They discovered that a Mesopotamian cylinder seal held the key to the origin of writing.

The origin of writing remains a great mystery and one of great scientific debate. At what point did we move from pictorial representations of reality to abstract symbols and how did this materialize in the appearance of the first letters? A team of researchers from the University of Bologna has provided a valuable clue by discovering a connection between images printed by ancient cylinder seals in Mesopotamia and some signs of protocuneiform writing.

In a study published this Tuesday in the journal ancient timesand led by silvia ferrara, A series of correlations have been shown between the designs engraved on these cylinders, which date back approximately six thousand years, and some signs of protocuneiform writing that emerged in the city of Uruk, located in what is now southern Iraq, in the year It is around 3000 BC. C.

“The conceptual leap from pre-writing symbolism to writing is a significant advance in human cognitive technologies,” explains Ferrara. “The invention of writing marks the transition between prehistory and history, and the findings of this study bridge this gap by showing how some late prehistoric images were incorporated into one of the first invented writing systems.”

Uruk, one of the first cities to emerge in Mesopotamia, was an extremely important center during the 4th millennium BC. C. In this region, cylindrical seals were made, usually made of stone and engraved with a series of designs, which were then laminated onto clay tablets, leaving a stamped impression of the design. Which was used as part of the accounting system. A little later, protocuneiform writing emerged, a form of archaic writing composed of hundreds of pictographic signs, more than half of which are illegible.

In search of correlations

“The close connection between ancient seals and the invention of writing in southwest Asia has long been recognized, but the connection between specific seal images and sign forms has rarely been explored,” says Ferrara. “This was our initial question: Did seal imagery contribute significantly to the invention of signs in early writing in the region?”

To find the answer, researchers systematically compared cylinder designs with protocuneiform signs, looking for correlations that could reveal direct relationships in both graphic form and meaning.

“We focused on seal images that originated before the invention of writing, but continued to develop in the proto-literary period,” say study co-authors Katherine Kelly and Mattia Cartolano, researchers at the University of Bologna. “This approach allowed us to identify a series of designs related to the transport of textiles and ceramics, which later evolved into related protocuneiform signs.”

“Our findings demonstrate that the images carved on cylinder seals are directly related to the development of protocuneiform writing in southern Iraq.”

sylvia ferrara
, University of Bologna

The authors therefore conclude that this discovery, for the first time, reveals a direct link between the cylindrical seal system and the invention of writing, offering new perspectives to study the evolution of symbolic and writing systems. “Our findings demonstrate that the images carved on cylinder seals are directly related to the development of proto-cuneiform writing in southern Iraq,” defends Silvia Ferrara. “They also show how the meanings originally associated with these pictures were integrated into a writing system.”

Comparison with petroglyphs

Antonio Benítez Buraco, professor of linguistics and expert on the origins of language, believes the results are consistent with what we knew about the origins of cuneiform writing, which appeared, for example, on objects used for counting. Gives and is based on the representation of the head. Of cattle which were later carved on clay to mean ‘cow’.

It will be interesting to see what similarities exist between the symbols used on petroglyphs and seals, as they are still a development.

Antonio Benitez Burraco
, Professor of Linguistics and Expert on the Origin of Language

“Of course, these tickets are more abstract,” he tells elDiario.es. “At first glance, it would seem more logical to expect that symbols would have been more concrete in the beginning and become more abstract over time. It could be argued that, for this reason, seals may be later (as writing) than more pictographic signs. However, older abstract graphic representations are present everywhere, as is the case, in particular, with petroglyphs.

Benítez Burraco says, “I think it would be interesting to see what similarities exist between the symbols used on petroglyphs and seals, because these symbols are probably an evolution of petroglyphs or similar representations.” “These petroglyphs are of great interest because they are very similar across the planet, which probably means that their motifs are perceptually/cognitively attractive to humans.”