At first, I thought it strange that a lot of these ancient tablets are receipts and bank statements.
That’s exactly what writing was invented for, from after the mid fourth millennium bce, the first few hundred years of rudimentary writing are accounting archives and lists of names (gods, jobs). Actual information (royal achievements, how-to, religion) came shortly before the mid third millennium.
Hundreds of years of nothing but bean grain counting.
At first, I thought it strange that a lot of these ancient tablets are receipts and bank statements.
Then I thought about how a huge portion of all the paper sitting in our landfills might be exactly that.
That’s exactly what writing was invented for, from after the mid fourth millennium bce, the first few hundred years of rudimentary writing are accounting archives and lists of names (gods, jobs). Actual information (royal achievements, how-to, religion) came shortly before the mid third millennium.
Hundreds of years of nothing but
beangrain counting.