Theuth, the eager god, was proud of having invented writing. “It will,” he promised King Thamus, “make the Egyptians wiser and improve their memories.” Thamus, in Plato’s account of the ...

The invention of writing may not have spread as quickly as more recent world-changing information innovations, such as the printing press, telegraph, telephone, radio, ...

Ever wanted to see grass grow? Jagadish Bose did. So he invented something that would help him. He also figured out how to set off gunpowder by radio, and became the father of Bengali science fiction.

The earliest known writing system, called cuneiform, was invented around 3100 B.C.E. in Mesopotamia. Before cuneiform, however, humans used a simpler writing system called proto-cuneiform that ...

Writing was then independently invented just four (proven) times, in Mesopotamia, Egypt, China and Mesoamerica. Most people lived without it for a few more millennia. Only in the 1940s did ...

Writing was invented in different places. Thousands of years ago, people lived in Mesopotamia (near the modern day Middle East), Egypt, China, and Mesoamerica (near what we now call Central America).

These connections not only shed light on the first invention of writing, but could also help decipher additional proto-cuneiform symbols, more than half of which are still a mystery to scholars.

The difference between history and prehistory can be summarised in a word. Writing allowed people to keep records of what happened and when. It meant they could pass on stories to other generations.