One of the key factor that allows historians today understand what life was like in the ancient civilizations was through written records of the past. Who were the first, then, to start keeping written records of events that were taking place around them? Well, the start of written records dates back to 3100 BC, where the Sumerians of Mesopotamia first began communication with one another through the use of pictographs, which are symbols to represent familiar objects. They drew pictures of goods that they traded on clay tablets. Over the next 200 years, they invented a pattern of symbols which were etched on to soft clay with a reed. This type of writing became known as "cuneiform" or wedge-shaped writing.

The ancient Egyptians too began to invent their own form of writing around the same time as the Sumerians. The type of writing was called "hieroglyphics", which like "cuneiform", also used symbols to represent one's thoughts and ideas. It is interesting to note however, that hieroglyphics cuneiform were not only just pictures which represented a thought, each symbol actually also represented a sound, which meant that they could be spoken like the ABCs of the English language that we know of today!

For the Maya of Mesoamerica, writing in the form of hieroglyphics also existed. Archaeologists have discovered evidence of the Maya version of hieroglyphics on the buildings, bones, shells, pottery, paintings, stone monuments and in books that were uncovered among the ruins of the Maya civilisation of the past. These hieroglyphics were very complex and today, only 80% of them have been deciphered. Some of these hieroglyphics depicted stories of the outstanding achievements of the Maya rulers, as well as the conflicts between the various Maya city-states. The longest piece of writing is inscribed on a huge stairway at Copan.

For the ancient Chinese, the earliest forms of writing were pictographs, which were somewhat like the ones the Sumerians had. Most of the symbols used were drawings that could be identified at a glance. Each of these symbols was a word in itself and there were different symbols for different words. Some words were even made up of a mixture of symbols.

The ancient Indians of the Indus Valley too had their own form of pictographs. Evidence of these pictographs can be found on the thousands of seals that have been dug up at the ancient sites in the Indus Valley. Each of these seals served as a trademark for a single farmer or merchant, which could have been stamped on the sacks of grains or goods that they owned.

Today, however, we see that in most parts of the world, men no longer communicate with one another through the use of pictographs or hieroglyphics. Instead, for most of us, we use the alphabet, which had originated from the Greek alphabet that had been created over 2000 years ago. The alphabet of today has 26 letters, unlike the alphabet of the Ancient Romans which had only 23 letters. The invention of the alphabet has indeed brought much convenience to the lives of mankind since millions of words can be formed from the letters of the alphabet, all of which could be easily understood at a single glance. The pictographs of the ancient Chinese too have undergone a drastic transformation to become the Chinese characters that they are today, characters that are easily recognised by anyone with knowledge of the Chinese language.

Indeed, writing today is so much more easily understood by most. Come to think of it, isn't it also much easier than drawing symbols to represent one's ideas?

A tortoise shell from the Shang period, between 1766 and 1122 BC, is inscribed with characters that are said to be the first form of Chinese writing. Such writing also appears on animal bones. Priests used such oracle bones and shells to foretell the future.

On this Kiowa winter count, the pictographs represent events. The moons, or lunar months, are shown by crescents. The black strips indicate the winters from 1865 to 1892.