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Humanity’s first baby steps into the writing process are collectively called "proto-writing" [Evolution picture with the most modern man turning round and saying "stop following me"]

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systems, which developed in the Neolithic age. [Examples of Neolithic writing]

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The line between proto-writing and today’s writing is a squiggly, strange one that anthropologists [The Neolithic alphabet]

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and archaeologists have drawn…

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…Guess they didn't have a ruler handy… [Archaeologist and anthropologist playing naughts and crosses]

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Here are the two main differences…

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For one thing, a fully developed writing system has to have a symbol for every sound in a [Drawing of man chucking a spear at an animal]

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language.

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That means that everything we say out loud can be transcribed into a written form. [Man talking as woman transcribes onto paper]

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Proto-writing systems only have some of the sounds represented.

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Proto-writing systems are also typically pictorial, which means that they rely on little drawings.

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Most of those drawings directly represent their meanings, rather than representing them [Examples of drawings]

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symbolically...

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Like…they might have a symbol that represents porcupines, but not letters that represent [Man painting a portrait of a porcupine]

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the sounds we make when we say that word.

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Proto-writing may sound primitive to some, but we still use some forms of it today. [Examples of modern signage]

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Like how about those little round headed people on bathroom doors?

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We know which one is which because when they were made, way back when, girls equaled skirts, [Toilet doors with male and female signs on]

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and boys equaled pants.

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Guess the people who made those forgot about the Scots. [Man in a kilt walks into the wrong bathroom]

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The other potential ancestors of modern writing were ancient number systems.

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Counting probably started with cave folks counting on their fingers. [Man pointing to his fingers]

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It’s useful to keep track of just how many saber-tooth tigers are prowling outside the

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cave.

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But eventually people moved on from fingers and toes and started making marks on stones or in clay

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that represented numbers.

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That same kind of symbolic thinking was useful in the development of symbols that represented [Man etching into a rock]

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sounds.

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So, eventually, these systems stewed together in the cauldron of human history and turned [Cauldron bubbling]

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into a lovely soup of writing.

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An…alphabet soup, perhaps…?

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Anyway, this magical process happened in three different places around the world. [The Earth spinning]

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To be fair, there's still some debate about the precise whens and wheres of the writing, but

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what follows is a pretty good guess…

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The earliest formal writing system was Sumerian cuneiform, which developed [Iraq is highlighted on a globe]

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in modern day Iraq.

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The Sumerians created a system of glyphs that directly represented things. [Pictures of glyphs]

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They pressed these glyphs into clay tablets with reed styluses.

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Later, the Sumerian written language got fancier, with glyphs being used to represent sounds. [Man drawing on a clay tablet]

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One of the other really old writing systems began in China. [China highlighted on a globe]

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Some people think they got the idea from the Mesopotamians…

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But the Chinese probably mostly thought of it all on their lonesome. [Chinese man kicks Mesopotamian away]

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The oldest examples of Chinese writing were found on these things called oracle bones. [Picture of an oracle bone]

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The ancient Chinese would carve letters into ox bones with a bronze pin and then throw [Man carving into a bone]

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the bones into a fire.

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Afterwards, they would examine the cracks made in the bones to try and divine the future. [Man picks the bone out of a fire]

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Sounds a lot cooler than the Magic Eight Ball.

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And last but not least, writing was developed independently in Mesoamerica, which is modern [Mexico highlighted on a globe]

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day Mexico and Central America.

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This area was home to lots of advanced ancient civilizations like the Olmec, Maya, Aztec,

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and more.

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Many of these civilizations developed written languages that represented whole concepts, [Ancient kid drawing on a wall]

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or even syllables of sound. [The kids mum hits him on the head for drawing on the wall]

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And perhaps most importantly, these systems may have allowed people to spell their names

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with a picture of a jaguar head.

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Not gonna lie… we're kind of jealous… [Man signs a reciept with a jaguar head]

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