Andrew Robinson (1) (1957–)

This was my first thorough introduction to the Indus Civilization, the very early civilization in what is now Pakistan and India, in the period from 2600 to 1900 BCE, so roughly contemporaneous with the Egyptian Old Kingdom (the time of the Great Pyramids. and with the height of the Sumerian-Akkadian civilization in Mesopotamia. Only in the first half of the 20th century did the great ruins of the Indus cities come to light and it gradually became apparent that this was a very sophisticated civilization, perhaps on the same level as its better-known Middle Eastern colleagues.
Publicist Andrew Robinson gives a good overview, with a few personal touches (including a lot of attention to the still undeciphered script of the Indus civilization), and especially the constant warning (rightly so) that there are still many unknowns. He also does not shy away from thorny issues, such as the highly charged debate about what happened after 1900 BCE, the so-called Aryan controversy. More about that in my History account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6373860560… (more)

The Story of Writing was not what I expected and more than I expected. I bought the book because of my interest in ancient scripts, languages and archaeology thinking it would be a good general overview. When I first glanced through it I thought I had bought a book more oriented toward middle school audience....that would be a wrong assumption. It is not an in depth scholarly work written for an audience with a graduate degree but it is still an engaging book for a later high school, freshman college level. It covers all of the major ancient scripts including cuneiform, Egyptian and Mayan hieroglyphs and much more. It goes into just enough depth to get you interested in learning more which I am sure is exactly what the author intended. The illustrations, explanations and examples are all well done. I didn't know a lot about cuneiform prior to reading this book and now I want to learn more. Also, even after reading several books about Mayan hieroglyphs I have never been able to understand the calendar system until Andrew Robinson was able to illustrate and explain it in such a clear way.

Very good. I recommend this to anyone with a budding interest in scripts and ancient languages.… (more)

This was one of the best ‘Very Short Introductions’ I've read so far: concise and yet encompassing almost all of the subject matter. Robinson provides a set of terminological instruments with which the various forms of writing can be analyzed and therefore better understood. It seems logical, but he makes it clear that language and writing must be distinguished, although they are obviously very closely linked. It is important to note that almost every writing system originated from a spoken language, and therefore always contains some form of phonetic component. This leads to curious observations, such as this that the Japanese language is fundamentally different from the Chinese, but that the Japanese did adopt the Chinese characters to write down their language, with the addition of some limited phonetic symbols. Robinson even supplies a few reading keys on a limited number of pages to be able to read, for example, cuneiform and hieroglyphic writing. Well done.… (more)