Sejong’s Achievement, as Viewed by an American Admirer

Jared Diamond¹^,^†

¹University of California Medical School Los Angeles

^†Corresponding Author : Jared Diamond, Department of Physiology, University of California Medical School Los Angerles, CA 90095-1751, USA

Copyright ⓒ 2016, Sejong University Language Research Institue. This is an Open-Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Published Online: Jan 01, 2017

Abstract

Along with the mastery of tools, fire, speech, and agriculture, writing rates as one of the most important distinctions between humans and animals.1 Of those distinctions, writing is the most recent, having arisen barely 5,000 years ago. Traditionally, writing was also the distinction most restricted geographically: 2,000 years ago most of the world peoples still did not write. As a result of this restricted distribution, “civilized” peoples have always considered literacy to form the divide between themselves and “barbarians.”

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