Recorded history
More complete writing systems were preceded by proto-writing. Early examples are the Jiahu symbols (c. 6600 BCE), Vinča signs (c. 5300 BCE), early Indus script (c. 3500 BCE) and Nsibidi script (c. before 500 CE). There is disagreement concerning exactly when prehistory becomes history, and when proto-writing became "true writing" However, invention of the first writing systems is roughly contemporary with the beginning of the Bronze Age in the late Neolithic of the late 4th millennium BCE. 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 3400–3200 BCE with earliest coherent texts from about 2600 BCE.
Proto-Sinaitic script
The term Proto-Canaanite is also used when referring to the ancestor of the Phoenician or Paleo-Hebrew script, respectively, before some cut-off date, typically 1050 BC, with an undefined affinity to Proto-Sinaitic. 
While no extant inscription in the Phoenician alphabet is older than c. 1050 BC, "Proto-Canaanite" is a term used for the early alphabets as used during the 13th and 12th centuries BC in Phoenicia. However, the Phoenician, Hebrew, and other Canaanite dialects were largely indistinguishable before the 11th century BC. A possible example of "Proto-Canaanite" was found in 2012, the Ophel inscription, when during the excavations of the south wall of the Temple Mount by the Israeli archaeologist Eilat Mazar in Jerusalem on a storage jar made of pottery. Inscribed on the pot are some big letters about an inch high of which only five are complete and traces of perhaps three additional letters written in Proto-Canaanite script.