The Sumerians are credited with creating the first known written language, cuneiform, around 3500 BCE in ancient Mesopotamia. This writing system began as a series of pictographs used for accounting and record-keeping and evolved into a series of wedge-shaped symbols inscribed on clay tablets. Cuneiform facilitated the administration of city-states, trade, and the recording of laws, literature, and historical events. The advent of writing was a transformative development, allowing for the preservation of knowledge and culture, and it laid the groundwork for the development of complex societies and governance in human history.