The great invention

Overview of the book The Great Invention - Silvia Ferara: In this joyful celebration of human creativity and perseverance - published worldwide - a leading Italian researcher in our cultural and social behavior explores the origins of our greatest invention: writing. The letter L where the tabletop meets the legs, the letter T between the double doors, and the letter D on the oval backrest of the armchair - everything around us is an alphabet in things. But how did these shapes reach the page, let alone form complex structures like this sentence? In "The Great Invention," Silvia Ferara offers an in-depth look at how - and how many times - humans have enabled the miracle of written language, traveling back and forth through time and across the world to Mesopotamia, Crete, China, Egypt, Central America, Easter Island, and beyond. With Ferara as our guide, we examine the puzzles of texts that remain undeciphered, including famous cases like the Faistos disk and the Voynich manuscript; touch the colorful, tangled threads of the Inca Khipu; study turtle shells and bull shoulder bearing the oldest Chinese inscriptions; and watch in awe as Sequoia alone invents a Cherokee language text; and delve into the forefront of decoding, where high-energy laser scanners bring tears to the engineer's eye.