The Invention of Writing

The invention of writing was the development of systems for recording language in a durable, visible form, first as Sumerian cuneiform in Mesopotamia around 3200 BCE and Egyptian hieroglyphs at roughly the same time. Writing appears to have begun as a practical tool for accounting and administration, tracking grain, livestock and labor in the growing cities of the ancient Near East, before it was extended to law, literature, religion and history. Because societies with writing left records that a later reader can interpret directly, rather than only the physical traces archaeology can recover, historians treat the appearance of writing in a given region as the conventional line between prehistory and history. Writing was invented independently at least a handful of times, also in China and in Mesoamerica, each system arising from a different set of practical needs.