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This is Scientific American 60-second science. I'm Cynthia Graber. Got a minute?

The Hebrew Bible was first written down some 2,600 years ago, and scholars have argued that only a

population with sufficiently widespread literacy could have accomplished the task. Now there's

new evidence for such literacy in the form of notes from that same time period written in ink on shards

of pottery. Scientists have debated whether the first significant phase of the compilation of biblical

texts happened before or after the fall of the First Temple in 586 BCE. To get at the potential

answers to that question, a group of researchers in Israel analyzed mundane inscriptions about the

needs of daily life on 16 ceramic shards written about 600 BCE from an ancient military fortress in Arad at the northern edge of the Negev desert.

These notes had no direct connection with biblical texts, which were more frequently written on papyrus or parchment and would not have survived the region's climate.

But they reveal that literacy did not

belong to a privileged few, the studies in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The research team was able to determine that the documents detailing military movements and

food expenses were written by a minimum of six authors. The scientists could even generally

identify those authors who ranged from a military

commander down the ranks to a much lower subordinate. This means that not only the priests

were able to write, but also the army administration were literate down to the quartermaster

of a fort in the desert. Shira Faganbaum-Golavin, a Tel Aviv University researcher involved with a study.

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