Writing started by people using their fingers to count things they purchased. The finger counting developed into a sign language where people from different languages started using numbers displayed by hand to eye in a physical observation. It was after a long time that sign language evolved into written numbers. Other people at the time were using tallies which were generated from stone or wood carving notches. Since Mesopotamia was a city with inhabited by many people from all walks of life, it thus goes without saying that it hosted farmers, hunters, and fishers. Uruk being the southern Mesopotamia largest settlement was made of smartly decorated walls and dotted by monumental mud-brick houses beautified with clay cones. It was at this time around 3200 B.C. that the people of Uruk commenced using clay tablets to draw pictographs and record goods they had sold or bought.
During this time in the city of Mesopotamia, the traders or farmers who had employed laborers used the clay tablets to preserve worker’s rations. It was continuous use of these pictographs that later the use of cuneiform writing was started. As the city of Uruk continued to expand so was the different writing methods was modified and arithmetic was born. Even though arithmetic was there unknowingly, the Uruk residents due to their city growth and desire for luxury materials they started having a high desire for imported goods. Hence, they had to have a balance of measure of goods and items they purchased to be fair in their trade and it was at this juncture they started using wood carving notches to calculate goods. Other people used string of clay tokens with baked sign to point out the represented number. After a long time of using the clay tokens, the clay envelops were outdone by round stylus numerals. The sign inserted on the clay tokens signified quantity of the commodity on the inside and its volume.
Bibliography
Nissen, Hans J. "Uruk and the Formation of the City." In Art of the First Cities: The Third Millennium B.C. from the Mediterranean to the Indus, edited by Joan Aruz with Ronald Wallenfels, pp. 11–16.. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.
