The origins of writing aren’t set in stone. The ancient cave peoples weren’t as illiterate as portrayed in popular media.

Researchers have made another major stride in understanding humanity’s origins of writing. In Mesopotamia, the birthplace of civilization, the earliest known writing system started around 3,000 BCE.

Schoolchild’s homework in Greek on a wax tablet, Egypt, 2nd century AD (copyright the British Library) LONDON — A 2,000-year-old wax tablet bears inscriptions of the Greek homework of an Egyptian ...

These mysterious Stone Age symbols from 40,000 years ago could be writing’s earliest predecessors - Information encoded in ...

Ancient carvings once thought decorative may actually be early attempts to record information. Their statistical complexity matches that of proto-cuneiform, pushing the origins of writing-like systems ...

The birth of writing could be 40,000 years earlier than previously thought after scientists found etchings in a German cave.

The origins of writing in Mesopotamia lie in the images imprinted by ancient cylinder seals on clay tablets and other artifacts. A research group from the University of Bologna has identified a series ...

For centuries, scholars have puzzled over the origins of the world’s first writing system. Now, a study by Italian researchers reveals that some of these earliest proto-cuneiform signs may have ...

Over 40,000 years ago, our early ancestors were already carving signs into tools and sculptures. According to a new analysis ...