Why is the Writing the Most Significant Human Invention in History?

We can know things that happened in every corner of the world because they were all recorded by writing, photographs and videos. Writing is the most important way to share ideas and to pass on important knowledge that people have learned. Now imagine if there had been no writing ever appearing in the world, what would have happened? There is a likelihood that people still have not civilized yet. By capturing ideas in physical form, writing allows us to travel across space and time without distortion.

According to the earliest writing evidence, Mesopotamia is the lead to invent writing and dates back to about 3300 BC. The picture on the top is the piece of clay contains some of the earliest writing in the world. The writing is in cuneiform like signs or symbols, but it records the daily beer rations for workers. It gives us a hint that the stuff of early writing is about money, laws, trade, employment. Moreover, people in Mesopotamia city were discovering how to use written records for all kinds of day-to-day administration, keeping large temples running or tracking the movement and storage of goods.

Writing is a great invention in history that helps preserving information into the future. As there is a limit to what you can do with the spoken word, writing plays a crucial role to express the complex thoughts, such as higher mathematics or philosophical argument. Meanwhile, it also creates new entities, such as money, corporations, governments and complex forms of society.