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A new study has revealed the origins of the world’s oldest writing system – inscriptions found on cylinders used to exchange agricultural products and textiles.
The study, published by the magazine Antiquity, focused on the historical city of Uruk in southern Iraq, which was a center of culture and trade about 6,000 years ago, as it contained the first cuneiform writing used at that time in former southern Mesopotamia. Currently southern Iraq.
The results of the study, in which scientists from different nationalities participated, showed that many of the symbols engraved on stone cylinder seals were developed into signs used in “primary cuneiform writing,” which are the seals that were used regularly between 4400 and 3400 BC, when they were invented from stone. In this area.
The study pointed out that these seals were in the form of small cylinders that could be rolled onto plates of wet clay, leaving clear engravings on the clay. The plates were then left to dry and became like “documents” bearing the signature or mark of the person who owned the seal.
From 4400 BC onwards, these seals were used as part of an accounting system to track the production, storage and movement of agricultural and textile products, the study stated.
This discovery reinforces the idea suggested in a previous study that the cuneiform script that was developed in Mesopotamia (about 3100 BC) is believed to be the oldest writing system, and that it arose partly from accounting methods to track the production, storage, and transportation of these products.
Scientists have noted that many of the symbols that were engraved on the cylinder seals later evolved into the symbols of proto-cuneiform, which proves that they represented an early form of writing, which also shows that proto-cuneiform may have arisen partly from symbols used in trade and accounting.
According to the study’s scientists, the discovery proves that the known decorations from cylinder seals are directly linked to the development of writing in southern Iraq, and provides important new insights into the development of symbol and writing systems, as decorations related to the transportation of jars and cloth eventually turned into primitive cuneiform signs.
