and the findings of this study bridge this divide by illustrating how some late prehistoric images were incorporated into one of the earliest invented writing systems." Proto-cuneiform is first ...

Instead of referring to sounds in an essentially arbitrary way, pictures refer to the world. As such, they require no learning and no translation—making emojis akin to the earlist forms of writing.

The cuneiform sign for "head" evolved ... languages that humans invented were derived from pictures. These include the first known writing systems in Uruk over 5,000 years ago, incised in ...