Inventing History: How We Learned to Write

Dr. Chris Farrar discusses the origins of writing. Here's an icebreaker for your next party: What's the most important invention of all time? Go ahead. Try it. Maybe you'll hear fire. Or the wheel. The internet. Or AI. But after this talk, we hope to convince you that there is one correct answer: Writing. Take a look at the process by which accounting for donations to temples more than five thousand years ago turned into writing systems capable of capturing the richness of human language and culture. Learn how poor turquoise miners in the Sinai desert, desperate for the protection of their patron goddess, combined symbols from one of these systems with the unique characteristics of their own language, creating a new way of writing and changing human destiny forever. Finally, talk briefly about the development of writing and the creation of one of the foundational texts of the western world: The Bible. It will be illuminating, interesting, and fun. Plus, there will be lots of pictures! Books are available for purchase and signing at the time of the program. Dr. Farrar holds a doctorate in Linguistics from Ohio State University. He has been a lay student of biblical archaeology and scholarship for 50 years. With this background, he has turned his attention since 2018 to writing historical fiction. In 2020 he published his first novel, By the Waters of Babylon, set in the time of the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem. In 2022, he published the sequel, Light of Exile, set two gene