Deciphering Ancient Writing: The Origins, Evolution, and Controversial Interpretations of Cuneiform and Sumerian Language

The discussion with Irving Finkel, a renowned expert from the British Museum, delves into the origins and evolution of writing, focusing primarily on cuneiform script in Mesopotamia. Writing is posited to have emerged around 3500 BC between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, initially as simple pictographic signs on clay tablets. The pivotal innovation was the realization that these pictures could represent sounds, leading to a syllabic system capable of encoding complex language, grammar, and literature. This sophisticated cuneiform system, which allowed scribes to record not only Sumerian and Babylonian but also other languages purely by ear, remarkably persisted for over three millennia before being displaced by the alphabet.

A crucial distinction made is between pictographic representation of objects and the phonetic encoding of sounds. Finkel controversially challenges the conventional archaeological narrative that pictographs necessarily preceded phonetic writing in a linear progression. He suggests that the earliest pictographic tablets might represent the *culmination* of a much older, non-linguistic visual communication system used for trade between different language groups, rather than the initial stage of linguistic writing. He further posits that a seal found at Gobekli Tepe, dating back to 9000 BC, could indicate the existence of a much earlier, sophisticated writing system, implying that the "invention" of writing might be far older and more widespread than currently accepted.

Practical insights emerge regarding the nature of historical evidence and its interpretation. Finkel emphasizes that the vast corpus of cuneiform tablets discovered, while substantial, represents only a "raindrop" compared to the "waterfall" of what once existed. Our understanding of ancient cultures is inherently skewed by the survival bias of materials (clay vs. perishable leaves) and the specific contexts of discovery (e.g., thousands of administrative tablets from a few storage rooms). This calls for a critical re-evaluation of assumptions about the completeness of archaeological records and the narratives derived from them. The invention of lexicography by early scribes to standardize and preserve the writing system is highlighted as a testament to their foresight and intellectual rigor.

The broader implications extend to linguistics and human cognition. The unique status of Sumerian as a language isolate, unrelated to any other known language family, suggests the profound loss of entire linguistic families over millennia. This underscores the fragility of linguistic heritage and the vast unknown history of human communication. Finkel also speculates on the presence of language and self-awareness in Neanderthals and early Homo sapiens, arguing that the complexity of their social structures and survival needs would necessitate sophisticated communication, challenging simplistic views of early human intellect. The entire process of deciphering ancient languages is likened to Sherlock Holmes's deductive reasoning, piecing together a grand narrative from minute clues.

The first attempts at writing that we could call writing go back to the middle of the fourth millennium, say around 3500 BC, something like that.

That is the essence of writing, that there's an agreed system of symbols that A can use and B can then play back, either in their heads or literally with their voices, a bit like a gramophone record.

Once you had that, you're liberated from pictographic writing into a position where you can record language.

They invented not only writing, they invented lexicography, which means that early in the third millennium, they put down all the things that were made of wood and all the things that were made of reeds and all the names of colors and of countries and all the gods and everything.

And the cuneiform part of it means wedge-shaped, because cuneus in Latin means wedge.

But to actually write down sound is a genius invention.

My hunch is that the archeological evidence that we have on this score is ultimately misleading, because I think this, that probably for a very, very long time before the Sumerians, people in the world, the world of what we call the Middle East, were in contact, they traded, they probably even had wars, and they had messages between them.

That seal from Gobekli Tepe is a raindrop from which I infer writing, and it's perfectly possible they all wrote on flat leaves.

Yes, we have a lot, but it's nothing in comparison with what existed.

But it's the absolute opposite, because what happened was that the Babylonians in the south, in my opinion, they worked hand-in-glove with the Elamites from Iran... They'd have taken them all safely home, cart after cart after cart.

The other language, which is Sumerian, the one when you stick bits in the beginning and stick bits at the end, is not only not Semitic, it's not related to any other known language.

I personally believe that Neanderthals and early Homo sapiens, for sure, had language. For sure they talked to one another.