Pictograms

Pictograms were simplified drawings of things to be recorded. They were an important part of language development, being one of the first few ideas of communications between other human beings to be actually written down in some form or another. The importance of being able to write down ideas was great, firstly because of the fact that man's memory alone isn't exactly the most reliable source of transfer of information. Also, it allowed the decendants of a certain race or culture to be able to recieve information from their predecessors, information which would otherwise be lost.

Chinese Ideagram Origins

However, pictograms were really quite limited in their application; something only to be expected of something this primitive. Still, it is not such a big step from these to arbitrary shapes which act as symbols for ideas, which is why we can safely say that pictograms are really the first language Man has ever known or encountered. This slightly more advanced system, known as Ideagrams, is the root of many Eastern languages.