The History of Communication at a Glance
Mawaiz Khan Akash
North Hampton School
The animals use signals and systems or codes to communicate but man alone has acquired the faculty of communication by speech. As communication is essential for animals’ survival similarly communication is man’s primary need to exchange of thoughts, messages, or information, as by speech, signals, writing, or behavior.
The word “communication” comes from the Latin verb communicare, “to talk together, confer, discourse, and consult, one with another. It is related to the Latin word communitas, that meaning not community or society but honest dealing. The history tells us that in different times man used different ways of communicating to get closer and closer. Like earlier manhood used to use letter; for that they had to travel far and wide to deliver them or face to face communication either by talking sign language. But the recent technology has annihilated this gap where man is using a vast and complex network of communications.
While tracing back the origins of communication it does clear (Gilbert & Scott: 2010) that drums were one way to send signals to neighboring tribes and groups. The sound of the drumming patterns would tell them of concerns and events they needed to know. The same publication highlighted that storytelling was used to tell stories, both fiction and nonfiction, before there were books. It was a way for families and communities to pass on information about their past. After body language the speech took place when man started communicating, the fossil evidence that speech appeared almost 500,000 years ago. (Uttara. M: 2000). The writing in communication started in the Early Bronze Age (late 4th millennium BC) out of Neolithic proto-writing.
One would curiously know the latest benchmarks of communication; including radio, telephone, television, computer and internet which totally changed man’s life in modern ways of communication. It was William...