World’s oldest writing system may have its origins in mysterious, undeciphered symbols

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Researchers have uncovered links between the precursor to the world’s oldest writing system and the mysterious, intricate designs left behind by engraved cylindrical seals that were rolled across clay tablets about 6,000 years ago.

Scholars consider cuneiform the first writing system, and humans used its wedge-shaped characters to inscribe ancient languages such as Sumerian on clay tablets beginning around 3400 BC. The writing system is thought to have originated from Mesopotamia, the region where the world’s earliest known civilization developed that’s now modern-day Iraq.

Before cuneiform, however, there was an archaic script using abstract pictographic signs called proto-cuneiform. It first appeared around 3350 to 3000 BC in the city of Uruk, in modern southern Iraq.

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