List-making: it's not just for Mycenaeans anymore

Although I found its additive style a little annoying (ironically), I appreciated this article on the history of the list. If nothing else, it has inspired me to stop apologizing for Linear B ("Yes, there was written Greek in the Mycenaean period, but unfortunately it's only lists of supplies and livestock.")

According to Robert Belknap in his book The List: The Uses and Pleasures of Cataloguing—a study of literary lists, particularly in the work of four American Renaissance authors—lists of sequential signs appeared as early as 3,200 B.C.E. Used as a means of accounting and record keeping, they signified an early form of communication that would evolve into written language. If this is true, then Eco is right: the list is the origin of culture.

List-making is also at the heart of traditional poetry, which often begins with genealogies. I frequently downplay the lists that occur in Homer and Hesiod in an effort to make those authors seem more accessible. I briefly mention the list's importance as a test of the bard's memory and as a way of including various parts of the audience (as with the Catalogue of Ships). But now maybe we will look deeper at how such poetry is in some sense an elaboration on a list (of gods or heroes).

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