Invention of Writing Timeline

The earliest literary author known by name is Enheduanna, credited with works of Sumerian literature including Exaltation of Inanna, composed in the Sumerian language during the 24th century BC.

Image source: Enheduanna

The next earliest named author after Enheduanna is Ptahhotep, credited with The Maxims of Ptahhotep, an instructional book for young men composed in Old Egyptian during the 23rd century BC.

Image source: Ptahhotep

While the ancient Egyptian state did not codify its laws, legal documents such as official decrees and private contracts were used during the Old Kingdom around 2150 BC.

Image source: Old Kingdom of Egypt

The first codes of law were written in Mesopotamia around 2100 BC, exemplified by the Code of Hammurabi (c. 1750 BC), which was inscribed on stone stelae throughout the Old Babylonian Empire.

Image source: Code of Hammurabi

Herodotus and Thucydides, who wrote in 5th-century BC Athens, are considered founders of the Western historiographical tradition, incorporating genealogy and mythic accounts into systematic investigations of events.

Image source: Herodotus

Socrates, active in 5th-century BC Athens, argued that writing was an inferior means of transmission of learning, as recounted in Plato's Phaedrus — though his dialogues themselves were preserved as written works authored by Plato.

The works of Galen, a Greek physician living in Rome during the 2nd century AD, were important in European medical practice through the Renaissance, demonstrating the enduring influence of written medical knowledge.

Image source: Galen

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the late 5th century, literature production became largely confined to the Byzantine and Sasanian empires, while in Western Europe manuscript culture became the domain of the Christian church until the 11th century. The Middle East became a crossroads for learning in Constantinople, Damascus, and Baghdad.

Image source: Fall of the Western Roman Empire

The spread of Islam in the 7th century brought about the rapid establishment of Arabic as a major literary language in much of the Mediterranean and Central Asia.

Image source: Spread of Islam

By the 11th century, the city of Córdoba in Andalusia had become one of the world's foremost intellectual centres and was the site of the largest library in Europe.

Image source: Córdoba, Spain

During the 12th century, universities emerged from clusters of scholars in Bologna, Salamanca, Paris, and Oxford. By 1500 there were at least 60 universities throughout Europe enrolling at least 750,000 students, with scholastic education continuing into the 17th century in some disciplines.

Image source: Medieval university

By the 14th century, the Renaissance in Europe led to a revival of Greek as a significant literary language, in addition to Latin, expanding the written intellectual traditions available to European scholars.

Image source: Renaissance

In the 18th century, dissident Scottish and English universities began offering practical instruction in rhetoric and writing to enable non-elite students to influence contemporary events.

Image source: Rhetoric

During the late 18th century, François Quesnay and Adam Smith developed systematic theories of economics for the first time, made possible by written scholarly discourse and publication.

Image source: Adam Smith

Only in the 19th century did universities begin making place for the writing of new knowledge, adopting the German model of disciplinary research. In elite British universities, tutorials required weekly student writing, while US courses in writing were often required starting in the late 19th century, with writing across the curriculum becoming a focus towards the end of the 20th century.

Image source: Composition studies

The first alphabetic writing was developed by workers in the Sinai Peninsula to write West Semitic languages around 1800 BC, in the context of cultural exchanges between Semitic-speaking people from the Levant and communities in Egypt.

Image source: Proto-Sinaitic script

Early abjads, where letters generally represent only consonantal sounds, remained marginal for centuries. Towards the end of the Bronze Age, Proto-Sinaitic script split into the Proto-Canaanite alphabet (c. 1400 BC), the undeciphered Byblos syllabary, and the Ancient South Arabian script (c. 1200 BC).

Proto-Canaanite, which was probably influenced by the Byblos syllabary, in turn inspired the Ugaritic alphabet around 1300 BC, an early cuneiform-based alphabet used at Ugarit.

Image source: Ugaritic alphabet

The Phoenician alphabet emerged around 1050 BC as a direct descendant of Proto-Sinaitic. It was ultimately adapted into the Greek alphabet, profoundly shaping the future of Western writing systems.

Image source: Phoenician alphabet

Evidence of Latin writing appears as early as the 7th century BC. The script gradually evolved over the following centuries, with all Latin letterforms arriving at their modern shapes by around 100 BC.

Image source: Latin script

Paper was invented in China during the 2nd century AD and is traditionally credited to Cai Lun. It revolutionized the availability of writing material, eventually spreading across the world.

Image source: History of paper

Paper money was first used in China during the 11th century. It and other financial instruments relied on writing, initially in the form of letters and later as specialized genres designed to facilitate transactions and guarantees of value between individuals, banks, or governments.

Image source: Banknote

As printing emerged, it largely served the knowledge needs of bureaucracy and monasteries, with substantial vernacular printing only emerging around the 15th century. Over ensuing centuries, no single authority in divided Europe could censor or control book production.

Image source: Global spread of the printing press

Johannes Gutenberg's invention of the moveable type printing press around 1450 created new opportunities in Europe for producing and widely distributing books, fostered much new writing, and had particular consequences for the development of knowledge, as documented by Elizabeth Eisenstein.

Image source: Printing press

Growing divisions in English society during the 16th and 17th centuries culminated in the English Civil War. In this and other periods of conflict, cheap printed materials facilitated propaganda campaigns, pamphlet wars, and often illicit challenges to the status quo.

Image source: English Civil War

Printing made possible the invention of scientific journals, with the Journal des sçavans appearing in France and the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in England, both in 1665, laying foundations for modern disciplinary publication practices.

Image source: Scientific journal

With the advent of wood-pulp paper in the 19th century, the cost of writing material began to steadily decline, democratizing access to writing and print.

Image source: Paper

During the late 19th century, the circulation of regional newspapers encouraged adoption and articulation of urban or localized identities by readers.

Image source: Newspaper

Through the 20th century, telegraphy, nationally circulating newspapers, and scripted national radio and television news broadcasts created horizons of attention, with both benefits and costs for public discourse.

Image source: Mass media

Advancements in mass production of paper throughout the 20th century improved strength, ink retention, and other qualities, making wood-pulp paper one of the cheapest commodities in the global economy, with unprecedented availability as a writing medium and widespread adoption for other applications.