Scholars consider cuneiform the first writing system, and humans used its wedge-shaped characters to inscribe ancient languages such as Sumerian on clay tablets beginning around 3400 BC.

However, proto-cuneiform is only found in southern ... the idea has surfaced or resurfaced with a thorough analysis of symbols and writing, and necessity might have spawned both forms of ...

Deciphering some people's writing can be a major challenge—especially when that writing is cuneiform characters imprinted onto 3,000-year-old tablets. Now, Middle East scholars can use ...

The wedge-shaped writing on the tablets, known as cuneiform, demonstrated that these ancient stargazers used geometric calculations to predict the motion of Jupiter. Scholars had assumed it wasn ...

Officials began using standardized symbols — rather than ... Archaeologists call this first writing "cuneiform," from the Latin "cuneus," meaning wedge. The system developed quickly to ...

A collection of artefacts collected 2,500 years ago in modern-day Iraq reveal the forgotten world of Mesopotamia, home to many world firsts – including beer production.

On the reverse were three etched symbols: a line ... formal writing system that we know of is the 5000-year-old cuneiform script of the ancient city of Uruk in what is now Iraq.

The symbol for rations is a human head eating ... deserves more than a quick glance. It is written in cuneiform, the oldest known writing in the world, a non-alphabetic kind of writing that ...

To read about 4,000-year-old cuneiform tablets excavated at the Anatolian city of Kanesh, go to "Assyrian Women of Letters." ...