Clay tokens, seals and the threshold of writing
- Date
- c. 5500–3400 BCE
- Category
- Economy & trade
- Region
- Near East (Mesopotamia and surrounding regions)
- Era
- Prehistory
- Significance
Long before script, the farming and trading communities of the Near East kept accounts with small modelled clay tokens — cones, spheres, disks, cylinders and other shapes — each standing for a quantity of a commodity such as grain, oil or livestock.
Used from at least the sixth millennium BCE, the system was elaborated as economies grew more complex. By around 3400 BCE, accountants began sealing tokens inside hollow clay 'envelopes' (bullae), pressing the tokens' shapes onto the outer surface so the contents could be read without breaking them open — and then realising that the surface impressions alone could carry the information. Stamp and cylinder seals, rolled into wet clay to mark ownership and authorise transactions, developed alongside. Denise Schmandt-Besserat argued that this three-dimensional accounting was the direct ancestor of two-dimensional written signs, leading toward proto-cuneiform. Whether or not the link was so direct, tokens, bullae and seals mark the administrative threshold of history — the moment record-keeping began to crystallise into writing.
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Related economy & trade events
- Domestication of cattle, sheep, goats and pigs in Southwest Asiac. 8500–7500 BCE
- Domestication of the potato, quinoa and Andean camelidsc. 8000–4000 BCE
- The Secondary Products Revolution: wool, traction and transportc. 3500–3000 BCE
- Hatshepsut's expedition to the Land of Puntc. 1469 BCE
- Meluhha: Indus Trade with Akkadian Mesopotamiac. 2400-2300 BCE
- Old Assyrian trade network and the karum of Kaneshc. 1950–1750 BCE
Further reading
The wider story
The Silk Roads: A New History of the World
Best-selling world history told through the trade routes that moved goods, faiths and ideas.
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