ABSTRACT
Language is generally accepted as the feature that distinguishes Homo sapiens from other species, That is, we can produce sequences of vocalisations that communicate to others ideas we have, and we can comprehend such vocalisations made by others, The origins of language are shrouded in mystery, but it probably served the purposes of coordinating the cooperative activities of groups of people, and of sharing the ideas afforded by an enlarged cerebral cortex. Our interest, however, is in the transmission of information in written form, rather than via speech. Here, one can be a little more precise about the origins of writing systems, because some examples of early scripts have survived. Written scripts have been invented independently in several different cultures, perhaps the oldest derived from Sumeria over 5000 years ago.
