Communication · c. 8,000 BCE

Clay accounting tokens

Small clay cones, spheres and discs stand for jars of grain and heads of livestock.

Across the Neolithic Near East, farmers used shaped clay tokens to keep track of stored goods, a system traced by Denise Schmandt-Besserat. Sealed in clay envelopes and later impressed on their surfaces, tokens became the direct ancestor of the first written numerals.

See it in the living treeWikipedia