For a long time, many people thought that Egyptian hieroglyphs or Oracle Bone Inscriptions in China were the earliest characters in human history.
At 1890, a cultural relic named "Narmer slate" was discovered. It has been determined that its age is about 3 1 century BC, and it contains the earliest hieroglyphics that can be found so far.
According to this, it is believed that about 3 100 BC is the time when relatively complete hieroglyphics were formed in ancient Egypt.
The Oracle Bone Inscriptions in China was first discovered by the epigraphist Wang Yu 1899 in Qing Dynasty, which can be traced back to around 1400 BC.
But now some archaeologists believe that the oldest writing in China is not Oracle Bone Inscriptions, but some immature writing found on pottery in Wen Tao before Xia Dynasty, such as Erlitou site and Banpo site. They appeared around 2500 BC.
However, because the number of Wen Tao is not enough, it can't be deciphered for the time being, and it is scattered, whether it is counted as a text is still controversial.
Now it is recognized as an ancient script, which appeared earlier than ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, Oracle Bone Inscriptions and Wen Tao, and that is the cuneiform script created by Sumerians in the ancient two river basins.
The two river basins, also known as Mesopotamia, are divided into two parts, and the southern part is called Babylonia. The south of Babylonia is called Sumer.
As early as the middle of the 40th century BC, Sumerians invented hieroglyphics. The so-called pictograph is to use pictures instead of words. For example, if you want to write the word "star", you must draw an "∞" on the ground. But obviously, this kind of writing is far from the cuneiform I saw later.
Although pictures and words are easy to understand, they are very random, and it is very difficult to express some words in pictures, which is not conducive to learning and dissemination. Pressing out some fixed symbols with a wedge pen is not only conducive to unifying symbols, but also conducive to improving efficiency.
The appearance of cuneiform characters is also related to the Sumerian counting system. The ancients in China used knots to keep notes, while Sumerians used small cones and pebbles to represent the quantity in a certain shape on the soil. Later, Sumerians used this method to evolve into a triangular wedge-shaped stone pen, which pressed some characters on the clay tablet and became cuneiform characters.
The writing method is solved, and the writing materials are better solved. The ancient Sumerian region is an alluvial plain caused by "two rivers", with inexhaustible clay.
Sumerians made these clay tablets, and after writing on them, when the clay tablets dried, they became "nature books". If you put the clay tablet on fire, it will be stronger.
Therefore, in 3500 BC, Sumerians developed a relatively mature writing system, which consisted of about 2000 symbols, including notes and intentional symbols.
The most advanced point is that Sumerian cuneiform is basically ideographic, and it is all words, not simple pictures.
By the middle of the 20th century BC, cuneiform had developed into a common language in West Asia and Egypt, and even Egyptian pharaohs used cuneiform when communicating with kings of West Asia such as Babylon and Assyria.