The written word is an essential part of being a human. Most people today who live in modern societies experience writing throughout the day. Whether they are reading books, surfing the Internet, reading billboards, or doing work, our world is immersed in writing.

While literacy rates have varied greatly around the world and throughout time, using the written word to share ideas and messages has been something people have been doing for much of our history.

This can make you wonder. What is the oldest written text that has been found?

Well, this is actually a more complicated question than it would seem. First, the definition of a written word must be made. If one simply means something that a human wrote to convey an idea, then the answer would be wherever the oldest known cave painting is located.

Cave paintings clearly document ideas or experiences, so in a way, they are written communication. It is, however, generally agreed that these are not words in the way most people think of them. Instead, they are pictograms that represent something in the real world.

Pictograms evolved over time to not just represent actual items seen in the world, but ideas. For example, if you see a picture of a circle with lines coming out of it, it could represent the sun (which would be a pictogram) or it could represent light, warmth, or other similar concepts. These are also not generally considered modern writing and have the name of ideograms.

When studying language, both pictograms and ideograms are generally considered more of a linguistic art than actual writing.

While they may have been the foundation of the written word, most people would not consider them in the same category of writing that uses something akin to letters to represent sounds.

So, what is the oldest found form of real writing? As of now, it is known as the Kish tablet.

The Kish tablet is a limestone tablet that has been dated to around 3500 BCE. It was unearthed on the site of an ancient city known as Kish. The Sumerian city is located in what is today known as Iraq.

This table has a type of writing known as cuneiform, which means ‘wedged shaped’ and is seen as a transition point between proto-writing (like pictograms or ideograms) and more modern writing. This artifact pre-dates more famous types of writing such as the Egyptian hieroglyphs by centuries.

Cuneiform was used for a long time throughout much of the Middle East, including by multiple cultures. This shows that it was able to be read by different groups of people who spoke different (though likely similar) languages.

The tablet was found early in the 19th century and linguists are still trying to decipher exactly what it says.

The written word is older than I thought.

If you thought that was interesting, you might like to read about the mysterious “pyramids” discovered in Antarctica. What are they?