Writing
The invention of the first writing systems is roughly contemporary with the beginning of the Bronze Age of the late 4th millennium BC. The Sumerian archaic cuneiform script and the Egyptian hieroglyphs are generally considered the earliest writing systems, both emerging out of their ancestral proto-literate symbol systems from 3400 to 3200 BC with earliest coherent texts from about 2600 BC. It is generally agreed that Sumerian writing was an independent invention; however, it is debated whether Egyptian writing was developed completely independently of Sumerian, or was a case of cultural diffusion.
Writing
By definition, the modern practice of history begins with written records. Evidence of human culture without writing is the realm of prehistory. The Dispilio Tablet (Greece), Jiahu symbols (China) and Tărtăria tablets (Romania), which have been carbon dated to the 6th millennium BC, are recent discoveries of the earliest known neolithic writings.