Hundreds of clay tablets marked in cuneiform have been found in excavations of the Sumerian city of Uruk (in present-day Iraq). Though the tablets date from roughly 3000 B.C., the writing on them uses relatively few pictographs; instead, numerous
The earliest of the tokens were simple in form—small cones, spheres, and pyramids—and they were often inscribed. In 1966, a hollow tablet containing several of these tokens was discovered, and more than 100 additional tablets, which are now recognized as sealed envelopes of clay, have since been found. Later envelopes are also inscribed with impressions of tokens in the outer clay, signaling exactly what each envelope contained. …
The token system, essentially a system of three-dimensional nouns, was replaced in about 3100 B.C. by a system of marks on clay tablets. A few centuries later, this latter system was to display the first use of numerals, where simple marks coded the concepts of one, two, and so forth. The eventual evolution of this system into mature writing, Schmandt-Besserat suggests, can be seen in the following example: At first it took two ovoid tokens to record two jars of oil. A little later, it took two markings on a clay tablet to achieve this—one mark, using the outline of the old token, to record the customary unit measure for oil, the jarful, and a second mark to convey the numeral: two oil jars. Eventually, it took three signs on the tablet, one for the numeral 2, one for the standard jarful, and a new symbol that denoted oil itself. With three such signs, an abstract and flexible written form had arrived.
With which one of the following statements about the society in which the clay tokens were used would Schmandt-Besserat be most likely to agree?
Society members’ trade and other economic activities were managed by a strong centralized governmental authority.
“Strong centralized governmental authority”? There’s no support for this.
Religious rituals were probably less important to the society’s members than agriculture and trade were.
There’s no support for a comparison between the importance of religious rituals and agriculture/trade.
Society members regarded whatever was produced by any individual as the common property of all.
“Common property of all”? There’s no support for this. The fact Schmandt-Besserat thinks people donated some goods to the temple doesn’t indicate she thinks people thought that anything produced by an individual belonged to the whole community.
The society eventually came to regard the clay tokens as redundant.
Without a readily available supply of raw clay, the society could not have developed a system of representation that used tokens.
What would have occurred if the society had no raw clay? There’s no support for Schmandt-Besserat having a view about this. Maybe the people would have made tokens out of a different material.
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