How reading right-to-left could have been the norm
Talking Points
- The History of Reading
- My theory of “Visual Predominance”. Albeit very novice and unbacked. Some theory I know
- Some examples
The backstory
The following information is from the most credible source on the internet, ‘comicphonics.com’, a children's history website. This way I can obtain the most dumbed-down version with the least waffle and arbitrary language. If you wanna know more about ‘arbitrary’ language and behaviour refer to my other posts.
We began writing in mud thousands of years ago. The ten commandments were written in stone using a chisel, it was then moved onto paper for easier reading. Could there have been incomplete information that wasn’t moved onto paper? How do we know anything? We don’t. That is a piece for another day. The chisel in the left and the hammer in the right since most people are right-handed. Consequently, moving from right to left was much more viable. We let the chisel set the target and the hammer follows bringing the artillery.
When the greeks moved onto papyrus, we switched to left-to-right to avoid smudging the ink.
The entire history of why we read right-to-left is based on an arbitrary decision. “Hold on,” you say. Don’t we have a valid reason for reading and writing like that. Depending on what you consider a ‘valid reason’ Not wanting to smudge ink while important or made to seem important is solely choice. If we smudged our writing from the offset I am sure we would be able to create meaning from the variations in smudges. Art is a great example of that.
Visual Predominance
Since we have been trained to look at things starting from the left our view on things is not as pure as could be. Visual predominance is the idea that because we focus on things left of our field of view first, thoughts surrounding those visuals dominate our perspective of what we are seeing. It's long-winded but I have an example.
Imagine you have a space within a space. There is another space positioned in the same place but rotated and off centre. Then you have another. What do you look at first? What you look at first drastically changes the image you perceive. Below is a piece illustrating my theory.
As you can see the “art” conveys a confusing message depending on what you choose to focus on. Done by myself!
Moral of the Story
Imagine you had absolutely no bias to what direction you focused on first? You would have perfect vision. You see all. Good or bad.
Just a thought
