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The proto-cuneiform script was a system of proto-writing that emerged in Mesopotamia, eventually developing into the early cuneiform script used in the region's Early Dynastic I period. It arose from the token-based system that had already been in use across the region in preceding millennia.
Previously, researchers thought that plain tokens contributed to the system for numerals used in proto-cuneiform signs, while complex tokens bearing incisions and other markings were the basis for ...
Sexagesimal numerals were a mixed radix system that retained the alternating bases of 10 and 6 that characterized tokens, numerical impressions, and proto-cuneiform numerical signs. Sexagesimal numerals were used in commerce, as well as for astronomical and other calculations.
The Kish tablet (c. 3500 BC) reflects the stage of proto-cuneiform, when what would become the cuneiform script of Sumer was still in the proto-writing stage. By the end of the 4th millennium BC, this symbol system had evolved into a method of keeping accounts, using a round-shaped stylus impressed into soft clay at different angles for ...
Tablet with proto-cuneiform pictographs – Uruk III (late 4th millennium BC) Sumerian writing evolved from a system of clay tokens used to represent commodities. By the end of the 4th millennium BC, this had evolved into a method of keeping accounts, which recorded numbers using a round stylus pressed into the clay at different angles.
The cuneiform script was developed from pictographic proto-writing in the late 4th millennium BC, stemming from the near eastern token system used for accounting. The meaning and usage of these tokens is still a matter of debate. [ 25 ]
As noted by the Assyriologist Robert K. Englund in 1998, "a general consensus of opinion in the field tends to support" the argument that the plain tokens were "the precursors of the impressed proto-cuneiform signs used for numerical and metrological notations in the earliest texts to represent numbers and measures of products of a ...
Before wedge-shaped cuneiform characters appeared on clay tablets around 3400 BC, there was proto-cuneiform, or an archaic script that relied on abstract pictographs, hundreds of which remain ...