The ancient Sumerians invented cuneiform, shown here on a clay tablet documenting barley rations issued monthly to adults and children. The language may have died out as a result of a 200-year drought ...

When people living in southern Mesopotamia (now southern Iraq) toward the end of the 4th millennium BC created documents by inscribing cuneiform characters on clay tablets, they took the first step in ...

The history of writing is for sale on the Internet, and it’s cheap. The opening bid for a cuneiform cone that allegedly hails from 2000 B.C.E. starts at $1. A square tablet recording a sale that took ...

Carved in the limestone of a desert cliff in Egypt is a 5,250-year-old tableau of a victorious ruler, perhaps the so-called King Scorpion -- whose exploits, previously the stuff of myth and legend, ...

Sometime around 1800 B.C., a Sumerian scholar inscribed a hand-sized clay tablet with a series of cryptic numbers. The unusual tablet, known as Plimpton 322 (below), has provoked years of fevered ...

Ancient Egypt, China and Mesopotamia are all frequently cited as long-lasting civilizations, enduring for thousands of years. But which of these societies lasted the longest? It turns out, that's not ...

1. The Sumerian Account of the Invention of Writing -- 2. Time and Place of the Invention -- 3. Received Ideas: The Pictographic Origins of Cuneiform Writing -- 4. Received Ideas: The Origin of ...

In southern Iran, in the sun-baked lands of Kerman, archaeologists have been digging up the remains of an unknown culture for two decades. Pre-Mesopotamian writing, planned cities, ritual objects of ...

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. SAN FRANCISCO — A 200-year-long drought 4,200 years ago may have killed off the ancient Sumerian ...