世界史关键时刻·英语30篇（2）

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楔形文字的诞生：两河流域书写起源

Around 3400 BCE, Sumerian scribes in southern Mesopotamia pressed reed styluses into soft clay to record temple accounts.
These wedge-shaped marks—called cuneiform—were the world’s first known writing system, evolving from simple pictographs.
Unlike earlier symbols, cuneiform could express abstract ideas, names, and grammatical structures with remarkable flexibility.
Scribes trained for years in special schools called ‘edubbas’, where they copied lists of signs and practiced legal formulas.
Clay tablets baked in sun or fire preserved records of trade, laws, and even early literature like the Epic of Gilgamesh.
Because cuneiform adapted to Akkadian, Babylonian, and Hittite languages, it remained in use for over three thousand years.
Archaeologists discovered more than half a million cuneiform tablets, many still awaiting full translation today.
This writing system did not spread widely by conquest but through trade networks and diplomatic correspondence across the Near East.
Its decline began around 100 BCE as Aramaic script—written with ink on parchment—became faster and more portable.
Still, cuneiform laid the foundation for all later alphabets by proving that spoken language could be systematically recorded.