What is the central idea of this text? Some anthropologists theorize that it wasn't the creation and use of tools that marked the emergence of early humans from their more animal-like ancestors, but the beginning of genuine

oral, and later pictorial communication. The development of a genuine

system of writing, thoug

came much later, as some societies transitioned from hunter-gatherer to permanent agrarian

communities. This nelifestyrequired counting property - like parcels of land, livestock or

measures of crops - and also the ability to transfer ownership of things from one individual or

settlement to another. Early such record-keeping was done with "counting tokens" about 9,000

years ago. But these tokens eventually were replaced by symbols that could be pressed or

inscribed into clay, and this marked the beginning of a written language. These symbols began

as pictures that represented what they pictured, but over time pictures also began to represent

concepts and, eventually sounds. Thus, written language was a natural outgrowth of an

increasingly agrarian society.