The moment

The world's first great city grew around temples to Inanna and An. Its temple households kept accounts on clay tablets, and that bookkeeping grew into cuneiform, one of the world's earliest writing systems.
Sacred site · c. 3300 BCE
Uruk, southern Iraq

The moment

The world's first great city grew around temples to Inanna and An. Its temple households kept accounts on clay tablets, and that bookkeeping grew into cuneiform, one of the world's earliest writing systems.