Portable records

• Early merchants used clay tokens with pictographs to record the quantities of materials traded or shipped. These tokens date back to 8500 BCE. The pictographs evolved and became abstract figures representing sounds.
• Around 400 BCE, the Greek alphabet was developed and replaced pictographs as a commonly used form of visual communication. They also wrote script from left to right. The Greeks used a writing stylus made of metal, bone or ivory to put marks on wax-coated tablets.

Some of the first tools for writing were the hunting club and the sharpened stone. Cave dwellers scratched pictures onto the walls of cave dwellings. It represented daily events such as planting crops or hunting victories.

With time, systematised symbols were developed fro...