Pictogram

A pictogram (also pictogramme, pictograph, or simply picto[1]) is a graphical symbol that conveys meaning through its visual resemblance to a physical object.

Ancient Sumerian, Egyptian, and Chinese civilizations began to adapt such symbols to represent concepts, developing them into logographic writing systems.

In 2011, UNESCO's World Heritage List added "Petroglyph Complexes of the Mongolian Altai, Mongolia"[6] to celebrate the importance of the pictograms engraved in rocks.

Because of their graphical nature and fairly realistic style, they are widely used to indicate public toilets, or places such as airports and train stations.

Because they are a concise way to communicate a concept to people who speak many different languages, pictograms have also been used extensively at the Olympics since the 1964 summer games in Tokyo featured designs by Masaru Katsumi.

[12] Contemporary artist Xu Bing created Book from the Ground, a universal language made up of pictograms collected from around the world.

A pictographic traffic sign (top) warning motorists of horses and riders
Ojibwa pictographs on cliff-face at Agawa Rock, Lake Superior Provincial Park of a boat and Mishipeshu , an animal with horns, painted with red ochre
Several prehistoric engravings can be found around La Silla Observatory . [ 3 ]
table with boxes instead of numbers, the amounts and sizes of boxes represent amounts of people
A compound pictogram showing the breakdown of the survivors and deaths of the maiden voyage of the RMS Titanic by class and age/gender