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Globular envelope with a cluster of accountancy tokens, Uruk duration, from Susa. Louvre Museum Archaeologist Denise Schmandt-Besserat determined the link between previously uncategorized clay "tokens", the earliest of which have been found in the Zagros region of Iran, and the very first recognized writing, Mesopotamian cuneiform. In around 8000 BC, the Mesopotamians began using clay tokens to count their farming and made items.

The quantity of tokens in each container became revealed by impressing, on the container's surface area, one photo for each circumstances of the token inside. They next ignored the tokens, relying exclusively on symbols for the tokens, made use of clay surface areas. To avoid making a photo for each instance of the exact same item (for example: 100 pictures of a hat to represent 100 hats), they 'counted' the items by using various little marks.

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The initial Mesopotamian writing system was obtained around 3200 BC from this method of keeping accounts. By the end of the fourth millennium BC, the Mesopotamians were using a triangular-shaped stylus pressed into soft clay to tape-record numbers. This system was gradually enhanced with using a sharp stylus to indicate what was being counted by means of pictographs.

Around 2700 BC, cuneiform started to represent syllables of spoken Sumerian. About that time, Mesopotamian cuneiform ended up being a general function composing system for logograms, syllables, and numbers. More Details was adapted to another Mesopotamian language, the East Semitic Akkadian (Assyrian and Babylonian) around 2600 BC, and then to others such as Elamite, Hattian, Hurrian and Hittite.

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With the adoption of Aramaic as the 'lingua franca' of the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911609 BC), Old Aramaic was also adapted to Mesopotamian cuneiform. The last cuneiform scripts in Akkadian found therefore far date from the 1st century AD. Phoenician composing system and descendants [edit] The Proto-Sinaitic script, in which Proto-Canaanite is believed to have actually been first written, is attested as far back as the 19th century BC.