DIRECTIONS: Read the store. Then cover it with your hand and answer from memory.
You keep the store in a city five thousand years ago. Four people have put things in.
Who
Sacks of barley
Sheep
Jars of oil
Ur-Nammu
3
11
0
Enheduanna
7
0
2
Lugal
2
4
1
Shubad
0
6
3
How many sheep are in the store altogether?
Working
Who put in oil but no sheep?
Working
Lugal comes to take his barley. How much does he get?
Working
Now Make It a City
World History · Page 2 of 5
DIRECTIONS: Same store, bigger city. Where does memory stop working?
Now two thousand people put things in and take them out all year. You have only your memory.
How many people
Could you hold it in your head?
What would you do instead?
4
20
200
2,000, for a whole year
This is why writing was invented: not for stories, which people already told
out loud, but because memory does not grow when the city does.
Invent your marks. You need a way to write what the thing is and how many there are. Draw a mark for barley, a mark for a sheep, and your way of showing five of something.
Show your work
What They Actually Did
World History · Page 3 of 5
DIRECTIONS: Read, then compare it with your marks.
The oldest writing ever found is a stock list. Clay tablets from a
city called Uruk, about 3200 BC, and they say things like 29,086 measures of
barley, 37 months, Kushim. Kushim is an accountant, and his may be the oldest human name we know.
They did what you did: a mark for the KIND of thing, and separate marks for HOW MANY.
The first written story, Gilgamesh, is around 2100 BC:
1,100 years after the receipts.
Your marks and theirs both keep "what" separate from "how many". Say why that is better than drawing eleven sheep.
Writing existed for about a thousand years before anybody wrote a story with it. What does that tell you about what people thought it was FOR?
Kushim might be the oldest name we know, and he was an accountant rather than a king. Say why it would be him and not a king.
An Ox, Lying Down
World History · Page 4 of 5
DIRECTIONS: The letter A was a drawing of an ox. Follow the four steps, then answer.
A picture of an ox It means "ox". Anybody can read it and nobody has to be taught.
Drawn faster Scribes in a hurry, thousands of times. Horns and a head, nothing else.
Turned on its side Nobody decided this. It just happened, over hundreds of years.
A And it stopped meaning "ox" and started meaning the SOUND an ox-word starts with.
Aleph meant ox and beth meant house: alpha-beta, alphabet.
At step 4 the mark stops meaning ox and starts meaning a sound. Say why that change makes an alphabet possible, and a set of pictures not.
Nobody decided to turn it on its side. Say how you think a thing like that happens with nobody in charge of it.
Yours, Handed On
World History · Page 5 of 5
DIRECTIONS: Give your page 2 marks to somebody who has not seen them. Without explaining, ask them to write three sacks of barley and two sheep.
Did they get it right? If not, which part went wrong — the kind of thing, or the number?
A system only works if somebody else can read it. What would you change about your marks now?
Everything on this sheet started because a store got too big to remember. Write down one thing YOU write down because you cannot keep it in your head.