3. In the Beginning Was the Receipt: Why Writing Was Invented

We imagine writing was invented to capture speech, and so did the Sumerians. But the first writing could not record a sentence at all. It grew out of clay counters, kept track of barley, beer, sheep and people, and took seven centuries to produce anything we would call literature. This episode follows writing from museum drawers full of little clay cones to the accountants of Uruk, and on to Egypt, China and Mexico, where it was invented again for quite different reasons.