A retired professor in Tucson said we're probably misreading the purpose of those small clay tokens from the Bronze Age.

He argued they were more about tracking labor shifts than simple trade goods, which completely flipped how I see early record keeping.

2 comments

2 Comments

kai6021mo ago

Okay but "flipped how I see early record keeping" is a bit off. That theory's been around for decades, it's not a new flip. The tokens are super old, like 8000 BC, way before the Bronze Age. The big deal is they might be the step right before actual writing, not just about labor. So it changes the story for how we even got to writing down language, not just record keeping.

william4071mo ago

Yeah you're right about the timeline, @kai602... I guess I meant it flipped my own view, not the whole field. But you're spot on, the link to writing is the real mind-bender.