In late December I recommended one of my favorite recent books off my reading list – recent in this case meaning when I read them, not necessarily when they were published. That was Empires of the ...

While today we can get machines to write for us, for most of human history, writing was a manual endeavor. And there are people who are super passionate about keeping it that way. Some schools are ...

Example of a cylinder seal (left) and its design imprinted onto clay (right) (Franck Raux © 2001 Grand Palais RMN, Musée du Louvre via Courthouse News) SAN DIEGO ...

In 2010, archaeologist Glenn Schwartz quietly suggested that the history of writing needs, well, rewriting. More than a decade later, he still thinks he's on to something. If he's right, the world's ...

From cuneiform to computer keystrokes. Thus when digital technologies of reading and writing arose, soon thereafter people became intensely reflective about what had preceded them: books, paper, pens ...

Get inspired by a weekly roundup on living well, made simple. Sign up for CNN’s Life, But Better newsletter for information and tools designed to improve your well-being. Researchers have uncovered ...

When you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission. By Martin Puchner THE GREATEST INVENTION A History of the World in Nine Mysterious Scripts By Silvia ...

As civilizations die, so do their forms of writing, top scholars of ancient cultures found in the first study to examine the extinction of writing systems. The research also showed that ancient ...

For centuries, scholars have puzzled over the origins of the world’s first writing system. Now, a study by Italian researchers reveals that some of these earliest proto-cuneiform signs may have ...

The room we are in is locked. It is windowless and lit from above by a fluorescent bulb. In the hallway outside—two stories beneath the city of London—attendants in dark suits patrol silently, giving ...

This research was conducted with Simon Jerome Han as lead author. Piers Kelly receives funding from an ARC DECRA Fellowship. Charles Kemp's work on this project was supported by an ARC Future ...