Pictograms, ideograms and logograms

A pictogram or pictograph is a symbol representing a concept, object, activity, place or event by illustration. It is the basis of cuneiform and hieroglyphs.

An ideogram or ideograph is a graphical symbol that represents an idea. Examples of ideograms include wayfinding signage, such as in airports. Commonly used to describe logographic writing systems such as Egyptian hieroglyphs and Chinese characters.

A logogram, or logograph, is a single grapheme which represents a word or a a meaningful unit of language.

Various ancient cultures all over the world use pictograms since around 9000 BC and they began to develop logographic writing systems based on these  pictographic or ideographic symbols around 5000 BC.

Egyptian hieroglyphics and Chinese writing, the characters has their  origins in

the pictorial representations.

Also Calligraphies,  Cuneiforms (ex: The Sumerian scripts as world's earliest systems of writing) were develloped by the help of these pictogrphic and logographic symbols.

Calligraphie

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Pictogram/ Ideogram 

The distinction between pictograms and ideograms is essentially a difference in
the relationship between the symbol and the entity it represents. The more
‘picture-like’ forms are pictograms and the more abstract derived forms are
ideograms.

 For more information:
 http://www.cambridge.org/features/linguistics/yule/downloads/sample_21.pdf

Modern Pictograms

Today also, pictograms are very usefull and they are everywhere.

Design work for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games:

Pictogram rock posters:

Ideas Transmitting Through Drawing

Petroglyphs

Eariest were dated to 10,000 to 12,000 years ago and it can be said that they were preparation for writing. Other writing systems such as pictographs and ideograms began to appear arround 7,000 to 9,000 years ago. It is possible to see different symbols in every continent. Each culture has different ways of communication and they have an intersting symbolic or ritual language.

 pre-writing symbols in different cultures

 Also Geoglyphs  are an other way of communication. They are large motives or designs produced on the ground. Most famous one is Nazca Lines in Peru. They were designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994. One hypothesis is that the Nazca people created them to be seen by their gods in the sky. 

Art 40,000 years ago

Cro-Magnons and Their Artistic Creativity

Cave and rock painting were generlly large animals and rarly drawings of humans. Red and yellow ochre, hematite, manganese oxide and charcoal were the natural colors that they were using. It is belived that respected elders or shamans were painting but now it is not really possible to know why they were painting.

I found this video really helpfull to understand prehistoric art

Also, how these paintings are survived?

Encaustic Technique was the reason. Ardis Harsche is one of the artists that uses this technique and her Cave Paintings series seemd interesting to me.