From Upper Paleolithic (-30 000 -10 000 ВС) when Homo sapiens and the first languages both emerge and when graphic forms also appeared, until the alphabets, who started developping around 3 200 ВС, the ways were long and not always straight. Jack Goody goes into the detail of the genealogy of the systems elaborated by man to transmit his thought. Invention of the first signs, of the first syntax, gradual simplification of the alphabets, coexistence of different systems surviving from different periods... Goody's analysis is careful, backed up by many references to history, to geography and to authors who, before him, tackled on this essential subject. For the first time translated into french, this is a classical text of the great english s...