6,000-year-old symbols linked to the world’s oldest writing system

Get inspired by a weekly roundup on living well, made simple. “Our findings demonstrate that the designs engraved on cylinder seals are directly connected to the development of proto-cuneiform in southern Iraq,” said the study’s principal investigator and team coordinator Silvia Ferrara, a professor in the department of classical philology and Italian studies at the University of Bologna. The researchers anticipated making marginal and indirect connections, but instead they identified seal images that appeared to directly transform into proto-cuneiform signs, suggesting that seals played a role in the developments that led to the birth of the first writing system, Ferrara said. “This approach allowed us to identify a series of designs related to the transport of textiles and pottery, which later evolved into corresponding proto-cuneiform signs.” Establishing an ancient link Such similar depictions in seals and proto-cuneiform signs indicate a close relationship between the two, said Eckart Frahm, the John M. Musser Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Yale University. “While the jury is still out on how much language coding the earliest phase of cuneiform actually has, importantly, it led to ‘true’ writing within a few centuries, so the invention of proto-cuneiform is a watershed.” Understanding that motifs from seals are directly related to the pictographs that would eventually lay the foundation for the first writing system shows how meaning was transferred from motifs to script, the study authors said.