"Vows of silence and humanist beliefs led European clerics to create new communication methods for the deaf 500 years ago"
How monks helped invent sign language
For millennia people with
hearing impairments encountered marginalization because it was believed
that language could only be learned by hearing the spoken word. Ancient
Greek philosopher Aristotle, for example, asserted that “Men that are
deaf are in all cases also dumb.” Under Roman law people who were born
deaf were denied the right to sign a will as they were “presumed to
understand nothing; because it is not possible that they have been able
to learn to read or write.”
Pushback against this prejudice began in the Renaissance. The first
person credited with the creation of a formal sign language for the
hearing impaired was Pedro Ponce de León, a 16th-century Spanish
Benedictine monk. His idea to use sign language was not a completely new
idea. Native Americans used hand gestures to communicate with other
tribes and to facilitate trade with Europeans. Benedictine monks had
used them to convey messages during their daily periods of silence. (See
also: New device translates brain activity into speech. Here's how.)
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History Sign Languages
How monks helped invent sign language
For millennia people with hearing impairments encountered marginalization because it was believed that language could only be learned by hearing the spoken word. Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, for example, asserted that “Men that are deaf are in all cases also dumb.” Under Roman law people who were born deaf were denied the right to sign a will as they were “presumed to understand nothing; because it is not possible that they have been able to learn to read or write.”
READ MORE
LEARN MORE
History Sign Languages
