In his book, The Spell of the Sensuous, David Abram considers tracking as the first form of literacy. One may wonder whether literacy is related to the ability to read and write or does it require some knowledge and understanding. Being literate is about identifying, understanding, and interpreting visual information. Literacy is often attributed to reading and writing skills, but it is not limited to them. It can be applied to pictures and footprints, making tracking the oldest form of human literacy. This essay will consider tracking as a type of literacy and discuss how language and landscape are related based on Abram’s The Spell of the Sensuous.
Tracking can be described as observing footprints and other signs that can lead a hunter to prey. The most advanced tracking forms can involve creating a working hypothesis based on the initial interpretation of signs, knowledge of animal behavior, and the terrain. Tracking requires analyzing visual information and making conclusions based on it. Today, modern people use reading for the same purposes, which makes these skills similar. Abram draws parallels between letters and footprints, highlighting that modern people read words from books exactly like hunters used to read footprints of a deer, bear, and other animals from the soil. He also makes an analogy between the letters on a white page and animal traces on white snow. For million years, humanity depended on hunters and their “literacy,” tracking animals, as it was the only way to find food. To survive, hunters had to get information about the location of their prey from traces, almost reading the footprints and making tracking the first form of human literacy.
The Spell of the Sensuous compares modern writing and ancient drawings, claiming that “our first writing, clearly, was our own tracks, our footprints, our handprints in mud or ash pressed upon the rock” (Abram, 1997, p.96). Ancient people traced animals and left outlines of their bodies on the cave walls, possibly hoping that the abundance of animals’ pictures would also increase their actual number. Pictures from old caves depict prey animals, footprints people saw in forests, clouds, nature, and human shapes. Hunters drew symbols and drawings similar to animals and their tracks on cave walls to remember what species they could hunt and which ones they should for their safety. Adults used these drawings to teach their children about the danger of the outer world, tell them stories, and show them how to hunt. It was their primitive way of transmitting information about their experiences and warning about possible threats long before humanity evolved into using spoken and written language.
Cave drawing inspired the creation of the writing systems, and many still contained animalistic elements. Egyptian hieroglyphs often illustrated birds, serpents, humans, and plants. The Chinese used ideograms and pictures that expressed some phenomenon or qualities. Humanity developed their drawing systems into hieroglyphs, learning to pass a more significant amount of information and save their knowledge in a written form. Later written language lost its relation to the animal world and nature, transforming into the first alphabet exclusively featuring human sounds and signs.
The Spell of the Sensuous discusses how human language relates to the sounds of nature and landscapes. Abram analyzes the notion of language, describing it as a mix of preverbal exchange and verbal recognition. It is intriguing to trace the roots of the first languages and try to understand how they were created. Language, similar to literacy, originated with the help of nature, appearing from the contact between humans and their surroundings. The Spell of the Sensuous suggests that “language is no more the special property of the human organism than it is an expression of the animate earth that enfolds us” (p. 90). It originates jointly with sounds and gestures of the human body and the landscape of nature.
Before the first alphabets, the human language used the elements and sounds of nature for communication. Merleau-Ponty referred to the language as “the very voice of the trees, the waves, and the forests” (p. 86). Meanwhile, Socrates states that written words speak to people almost like they are alive (p. 138). Everyone can hear words in their mind when they read, so the author compares it to how ancient people could hear and listen to the sounds of the moon, rivers, and trees like they were speaking to them. Language no longer referenced nature’s sounds and started associating with signs and sounds made by humans after the Greeks invented the first phonetic alphabet. However, the language still included many sounds of nature, and the landscape continued speaking. For instance, English words related to water, like “splash,” “gush,” or “wash,” sound so similar to the noises rivers make (p. 82). Human language depends on nonhuman sounds, so it cannot be considered an exclusively human possession.
Abram also considers the language of gestures and its relation to landscape. Many perceive language a verbal form of communication, but it appears to be far more complex. Gestures and body language can convey a large amount of information and are the way of speaking for many animals. They can communicate by releasing chemical secretions, making facial expressions, or crying, while bees even have dances that show the direction of a food source. Abram describes his experience meeting sea animals and how he realized that the body, tonality, rhythms, and gestures could speak themselves (p. 167). He presents the example of two friends who meet each other after a long time and concludes that the tone of their voices can express their happiness more than their words (p. 80). Indeed, sometimes the way people talk can be more important than the content of their speech. Psychologists can assume people’s opinions about each other by how their hands and legs move during the conversation. Language is a bodily phenomenon, so animals and people can communicate with gestures and sounds.
Abram discusses the literacy of tracking and the relationship between the language and landscape in The Spell of the Sensuous. Tracing animals from their footprints and other signs, essential for ancient people to survive, can be compared to reading skills, as they both require analyzing visual information and making conclusions. Therefore, tracking can be reviewed as the oldest form of human literacy. Ancient people drew pictures of animals and their traces on the walls of their caves, creating the first written languages. Those drawings were deeply connected to the animal world, but written language evolved to feature human signs with time. However, language is still connected to the symbols of nature, as many modern words originate from the sounds of rivers, trees, or wind. Humans and animals communicate through body language, like facial expressions or sounds. Human language and literacy are closely related to the landscape, and humans are much closer to nature than they might think.
References
Abram, D. (1997). The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World. Vintage Books.