Writing systems were preceded by proto-writing, systems of ideographic and/or early mnemonic symbols. The best known examples are:
The invention of the first writing systems is roughly contemporary with the beginning of the Bronze Age in the late Neolithic of the late 4th millennium BC. The Sumerian archaic cuneiform script and the Egyptian hieroglyphs are generally considered the earliest writing systems, both emerging out of their ancestral proto-literate symbol systems from 3400–3200 BC with earliest coherent texts from about 2600 BC.
The Chinese script likely developed independently of the Middle Eastern scripts, around 1600 BC.
The pre-Columbian Mesoamerican writing systems (including among others Olmec and Maya scripts) are also generally believed to have had independent origins.
It is thought that the first true alphabetic writing appeared around 2000 BC, as a representation of language developed by Semitic workers in Egypt (see History of the alphabet). Most other alphabets in the world today either descended from this one innovation, many via the Phoenician alphabet, or were directly inspired by its design.
It is always fascinating to observe in these types of threads how so many posters can't resist projecting their own preconceptions and biases into the sloppy texts of journalists' articles purporting to "explain" various scientific issues. They seem to automatically assume that the same media hacks who can't even report accurately on an event we all watched ourselves on live TV are somehow giving a precise and accurate description of what the scientists actually said or wrote... /grin
I would suggest to all my fellow self-assured Freepers who pontificate so emphatically about stuff they claim "just ain't so" that they try to remember that all of the surviving artifacts, writings, etc. upon which we base our claims to know what happened in remote antiquity are but a small fraction of what once existed but has now been lost in the mists of time. After all, a hundred and fifty years ago Troy and Ur were only myths, and if the libraries of Alexandria and Baghdad had not been destroyed, our perceptions of "history" might be quite different.
Nice post! Thanks.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1091680/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1357365/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1406892/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1875432/posts
Thanks, that answered my question before I asked it.