Prehistoric Yellow Lined Tablet

According to forensic DNA evidence, plus follicles found in the vicinity of the archaeological scene, this alleged artifact is guesstimated to be late 4th millennium {+/- 3.9} BCE; to wit:

Approximately sometime around the year 4102.95 (BC) a Sumerian scribe invented a new form of communication called the ‘hash mark’. It was his hope that a number of these marks could be combined to form syllables, words, and eventually even sentences. He dreamed that someday everyone would be able to transcribe the spoken word using this unique form of preservation. He named this discovery: ‘writing’.

 

Unfortunately the idea never got very far in the southern Mesopotamia kingdom because the inventor didn’t have anything upon which to inscribe his writings. All he could do was make his marks in the desert sand with a dead olive branch.

 

Around the third millennium (also BC) an itinerant day laborer discovered an outcropping of vermiculite that could be mined, cut, polished, and formed into portable slabs called ‘pads’ or ‘tablets’. The pocket-size pieces of rock became so popular that people soon started covering them with hash marks and even writings.

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