Lesson · 3400 BC to 200 BC

Writing, invented four times

Writing wasn’t invented once and handed on. As far as anyone can tell, people worked it out for themselves in at least four separate places.

Four beginnings

Where the oldest writing of each tradition has been found.

MesopotamiaEgyptChinaMesoamerica
Coastlines as they are today. Natural Earth, Equal Earth projection.4

On one timeline

Earliest known writing in each place, 3600 BC to AD 1.

3500 BC3000 BC2500 BC2000 BC1500 BC1000 BC500 BCAD 1MesopotamiaEgyptChinaMesoamerica
Solid blocks: when the earliest writing in each place was made. Hatched: earlier writing from Oaxaca, Mexico, which is still debated. The thin line after each block shows that the tradition carried on.

The gap is the point. China’s first writing comes about 2,000 years after Mesopotamia’s, and Mesoamerica’s some 700 to 1,000 years after that, with no sign that the idea travelled between them.

What the first writers wrote

Not poems. Mostly lists, labels and questions.

WhereWhenWhat the oldest writing is
MesopotamiaUruk, southern Iraq3400 to 3200 BCTallies of goods, rations and land, and tags that labelled property.1
EgyptNile valleyend of the 4th millennium BCShort labels and tags, much like the earliest tags from Uruk.1
ChinaAnyang, Henanabout 1300 to 1050 BCQuestions put to the ancestors, cut into ox bones and turtle shells.21
MesoamericaSan Bartolo, Guatemala, and Oaxaca, Mexicoby 300 to 200 BC; perhaps from 600 BCPainted signs on a wall; one may be the Maya word for lord.31

In Mesopotamia, the earliest known tablets come from Uruk, in what is now southern Iraq, and date to between 3400 and 3200 BC. They were found thrown away as rubble under a later temple area, not where they were written. Many are accounts: grain for fields, rations for workers, animals and beer for the temple.1

Egypt had writing by the end of the same millennium. The earliest pieces are short labels, and they look very like the labelling tags from Uruk.1

In China, the oldest writing is on oracle bones: ox shoulder blades and turtle shells used by the kings of the Shang dynasty to ask their ancestors questions. The British Library, which holds more than 450 of them, calls the script the ancestor of the Chinese characters used today.2

In Mesoamerica the record is thinner. At San Bartolo, in Guatemala, a painted column of ten signs, reported in 2006, was dated to about 300 to 200 BC by burnt wood buried with it. Only one sign can be read with any confidence, and it may be an early form of the Maya word for lord.3

Where experts disagree

Egypt: alone, or inspired?Egypt’s writing appears at nearly the same time as Mesopotamia’s, with very different signs. The University of Chicago’s exhibition on the subject counts it as a separate invention. The alternative, that Egyptians heard of the idea and made their own signs, can’t be ruled out.1

Oaxaca before the Maya?Carved signs from the Oaxaca valley in Mexico may be older, perhaps as early as 600 BC, but their dates are disputed. We show them hatched on the timeline.3

Sources for this page

Every number on this page comes from one of these. How we check.

  1. Woods, C. (ed.) (2010). Visible Language: Inventions of Writing in the Ancient Middle East and Beyond. Oriental Institute Museum Publications 32. Exhibition story on Google Arts & Culture. artsandculture.google.com/story/rwWhZTdobl0nLAUsed for: Four independent inventions of writing; the Uruk tablets, 3400–3200 BC; Egypt by the end of the 4th millennium BC; China in the 2nd millennium BC; Mesoamerica by the mid 1st millennium BC. Checked 11 November 2026.
  2. British Library, Asian and African Studies blog (2014). The Couling-Chalfant collection of oracle bones in the British Library. britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/asian-and-african/2014/06/the-couling-chalfant-collection-of-oracle-bones-in-the-british-library.htmlUsed for: Shang oracle bones as the oldest known Chinese writing, and the ancestor of today’s characters. Checked 11 November 2026.
  3. Saturno, W. A., Stuart, D. and Beltrán, B. (2006). Early Maya writing at San Bartolo, Guatemala. Science 311, 1281–1283. doi.org/10.1126/science.1121745Used for: Maya writing at San Bartolo, about 300 to 200 BC. Checked 11 November 2026.
  4. Natural Earth, 1:110m and 1:50m land, public domain, via the world-atlas package by Mike Bostock (ISC licence). www.naturalearthdata.com/Used for: Every coastline drawn on this site. Checked 11 November 2026.