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次の英文を読んで、その要旨を250字以内の日本語で書きなさい。句読点も字数に含めます。
In the tens of thousands of years of human development, writing is a relatively new development. Although we have no way of knowing how long people in different parts of the world have been using language, we do know writing has been used for only the past few thousand years. How humans stored information for use at another time or in another place before the invention of writing is somewhat of a mystery. But there are various hints even in the highly technological societies that surround us today.
Elders among the Ulkatcho people of west-central British Columbia, Canada, tell a story about their ancestors who, as part of a war party, attacked an enemy society. Because their language was not written and their lifestyle did not require a complex number system, the Ulkatcho people developed a clever way of counting and recording the number of warriors who went to the battle. Before leaving, each of the 500 warriors placed one rock in a line in the forest. If warriors matched rocks, they held a big celebration because they knew no one had been killed in the battle. The Ulkatcho people say the line of rocks can still be seen.
This traditional story is just one example of techniques that societies with no writing systems used to record important information for use at another time or in another place. Another society without writing was the ancient Incan society of South America, which was a highly developed empire that spread across a vast mountainous area. Because it covered such a large area, communication between distant parts of the empire was carried out by messengers who ran from place to place over rugged mountain roads and trails. Because they had no writing system, the Incan runners carried ropes called "quippu" that were tied, or knotted, in certain arrangements so that when a runner reached his destination, he could use the knots to help him remember the key points of the messages but also to keep records. Anthropologists believe these ropes were used not only for messages but also to keep records.
Many other societies have developed techniques to record information for later use. Certain North American native peoples used marks on sticks or knots in cords to record key elements of traditional myths and stories so that they could be retold without losing important elements. In the ancient Middle East, merchants of the Mesopotamian society (in what is now Iraq) used clay plates to represent goods that were bought and sold. In ancient China, simplified line drawings were developed to record information.
The rocks placed in the forest by the Ulkatcho people, as well as the marked sticks and knotted ropes and cords used for messages and story telling, were techniques used to record information. The Mesopotamian clay tablets and the Chinese drawings were also techniques for information storage. The arrangements of the clay plates and he simplified drawings of the Chinese, however, came to represent ideas in language. These primitive information systems developed into the writing systems we see around us today. [広島大（後-総合科）]
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