Statuettes to [?] to script

The origins of writing are here matched to cylinder-seals. In effect: typing preceded writing. At least in Sumer and Akkad.

It all starts with accountancy, those little statuettes all over the Cyclades. These are tokens for trade - including trade in humans (not necessarily slaves; round-trip ferrying might do). The question moves to how they became the two-dimensional representations in pictographs. Most researchers don't deem the pictographs to look like the tokens. The seals are that middle path, the "Seals and signs" paper now argues.

We read backward, as we dig backward. Uruk IV is ~3400 BC. The word "language" doesn't come up until the bibliography, but the authors use Sumerograms for most pictographs. Which they can now decipher with help from the seals. Uruk III / Jemdet Nasr is around the turn of that fourth/third BC millennium; seems more-solidly Sumer. Although, as in the case of netted-vessel representation ZATU190: we cannot necessarily read it as the later pictograph would read it. Here the picto will be GAN / [i]kannu[/i], but ZATU190 holds not just the "stand" but also the netting.

BACKDATE 11/7 like hell I was doing anything on Guy Fawkes' Day. Anyhoo h/t Archaeology org which used to be Saraceni, now might be AI.