When we look at ancient languages evolve from strict pictographs into symbols, why do ALL the letters turn sideways?
What random-ass thing makes everyone turn their letters 90 degrees? Who would think "yeah, a field of barley, clearly that makes more sense with the barley growing sideways instead of up."
I don't think they suddenly changed from writing vertical to horizontal or anything. I don't get it.
quite frankly
in reply to Craig P • • •silverwizard
in reply to Craig P • •Craig P
in reply to silverwizard • • •silverwizard
in reply to Craig P • •@Craig P youtube.com/watch?v=qbCniw-BcW…
Lots of my info is from this talk (and talking about letter history with my 5 year old and doing deep dives), but as I understand, clay tablets you wrote sideways, and then paper/papyrus you wrote like we do, and that transfer caused the flip.
Craig P
in reply to silverwizard • • •@silverwizard That's interesting! It's also definitely not the reason in all cases, because cuneiform was on clay the whole time for the entire run.
It could be something similar, though, because how they wrote on clay evolved at roughly that time...