Cuneiform clay tablets have a survival advantage over other materials, so it's anyone's guess when the first well-defined symbolic representation of spoken lang

Cuneiform clay tablets have a survival advantage over other materials, so it's anyone's guess when the first well-defined symbolic representation of spoken language system was invented, it may have been lost to history entirely. Highly recommend Prof Irving Fink's talk to Royal Institution on the 3,000 year development of cuneiform, how it is read, and the story of its decipherment: https://youtu.be/PfYYraMgiBA https://youtu.be/PfYYraMgiBA