The Invention of Writing

The first writing wasn't poetry or scripture — it was bookkeeping. Sumerian officials pressed wedge-shaped marks into wet clay, a script we call cuneiform, to track deliveries of grain, beer, and livestock. Only later did those marks learn to record names, then kings' deeds, then stories and law. Writing froze memory in place, and every later leap in copying ideas cheaply — the alphabet, the printing press, the telegraph, the internet — is a sequel to this moment in the mud of Uruk.