Event

Invention of writing

The earliest known writing: signs drawn on clay tablets in southern Mesopotamia in the late 4th millennium BCE, the forerunner of cuneiform.

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Invention of the alphabet According to David R. Olson Scholarship & press 1
An indirect line: the alphabet's makers apparently took their method from Egyptian hieroglyphs, and whether Egyptian writing borrowed the idea from Sumer is uncertain.

Rise of cities in Mesopotamia Scholarship & press 2 3
The essay adds that proto-cuneiform writing may also have existed in Syria and Turkey by the mid-4th millennium BCE.

Timeline 1 date

Proof 3 sources

Writing: History of writing systems, Encyclopaedia Britannica. Scholarship & press Archived copy
While all Western writing systems may be traced back to the beginnings of symbol making in Sumer, there is no reason to believe that Asian writing systems were borrowed from the Sumerian form.
The Origins of Writing, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History), Oct 2004. Scholarship & press Archived copy
The site was dominated by large temple estates whose need for accounting and disbursing of revenues led to the recording of economic data on clay tablets.
How to write cuneiform, British Museum, 21 Jan 2021. Scholarship & press Archived copy
First developed by scribes as a bookkeeping tool to keep track of bread and beer rations in ancient cities like Uruk (in the south east of modern-day Iraq)

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