After Class-Chapter 1

In class today we discussed the reading for chapter 1 about the beginning of visual communication. I was eager for the class discussion since i was still a little confused as to what the book was saying. More specifically I was interested in finding out the difference between a few key terms that the chapter touched base on, like the three different types of visual communication found in the early stages of civilization. Petroglyphs, ideographs and pictographs are the three terms that class discussion helped clarify. During the reading I could not decipher what was a pictograph or what was an ideograph, the discussion in class allowed me to actually look at the terms and break them down. For example picto stands for picture meaning the symbols used are meant to portray an object, whereas ideographs are signs that try and convey an idea. As for the term ptroglyphs I realized that petro is short for rock or stone so the term is talking about abstract symbols that are carved onto stone.

Since the reading for chapter one was otherwise straight forward with its message I did not have that many questions in regard to it. However the class discussion helped set up the next chapters topic more so than the book did. What intrigued me the most were the charts shown in class that depicted the gradual change from early symbols to the modern day alphabet. Along with the slight introduction to the next chapter, I also enjoyed going more in depth about the Rosetta Stone. The book did a perfectly acceptable job in describing the discover of the stone, but it was not till we talked about it in class that I truly thought about how extraordinary and important the stone was. When I read about the massive stone document it was just that, another document but then in class we discussed its importance even further and it interested me to know that without that one stone we would have never been able to translate Egyptian hieroglyphics, and furthermore their way of life.