The act of writing, unlike speech, is not an innate human
ability; it is learned, or discovered, over time. So, who
discovered it first? Archaeological evidence suggests the
earliest organised system of writing was in India. For Western
civilisation, arguably the oldest surviving records were in
Sumerian, the language of peoples who lived about 5,000 years
ago in southern Mesopotamia (where Iraq is today). Some people
have suggested that the Egyptians farther west can justifiably
claim historicity for the earliest writing with their
pictographic hieroglyphics. But that discussion will have to
wait until another Entry. The Sumerian language had a system of
picture writing consisting of over 1,500 symbols, representing
objects, numbers and ideas. These were inscribed by a pointed
stylus on pieces of clay tablets which were then baked to
preserve them. Objects were depicted as picture representations,
numbers by repeated shapes (lines or circles) while proper nouns
used the 'rebus'. A rebus is something of a lit