Chapter 4 of John Heise's 'Akkadian language' on the origin and development of cuneiform. Cuneiform Signs Lists cuneiform fonts for use in TeX and LaTeX 1.
Writing is one of the essentials and characteristics of civilization.
Urbanization, capital formation and writing are closely related. Writing developed at the end of the 4th millennium in the Middle East. Almost all of the early cuneiform texts and a very large fraction of the 2nd millenium texts concern economy and administration. A comprehensive theory concerning the origin of writing was developed by Denise Schmandt-Besserat , University of Texas. The clay tokens in various forms and shapes were used as counters.