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Your Brain Was Never Supposed to Read
How a man-made invention rewired human cognition
We take literacy for granted.
If you operate a cellular device or use subtitles during a movie, you have likely been reading since you were a child. Despite the fact that reading and writing must be formally taught, something like 87% of people around the world (as of 2022) are considered to be literate (source).
And yet, despite its universality, it is not something that we humans evolved to do — at least not directly.
Instead, our brains have invented a way to express information via symbols, which allows us to spread information across vast distances, and even through time.
But, how do our brains actually do this?
To answer this question, we must first take a look at the historical development of reading and writing, and then finally the actual neuroscience behind it all.
A Brief History of Reading
While humans have been able to speak for at least 135,000 years (source), the first writing system did not appear until roughly 3200 BCE, with the arrival of Sumerian cuneiform (source).
Putting this into perspective: we’ve been reading and writing for less than 4% of our entire…
