Writing with symbols and pictographs

Uruk was the first civilization to introduce written record-keeping, using symbols, pictographs, and eventually words. The Sumerians were an innovative civilization and improvised this symbolic language into complex documents, epic poems and literature, along with lists and genealogies.

Writings were mostly on reeds and clay, slowly forming a complex language of letters based on ‘wedge-shaped’ markings, known as cuneiform.