These tablets were baked to solidify them. From these descended Phoenician and Hebrew. There are also NE Semitic consisting of Assyrian and Babylonian, both are now extinct. The third group, S Semitic, is that from which modern Arabic descended as well as Amharic and Tigrinya, the language of Eritrea. It is safely to say that language preceded writing and not vice versa.
Language is a means of communication.
At the earliest stages of life, man used to imitate the voices of nature in his language. One of the simplest forms of communication is whistling, hissing and gesture as well as the use of the moves of hands, eyebrows and lips so as to generate voices similar to the voices in nature. Since nature is single, therefore, we have seen some linguists who call for one single language. The emergence of language dictated the invention of writing. With the passing of time and the establishment of states, the need for writing became all the more necessary and imperative.