Researched
Writing
Writing emerges in Uruk (Sumer) and Egypt around 3200 BC: knowledge, contracts and administration outlast individuals.
Open in the interactive tree →Cuneiform began as bookkeeping on clay tablets: quantities of grain, livestock and labor. Egyptian hieroglyphs follow almost simultaneously, and writing was invented several times independently (China ~1250 BC, Mesoamerica ~600 BC). From then on, knowledge accumulates across generations without depending on an unbroken chain of memory.
Prerequisites
- Spoken Languageat least ~135,000 years ago?
- Tally Marks & Counting~43,000 years agoWriting began as bookkeeping of counted goods, a step beyond tallies
- Settlement & Cities~9000 BC
- Trade & Division of Labor~7000 BCEarliest writing is trade accounting: clay tokens and tablets record traded goods
Unlocks
- Number Systems & Place Value~3000-2000 BC
- State & Administration~3000 BC
- Alphabet~1800 BC
- Codified Law~1754 BC
- Libraries~650 BC
- Philosophy~585 BC
- History Writing (Herodotus)~430 BC
- Ancient clinical medicine~400 BC
- Calendar3rd millennium BC
- Paper~105 AD
- Ancient astronomy~150 AD
- Alchemy & Distillation~800
- East Asian Printing868
- Musical Notation~1025
- Banks & Double-Entry Bookkeeping~1340-1494
- Printing Press~1450
- Comparative Linguistics1786
- Hieroglyphs Deciphered1822
- Braille1824
- Cuneiform Deciphered1857
- Deciphering the Indus Scriptopen
More in Foundations of Civilization · Antiquity
- Weights & Standard Measures~2500 BC
- Alphabet~1800 BC
- Sundial & Water Clock~1500 BC
- Libraries~650 BC
- Philosophy~585 BC
- Plato's Academy387 BC
- Calendar3rd millennium BC
- Paper~105 AD