The origin of ancient writing

story, whose retelling at a recent symposium at the University of Pennsylvania amused scholar. They smiled at the absurdity of a letter which the recipient would not have been able to read. B They also doubted that the earliest writing was a direct rendering of speech. Writing more likely began as a separate, symbolic system of communication and only later merged with spoken language. C Yet in the story the Sumerians, who lived in Mesopotamia, in what is now southern Iraq, seemed to understand writing's transforming function. As Dr. Holly Pittman, director of the University's Center for Ancient Studies, observed, writing 'arose out of the need to store and transmit information ...over time and space'.