Over five thousand years ago, people living in Mesopotamia developed a form of writing to record and communicate different types of information.
Cuneiform: Writing style that is made from wedge-shaped strokes, inscribed on clay, stone, metal, wax or other materials. Cuneiform writing has been used in several languages, and was in use for about 3,000 years, from about 3100 BCE until about year 0. Cuneiform writing originated in southernMesopotamia, and was created in the Sumerian culture, in order to write in the Sumerian language. Later it was used for Akkadian, Babylonian and Assyrian. Cuneiform developed into the dominant writing style of the Middle East, and even spread toEgypt, where hieroglyphic writing was normally preferred. Cuneiform writing was also applied to several local languages, like Hurrian in northern Mesopotamia, Syria and Asia Minor; Eblaite in Syria;,Hittite, Luwian, Palaic and Hattic in Asia Minor; and Urartian in Armenia. Later developments of cuneiform writing came to be used in Syria, along with Ugaritic, and, in Persia, along with Old Persiansymbols.
The earliest writing was based on pictograms. Pictograms were used to communicate basic information about crops and taxes. Over time, the need for writing changed and the signs developed into a script we call cuneiform. Over thousands of years, Mesopotamian scribes recorded daily events, trade, astronomy, and literature on clay tablets. Cuneiform was used by people throughout the ancient Near East to write several different languages.
All of the ciclizations in the Mesopotamia used the writing system of cuneiform.The Babylonians adopted the Sumerian writing system called cuneiform, which they started using around 2700 B.C. They shaped the Sumerian writing system to express they're own language, Akkadian. Cuneiform has approximately six hundred different symbols to form sentences. Their symbols were written on wet clay tablets which were baked in the hot sun and many thousands of these tablets have survived to this day. It was the use of a stylus on a clay medium that led to the use of cuneiform symbols since curved lines could not be drawn. Perhaps the most amazing aspect of the Babylonian's calculating skills was their construction of tables to aid calculation.