Developed by the Sumerians in Mesopotamia by around 3200 BCE, what is generally credited as the world's earliest known writing system, made by pressing a reed stylus into wet clay?
- Egyptian hieroglyphics
- Cuneiform
- The Phoenician alphabet
- Chinese oracle bone script
Why B? And why not the others?
Correct answer: B. Cuneiform
Sumerian scribes in cities like Uruk began pressing a cut reed into soft clay tablets to record grain deliveries, livestock counts, and temple accounts, gradually turning simple pictographs into abstract wedge-shaped marks that could represent sounds as well as objects. Once baked or sun-dried, clay tablets proved remarkably durable, so tens of thousands survive today, letting scholars trace the script's spread to Akkadian, Babylonian, Hittite, and other languages across the Near East for roughly three thousand years. Egyptian hieroglyphics arose around a similarly early period but remained a separate, pictorial system carved and painted rather than pressed into clay. The Phoenician alphabet did not appear until around 1050 BCE, more than two thousand years later, and Chinese oracle bone script is younger still, dating to around 1200 BCE.
Source: Britannica: cuneiform; Sumer