New Findings About Origins of Writing Found in Mesopotamia

Researchers have found the origins of writing and explained that the world’s oldest writing system might have come from simple symbols used in trade. These symbols were carved onto small cylinders and helped people keep track of farm goods and cloth, a new study shows.

This discovery supports an older idea. Long ago, in ancient Mesopotamia (now part of Iraq), people developed a writing system known as cuneiform around 3100 B.C. It may have been established as a way to record and count items such as food, supplies, and goods.

Researchers found that some of the symbols carved on these stone cylinders eventually became signs used in “proto-cuneiform”—an early form of the cuneiform script. Their findings were published on Tuesday, November 5th in the journal Antiquity.

Use of cylinder seals for millennia throughout Mesopotamia

Cylinder seals were used for thousands of years across Mesopotamia. People would roll these seals over clay tablets to leave prints, often as a way to confirm a deal or, later on, to mark a letter.

Some of the seals in this new study are from as early as 4400 B.C., which is over 1,000 years before writing began.

Study authors Kathryn Kelley and Mattia Cartolano, researchers at the University of Bologna, explained that they focused on images from seals made before writing existed, which later evolved into symbols used in the earliest writing.

The research team found that some seal designs show scenes of jars and cloth being moved between Mesopotamian cities, likely involving temples. These images, researchers suggest, eventually turned into proto-cuneiform signs in early records on the trade of farm goods and textiles.

Link between “preliterate” seals and early writing

Although not everyone agrees with this theory, the authors believe it shows a clear link between these early symbols and the very beginnings of writing.

“It proves that the motifs known from cylinder seals are directly related to the development of writing in southern Iraq and shows how meaning was transferred from preliterate motifs into script,” researchers wrote in the statement.

Cuneiform writing involved pressing a stylus into soft clay to create wedge-shaped marks. These marks represented sounds, allowing people to record spoken language. Once the clay was dried or baked, these impressions were preserved.

This writing system was first developed by the Sumerians, an ancient civilization that lived in cities in southern Mesopotamia from about 5500 to 2300 B.C. Afterwards, the Akkadian Empire, based in the city of Akkad, took over.

The Akkadians kept the Sumerian writing system but used it to record their own language. For more than 2,000 years, through the Babylonian and Assyrian eras, Akkadian written in cuneiform became the main written language across Mesopotamia.