in which symbol represents a specific object. Hieroglyphics first appeared around 3150BC in Egypt. The hieroglyphics made it possible for almost everyone in the Egyptian Empire to receive the same information, because it was recorded exactly and not being altered through different peoples telling. In order to spread the information more quickly, however, roads needed to be developed. Roads are believed to appear sometime before 3000BC. They started out as simple trails connecting different parts of a village, but it was the connection that was important. Roads allowed people to carry information quickly from place to place, and are still important today for people to travel quickly. As time when on the written language needed to be further developed. Instead of using pictures to represent every item in existence, humans needed to be able to use a standard set of characters that could be combined in different ways to represent things. The creation of the Phoenician alphabet enabled this. It was created around 1050BC and consisted of only symbols for consonant sounds. These consonants allowed people to combine different sounds to create words similar to their spoken language. However, the lack of vowels made it difficult to create some words. This was solved when the Romans adapted the Phoenician alphabet and tweaked it to suit there needs by adding vowels. The Phoenician alphabet paved the way for the Greek alphabet which led to the development of the Latin alphabet and so on. Today the alphabet and writing are very important because we receive a lot of information through the written language. Books, magazines, newspapers, the dictionary, and this blog post all use the written word to send a message. This message can be understood by whomever is literate in the language of the message, and does not have to worry about the interference o accents or speech impediments to mess up the message. The spread of literacy was greatly affected by the invention of the Gutenberg printing press in 1440. The printing press allowed documents to be produced in mass proportions and spread throughout different parts of the world. This allowed more people to access the documents, leading to more people being able to learn to read. The printings press was the first invention to allow mass communication, which is a big part of modern day media. People can easily send information anywhere in the world through postal service, e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and more. However, none of these would have been possible without the creation of the original forms of media.