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.
Brahmi script
The earliest known full inscriptions of Brahmi are in Prakrit, dated to be from 3rd to 1st-century BCE, particularly the Edicts of Ashoka, c. 250 BCE. Prakrit records predominate the epigraphic records discovered in the Indian subcontinent through about 1st-century CE. The earliest known Brahmi inscriptions in Sanskrit are from the 1st-century BCE, such as the few discovered in Ayodhya, Ghosundi and Hathibada (both near Chittorgarh). Ancient inscriptions have also been discovered in many North and Central Indian sites, occasionally in South India as well, that are in hybrid Sanskrit-Prakrit language called "Epigraphical Hybrid Sanskrit". These are dated by modern techniques to between 1st and 4th-century CE. Surviving ancient records of the Brahmi script are found as engravings on pillars, temple walls, metal plates, terra-cotta, coins, crystals and manuscripts.