Britannica Student Encyclopedia - 2010

December 17, 1903. The flight took place

in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina.

The Wright

brothers’ first

airplane, the

flyer, had

wings that

were made of

wood and

muslin cloth.

76 Writing BRITANNICA STUDENT ENCYCLOPEDIA

 

Reading is the process of looking at and

understanding writing. When people

know how to read and write, they are

called literate.

Types ofWriting

The simplest type of writing uses pictures

to stand for words or ideas. Many

Native American groups used this type

of writing. In other types of writing,

marks of various designs can stand for

whole words or parts of words. Chinese

and Japanese characters are examples of

this kind of writing. In alphabetic writing,

marks called letters each stand for a

different sound. The alphabet used for

English is an example of this type of

writing.

History

In prehistoric times people scratched

marks on stones or wood. Some made

cave paintings that showed people and

animals. But these marks and drawings

were not true writing systems.

As people began to trade, they developed

systems for keeping records of their

business. They created counting tokens

to show how many animals or crops

they had traded. Eventually different

marks came to stand for the different

goods. For example, a mark representing

a cow looked much like a cow.

An important advance in writing took

place when people began using marks to

stand for more than just objects. Certain

marks could then represent ideas, such

as love or morning. At some point

people started using marks to stand for

the sounds of speech.

The Sumerians of Mesopotamia (in

modern Iraq) invented the first real writing

system about 5,000 years ago. This

writing, called cuneiform, was a system

of wedge-shaped dents pressed into slabs

of mud or clay. Not much later the

Egyptians invented their own writing

system, called hieroglyphics. About

3,000 years ago Semitic peoples in the

Middle East created the first alphabets.

Most of the people who lived in early

civilizations did not know how to read

or write. In many places people called

scribes wrote things down for others. By

the AD 1400s, however, more people

were becoming educated. The invention

of the printing press in the middle of the

1400s helped make books and other

writings widely available. By the 1900s

many countries were requiring their

A clay tablet has a record of the sheep and

goats that someone owned in ancient Mesopotamia

(in modern Iraq). The writing system

used on the tablet is called cuneiform.

BRITANNICA STUDENT ENCYCLOPEDIA Writing 77

 

children to go to school to learn how to

read and write. Today most people in

the world have these skills.

#More to explore

Alphabet • Communication

• Hieroglyphics • Language

Wyandot

TheWyandot are Native Americans of

the central United States and southern

Canada. They call themselves theWendat.

When French explorers met them in

the early 1600s, they lived in what is

now southern Ontario. The French

called them the Huron. TheWyandot

are still sometimes known by that name.

TheWyandot traditionally lived in longhouses,

which were large enough to

house several families. They built their

longhouses using wood and bark. They

grew corn, beans, squash, and sunflowers.

They also fished and hunted deer.

After the French arrived, theWyandot

traded furs to them for goods such as

metal tools, cloth, and guns.

In the middle of the 1600s theWyandot

were attacked by their enemies, the Iroquois.

The Iroquois destroyedWyandot

villages and took someWyandot as captives.

OtherWyandot escaped to the

west. Still others went to live with the

French in Quebec.

During the 1600s and 1700s theWyandot

who had moved west moved again.

For a time they lived in what are now

Michigan,Wisconsin, Illinois, and

Ohio. In the middle of the 1800s the

U.S. government forced theseWyandot

to move to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma).

At the end of the 20th century about

2,000Wyandot lived in the United

States, mostly in Oklahoma or Kansas.

OtherWyandot lived in Canada, in

Ontario and Quebec. There they are

known as the Huron-Wendat.

#More to explore

Iroquois • Native Americans

A girl practices writing letters on a blackboard.

A museum in Ontario, Canada, shows what

a Wyandot village may have looked like. In

one building dried tobacco hangs from the

ceiling.

78 Wyandot BRITANNICA STUDENT ENCYCLOPEDIA

 

Wyoming

The state ofWyoming lies in the western

United States. An explorer once

describedWyoming as a land where

“nature had collected all of her beauties

together in one chosen place.”Wyoming’s

natural beauty is preserved in

several national parks and monuments.

One of them, Yellowstone National

Park, became the world’s first national

park in 1872.

Wyoming’s nickname is the Equality

State. In 1869Wyoming allowed

women to vote and to hold public

office. This was the first time in U.S.

history that women had been given

these rights.Wyoming also elected the

country’s first female governor, Nellie

Tayloe Ross, in 1924. The state capital is

Cheyenne.

Geography

Wyoming borders Montana on the

north and northwest. To the west is

Idaho. Utah lies to the southwest,

and Colorado lies to the

south.Wyoming’s eastern neighbors are