ANCIENT TIMES
The first tool people developed to communicate was language. Scientists believe this happened about 35 000 years ago. At first people just talked to one another but eventually the need to record what they said led them to draw pictures on cave walls. These drawings developed into symbols to represent ideas, which eventually led to writing. The first form of writing was called cuneiform script and developed around 3500 BC in Sumer (modern-day Iraq). This influenced the invention of hieroglyphs around 3100 BC in Ancient Egypt. In China, writing developed independently from these influences in the 13th century BC and the Chinese still use this complicated system today. These early writing systems used symbols to depict complete ideas and words, but it was only in the 11th century BC that the Phoenicians (from the area now known as Lebanon) simplified hieroglyphs and turned them into an alphabet, where each symbol represents a sound and when you add them together you can read any word. This was further developed by the Ancient Greeks and Romans into the alphabet we use today. The Sumerians used styluses to Without an alphabet and writing tools we wouldn’t have developed written communication. The Rosetta Stone (left) from 196 BC – inscribed with Egyptian hieroglyphs, Demotic script and Ancient Greek – provided the key to modern understanding of Egyptian hieroglyphs.