What is the reason why ancient books are arranged from right to left? When a person faces south and faces north, he looks up at the stars in the sky. If the stars are not moving, he is looking from right to left. In our country (Northern Hemisphere), water also rotates to the right (of the water) when flowing. If the word is water, it flows from top to bottom and must rotate to the right (of the word), so a new column will be created. During the historical period of oracle bone inscriptions, people respected heaven and earth, "looking up to observe astronomy, and looking down to observe geography, so they know the brightness" ("Book of Changes·Xici"), which is naturally like the law of heaven and earth. The text is arranged from right to left.
We are now accustomed to this order of writing words: from left to right, first up and then down, that is, horizontally and rightward. This is very different from the order in which ancient Chinese characters were arranged vertically and to the left. In fact, from ancient times to the present, the writing order of various characters in different parts of the world has been different. Generally speaking, there are three types: left row, right row and descending row. Today, countries around the world still retain these three writing orders. The left line is like English, etc.; the right line is like Arabic, Hebrew, etc.; the bottom line is like traditional Mongolian, Chinese ancient book printing, and sometimes Japanese, etc.
These three writing methods originate from different writing habits. For example, writing from right to left is said to be because of God's position, with the North Star as the coordinate, the sun rising in the east (right) and setting in the west (left). This method originated very early and has been preserved in various Semitic language families until now. The Greek alphabet was inherited from the Semitic alphabet (Phoenician) and originally ran from right to left, but later it was reversed. The reason is probably that when writing with your right hand, writing from right to left blocks your eyes. But there is a transition period to this change. Because Greek characters were written on wax tablets, sometimes after the previous line was written from right to left, they were written from left to right, turning into "cow style", and the line order was even from bottom to top! It was not until around 500 BC that the order was changed to the most popular right-hand-down sequence.
In ancient times, Chinese characters were always written straight down, with few exceptions. The origin of this sequence is closely related to writing materials. For example, ancient bamboo slips have many vertical textures. Long and narrow bamboo slips are usually written in a single line. People's habit is always to hold a long and narrow object vertically and write in a single line, all the way down. And because the left hand holds the bamboo slips and the right hand writes, after writing, they are placed on the right side in order, and the left hand picks up the new bamboo slips and starts writing. This becomes the habit of going up first and then down, from left to right.
It was later changed in line with international standards.
Okay, add a ps:
Proto-Indo-European was deduced by later linguists through the method of comparative linguistics based on the characteristics of the current Indo-European languages. The imaginary language that comes out. This hypothetical language is considered to be the common ancestor of all current Indo-European languages. The original Indo-European language has not been directly confirmed, so I have no way of knowing whether its writing order is really right-wing.
In fact, from the perspective of modern Indo-European languages, some parts (such as Urdu) are left-rowing. Coupled with the Greek ox-plot style, it is certain that the writing order of Indo-European languages ??has evolved. Sanskrit and Greek are also derived from ancient Indo-European languages, and writing habits have an objective impact on writing order, so it is not surprising that they will evolve over a period of time.
As for the Semitic language family and the Indo-European language family, there should be no relationship, although the relationship is very strange in terms of geographical location.