Cuneiform — The World's First Writing System

Cuneiform, developed by the Sumerians in ancient Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq), is the world's oldest known writing system. Pressing a reed stylus into wet clay tablets, scribes first recorded trade transactions and inventories. Over centuries, the system evolved from pictographs to abstract wedge-shaped signs capable of expressing complex language, law, literature, and astronomy — including the Epic of Gilgamesh, humanity's oldest known work of literature.

Exact date is debated; some tablets may be slightly earlier or later. Egyptian hieroglyphics emerged around the same period independently.