It is thought that writing was invented about 5,000 years ago by the Sumerian people of Mesopotamia (part of Iraq in today’s world). Writing was called cuneiform which translates as ‘wedge shaped’ because writing was done by pressing a reed into soft clay tablets to make wedge shaped marks. Cuneiform started off as pictures of objects or pictograms.
Over time, these pictograms were simplified to make them easier to ‘write’ and letters as we know them developed from this. The Greeks are widely credited with having invented the first alphabetic script, around 100 years BC.
The Chinese probably invented writing using a brush and ink 1500 years before the birth of Christ. At a similar time, the Egyptians started to use hieroglyphs and papyrus, a paper made from the stems of the papyrus plant.
Later, papyrus was replaced with parchment made from animal skins, but the Chinese first started using paper from wood pulp in the first Century AD.