The Sumerian language was the first to have a written form around 3500 BCE, using a system called cuneiform. This script evolved over time, and was later used by other languages like Akkadian, Babylonian, and Assyrian.
A simple and beautiful listing of the World’s Writing Systems. You can sort by time (proto-cuneiform to Toto), region, name (Adlam to Zou), and whether the scripts are living or historical
Thus far, Ithaca has discovered that the Athenian Decrees were written around 421 B.C.E. — these are the foundational documents of the world’s first democracy. Past conventional thinking had put their date closer to 446 B.C.E. Even the shift of just 15 years helps scholars re-contextualize these documents — now we know they were written at the same time as Athens prepared to go to war with Sparta, another Ancient Greek state that was governed as a military autocracy.
