Record-Keeping
- Historic Period: Between 5,500 to 3,500 BCE – Mesopotamia & Sumer
Record-keeping was incredibly important to ancient people. In fact, if it was not…we’d know very little about many cultures. Record keeping can go as far back as the Neanderthal or “cavemen,” as they would draw on cave walls. This was a very early form of record-keeping. Eventually, things like stone tablets among others would keep vital records. This form of writing began around 5,500 BCE in Mesopotamia. Yet true writing that we might recognize today started around 3,400 BCE in Sumer, an area near the Persian Gulf. This Sumerian script was influenced by a lot of local materials and would become the first real long-form script in history. Later on, scrolls among other things would be used to keep records.