Saturday Travel, Cont Fm Previous Photo, Which Discussed This > I-80 Rest Area, Architecturally Themed to “Iowa Writers and Writing”.

11:20.5 am Saturday May 21, Giant "Ink Pen Nib" Sculpture, I-80 Rest Area, Mile Marker 147, Mitchellville, IA 50169.

…. Just As For YOU, In The View /\ Above /\, THE REAL-LIFE-VISITOR’S Attention, At This Rest Area, IMMEDIATELY IS GRABBED BY This Giant Writing Instrument, AS SYMBOL!

AND ESPECIALLY NOTE =>Scribed ON The Pen => “The Beautiful Land !!” .
…AND just in case the visitor hasn't yet already got the point, A Bronze Plaque in the lobby is titled “It Has Iowa Written All Over It."

Or Course The “Theme of This Rest Area, Is IOWA, And It’s Outstanding Writer/Authors, And Iowa’s Contribution The Art Of Writing: =>

…. BUT / AND => This “Theme” and the /\ Above /\ Pictured Giant Writing Instrument, AS SYMBOL, Point To A LARGER and VERY Important & Long History & Technology, Of Writing & The Instruments Used For “Writing”!!
….The earliest “writing” was done with rock or flint scraping / cutting on wood, or bone, or stone walls. These were mostly pictures and not symbolic as we currently understand. …Wikipedia says “Emerging in Sumer [Mesopotamia = Fertile Crescent pre Babylon], in the late fourth millennium BC (the Uruk IV period) to convey the Sumerian language (which was a language isolate), cuneiform writing began as a system of pictograms, stemming from an earlier system of shaped tokens used for accounting. In the third millennium, the pictorial representations became simplified and more abstract as the number of characters in use decreased (Hittite cuneiform).
….The system consists of a combination of logophonetic, consonantal alphabetic, and syllabic signs.” This, in other-words, became Babylonian Cuneiform, where “ It is distinguished by its wedge-shaped marks on clay tablets, made by means of a blunt reed for a stylus.” [In the absence of wood or plentiful bone, and before invention of papyrus, clay was plentiful and convenient.]
….Although millions of sun baked clay tablets are perfectly preserved, they are hard to carry around and get broken. Eventually papyrus, parchment, and velum became standard, + written-on with ink filled reed pens up to ~600 AD, when bird feather quill ink pens were ..”primary in the western world from the 6th to the 19th century. Quills went into decline after the invention of the metal pen [using recently developed strong flexible steel], mass production beginning in Great Britain as early as 1822 …”

The Next Photo Shows The Full Text of , The Bronze Plaque => “It Has Iowa Written All Over It !!!” .

Photo File = DSC_0123 I-80RstArea}GiantInkPenTip TheBeautifulLand Rot.jpg
…..Posted 23 Aug 2020.