What do we know about human civilized history before the advent of the written w

Question: What do we know about human civilized history before the advent of the written word!?
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First we must define civilized!. Wikipedia does a good job of that!.
Please see the link I providedWww@QuestionHome@Com

Sadly, very little!. The written word itself has changed over the millennia!. The earliest written word seems to be the pictogram, which dates to atleast 6600 BC!. The pictogram being an image which represents a concept, object, activity, place, or event!. Ideograms are similar to pictograms, only they represented ideas rather than concepts, objects, activities, places, or events!. Egyptian heiroglyphics date from around 3200 BC!. It's more specific than the pictogram as it depicted letters and words rather than concepts, objects, activities, places, or events!. Very similar to our more modern alphabet where the written letter is a symbol to represent the sound of the letter!.

Consider the letter A in it's capital form!. We naturally associate the sound of the A with two slanted lines with meet at the top and a horizontal line in the middle that connect the two (though there are other ways of writing the capital A which don't use this form)!. But in heiroglyphics A could be written as either a bird or a bent arm!. And according to the 1983 World Book Encyclopedia Volume 1, around 3000 BC the earliest form of Egyptian hieroglypics used an ox head for A!.

So how does this connect with what we know about human civilized history before the advent of the written word!? Simply put, how do we read the written word if we don't know what it is!? Cave paintings are being theorized as being a very early form of writing, which actually has made sense to me for over a decade now!. The people who painted them weren't merely painting decorations, they were also telling stories of life in their day and age and we don't know just how to read them!. We couldn't read heiroglyphs until the discovery of the Rosetta Stone!. With writing in the hieroglyphic and Demotic Egyptian scripts and the classical era of Ancient Greece, Egyptian hieroglyphics were able to be translated and then more was able to be understood of Ancient Egyptian life!.

As it stands archeologists have to try and put two and two together and hope they equal three at best!. Yes, 2+2=4, but the point here is that they have to guess based on the physical evidence they discover!. The more learned from the physical evidence, the more 2+2=4!. For instance finding a spot where there are a lot of stone flakes and a stone where one of the largest flakes fit's perfectly against the stone!. And all the flakes themselves are fairly sharp!. This may be representative of the possibility that knives blades and spear heads were made in this spot!. Nearby are other areas where similar flakes are found!. And testing methods to make similar flakes then testing them for their ability to cut, especially animal skin, proves that indeed such areas could have been used for making knives and spearheads!.

So it is really up to guess work to figure out what civilized life was like before the written word as we know it!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

History was passed down orally!. One generation passed it down to the next generation, generally in stories!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

I'm inclined to include the written word as one of the necessary ingredients of civilisation!. Www@QuestionHome@Com