Neolithic counting tokens Counting with tally sticks and tokens The earliest way of writing down numbers was to carve notches in tally sticks, and this method spread from Africa all over Europe and [...]
History of math: Sumerian multiplication table (2700 BC) Cuneiform multiplication table Once people in West Asia figured out how to write down numbers, about 3500 BC, they quickly began to want to use cuneiform to [...]
Inheritance: an Akkadian will (in the Louvre museum, Paris) A will written in cuneiform This is the will of a man named Baal-Karad from Syria, who lived about 1300 BC, in the [...]
This inscription from Kandahar, in Afghanistan, has Greek writing at the top, translated into the Aramaic alphabet at the bottom. The Mauryan Indian king Ashoka put it up about 258 BC. [...]
Cuneiform writing (now in LACMA, Los Angeles) Early Sumerian writing West Asia is probably the first place in the world where people figured out how to write. (Though Egyptian people began writing [...]
Epic of Gilgamesh: Gilgamesh and his friend Enkidu fight the monster Humbaba, on an Assyrian cylinder seal from the 600s BC The real king Gilgamesh The Epic of Gilgamesh is [...]
Some of the earliest known Egyptian hieroglyphs (Abydos, ca. 3200 BC) Keeping records Soon after the Egyptian kings united Egypt into one country, about 3200 BC, they needed government officials [...]
Cuneiform tablet, made by kids at Laurelhurst School, Portland Oregon About 3500 BC, people in West Asia began to use writing. Because nobody had invented paper yet, these people wrote [...]
