ABSTRACT
In the three-million-year history of the human species, writing is a relatively recent development. We can trace its origins to Stone Age tally sticks and clay tokens dating from about 8000 BC, and to cave painting, but writing proper seems to have developed only about 3500-2600 BC (SchmandtBesserat 1992). Although many of the earliest surviving examples have yet to be deciphered, it is clear that writing is connected to palace culture, rule and order, keeping accounts, tracking stores, enabling survival. Without writing, how could we map our territories or record good hunting areas? How could we order armies to move, make laws and regulations or keep
track of kinship? If making marks of some sort was originally a form of keeping accounts, and later grew into what we now call writing, and if the responsible management of stores, palaces and cities developed into what we now call civilization, why should we imagine that a connection of writing with responsibility that is so important to the species as a whole should be anything less at a personal level?
