Ferrara says it was in that context that proto-cuneiform appeared: an archaic form of writing made up of hundreds of pictographic signs, more than half of which remain undeciphered to the present day.

This is a Sumerian cuneiform clay tablet from the Ur III period, c.2100 B.C. This was the heyday of the Sumerian civilisation which occupied much of modern day Iraq. Sumerian was a non-Semitic ...

This piece of clay contains some of the earliest writing in the world. It's called 'cuneiform,' which means wedge-shaped. This tablet is a record of the daily beer rations for workers. Beer here ...

according to scholars who recently made breakthroughs in translating cuneiform tablets housed at the British Museum in London. “Imagine you’re [an ancient] farmer—you’re out there ...