What is the oldest known writing system, and what did the first texts actually say?

The answer

The oldest known writing system is proto-cuneiform, developed in the Sumerian city of Uruk (modern Iraq) around 3400 BCE. The earliest tablets, discovered in the Eanna temple complex, are remarkably mundane: they record grain rations, livestock counts, and beer distributions. Writing emerged not from storytelling but from accounting. These clay tablets use pictographic symbols pressed with a reed stylus. By around 2600 BCE, the system had evolved into full cuneiform capable of expressing abstract ideas. The Kish tablet, dated to approximately 3500 BCE, may be even older but is disputed. Over 500,000 cuneiform tablets have been recovered, with many still untranslated in museum storage worldwide.