2. The Ancient Egyptians were writing around 3100BC
The Ancient Sumerian civilisation in the Middle East developed writing around 3400 BC, and a few hundred years later the Egyptians were doing the same. The Egyptians may have developed their system of symbols independently of Sumeria, but it is ultimately impossible to say. Nonetheless, Hieroglyphics are a fascinating topic in themselves, and a mightily impressive feat. Hieroglyphics were pictorial representations of words, concepts, and sounds, which were used for an array of purposes. The earliest instances of hieroglyphic writing are found carved into pottery and ivory in important tombs from the end of the 4th Millenium BC.
Those capable of writing Hieroglyphics began training at around 6 years of age, and enjoyed a very privileged place in society, avoiding taxes and military conscription. Hieroglyphics as a system of writing operated in a very different manner from modern scripts: a single picture could mean a whole word or part of another, and some were phonetic, meaning that a picture of an animal could be a homonym. We are only able to decipher Hieroglyphics with a degree of accuracy because of the Rosetta Stone, an ancient crib-sheet which provides the Ancient Greek for religious and secular forms of Hieroglyphics.