Pictographs are a form of visual language that use pictures to represent words. Pictographs and hieroglyphs seem very similar, but pictographs are a form of picture writing that represents literal visual representatives; while hieroglyphs can represent sounds. The earliest written form of Pictographs is found in Han Zei Zi. Han Zei Zi is a book written around 300 B.C by a Chinese philosopher named Han Fei. However most pictograph drawing were traced back to the Paleolithic Era. Many ancient cultures have used pictographs as an early writing system including: Sumerian, Egyptian, and Chinese.
Heather Vigo