'Ferrara's book is an introduction to writing as a process of
revelation, but it's also a celebration of these things still
undeciphered, and many other tantalising mysteries besides.' The
Spectator This book tells the story of our greatest invention. Or,
it almost does. Almost, because while the story has a beginning -
in fact, it has many beginnings, not only in Mesopotamia, 3,100
years before the birth of Christ, but also in China, Egypt and
Central America - and it certainly has a middle, one that snakes
through the painted petroglyphs of Easter Island, through the great
machines of empires and across the desks of inspired, brilliant
scholars, the end of the story remains to be written. The invention
of writing allowed humans to create a record of their lives and to
persist past the limits of their lifetimes. In the shadows and
swirls of ancient inscriptions, we can decipher the stories they
sought to record, but we can also tease out the timeless truths of
human nature, of our ceaseless drive to connect, create and be
remembered. The Greatest Invention chronicles an uncharted journey,
one filled with past flashes of brilliance, present-day scientific
research and the faint, fleeting echo of writing's future.
Professor Silvia Ferrara, a modern-day adventurer who travels the
world studying ancient texts, takes us along with her; we touch the
knotted, coloured strings of the Incan khipu and consider the case
of the Phaistos disk. Ferrara takes us to the cutting edge of
decipherment, where high-powered laser scanners bring tears to an
engineer's eye, and further still, to gaze at the outline of
writing's future. The Greatest Invention lifts the words off every
page and changes the contours of the world around us - just keep
reading. 'The Greatest Invention is a celebration not of
achievements, but of moments of illumination and "the most
important thing in the world: our desire to be understood".' TLS
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