FIGURE 1.1 Cuneiform Writing
The earliest known form of writing developed in different locations in Mesopotamia in 4000–3000 B.C.E. when people began linking meaning and sound to signs such as those shown in the chart. Some scribes who mastered the system used sticks or reeds to press dense rows of small wedge-shaped marks into damp clay tablets; others used chisels to engrave them on stone. Cuneiform was used for at least fifteen Near Eastern languages and continued to be written for three thousand years.