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The tokens were then progressively replaced by flat tablets, on which signs were recorded with a stylus. Actual writing is first recorded in Uruk (modern Iraq), at the end of the 4th millennium BC, and soon after in various parts of the Near East. [30] An ancient Sumerian poem gives the first known story of the invention of writing:
The following is a list of the world's oldest surviving physical documents. Each entry is the most ancient of each language or civilization. For example, the Narmer Palette may be the most ancient from Egypt, but there are many other surviving written documents from Egypt later than the Narmer Palette but still more ancient than the Missal of Silos.
The earliest chronologies date back to the earliest civilizations of Early Dynastic Period of Egypt, Mesopotamia and the Sumerians, [3] which emerged independently of each other from roughly 3500 BCE. [4] Earliest recorded history, which varies greatly in quality and reliability, deals with Pharaohs and their reigns, as preserved by ancient ...
In the Early Iron Age, alphabetic writing spread across the Near East and southern Europe. With the emergence of the Brahmic family of scripts, languages of India are attested from after about 300 BC. There is only fragmentary evidence for languages such as Iberian, Tartessian, Galatian and Messapian. [34]
Prehistory, also called pre-literary history, [1] is the period of human history between the first known use of stone tools by hominins c. 3.3 million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems.
In Ancient Egypt, papyrus was used as a medium for writing surfaces, maybe as early as the First Dynasty, but first evidence is from the account books of King Neferirkare Kakai of the Fifth Dynasty (about 2400 BCE). [11] A calamus, the stem of a reed sharpened to a point, or bird feathers were used for writing.
Writing appeared very early in the Middle Uruk period, and then developed further in the Late Uruk and Jemdet Nasr periods. [135] The first clay tablets inscribed with a reed stylus are found in Uruk IV (nearly 2000 tablets were found in the Eanna quarter) and some are found also in Susa II, consisting solely of numeric signs.
Archaeological excavations at the site of Umm el-Marra have uncovered four inscribed clay cylinders dating to ca. 2300 BC and whose incisions have been hypothesized to be Early Alphabetic Semitic writing, which would make them the oldest such examples.