I just don't understand all the guess work in the article. Based on the historical record to date, the first written records appeared in Mesopotamia, and it ha

I just don't understand all the guess work in the article. Based on the historical record to date, the first written records appeared in Mesopotamia, and it has long been understood writing developed out of economic need. Further, we have a vast records on the people and culture of ancient Mesopotamia. We know it was a patriarchal society. Their religious texts specifically define the stages of a women's life as: "I am daughter, I am bride, I am spouse, I am housekeeper". Therefore, I don't think it makes one sexist to look at this particular society through a sexist lens. That said, the historical record includes literary works written by women in ancient Mesopotamia, though to my knowledge none of these women were merchants or traders, but royalty and high priestesses. Further, there is no shortage of women authors from other ancient societies either, but we know they came later. Since looking beyond the historical record is all guess work anyway, because the record points to the first writings being for contracts/receipts/economic necessity, it could be that marriages may have likely been the first "transactions" to be recorded (this would include probably both the bride and grooms names, as well as the brides price and the bride-groom price). My thought is these transactions simply would have been considered the most important in that society and applied to the greatest number of people. Going full circle to the sexist thing, many of the marriage contracts we do have from Mesopotamia include clauses guaranteeing the bride was a virgin and we know if that was question the women had to appear before the courts (though these are later in time too, after Hammurabi's Law was written). And although humor is frowned upon here, since everyone is taking a jab at the historical inaccuracies of the cartoons, why has no one questioned why our good friend Kushim is looking at an iPhone in the last picture?