Cuneiform account keeping began with numerical signs in Uruk-phase Sumer (Schmandt-Besserat Reference Schmandt-Besserat1996), which by the Late Uruk period formed the precursor for writing in its combination of numerals and associated images (Englund Reference Englund, Radner and Robson2011), exactly what we have identified.

Sumerologists place the origins of the development of writing around 3300 bc in the pictograms associated with abstract marks representing numbers; ‘the writing system invented or developed … of a pictographic character; its signs were drawings’ and cuneiform gradually developed out of this, which ‘is a script, not a language’ (Van de Mieroop Reference Van de Mieroop1999, 10: our emphases).

The value of <Y>, the position of which varies in the sequences, may be the precursor of place value, in which, for example, 5, 50 and 500 represent different values according to their position, thought to have been a Sumerian invention (d'Errico et al. Reference d'Errico, Doyon and Colage2017).

Who were the world’s first astronomers? The answer typicallyincludes scientists such as Galileo, Nicolaus Copernicus, or ancientcivilisations that gave birth to what we consider Western science,such as Sumer in Mesopotamia.

Ancient peoples frequently engaged in offloading their mental contents and augmenting their brainpower with external resources, as evidenced by objects they left behind. Sumerians employed clay tokens to keep track of livestock and other goods when trading; Incas tied knots in long cords, called quipus, to memorialize events; administrators and merchants across a broad swath of the ancient world used abacuses and counting boards.