The earliest libraries were archives of clay tablets, primarily marked up with cuneiform script, one of the earliest forms of writing,

and especially prominent due to its utility in keeping accounts. Most of these tablets that were

maintained in these early archives then were the ancient Sumerian equivalent of Excel spreadsheet

documents, rather than great works of fiction or formalized

treatises about anything more expansive and culturally oriented.

This use case and the medium determined the shape of early libraries.

They were essentially rows of shelves built to hold rows of clay tablets, One edge facing the librarian, the contents of the

tablet inscribed along that outer edge. The setup optimized for use by professionals, almost exclusively.

The cradle of civilization encompasses what we often call the Fertile Crescent, a portion of Southwest Asia that was blessed

with excellent agriculture and geography that made it a crossroads for trade between emerging

civilizations across Europe, Asia, and Africa. The Fertile Crescent moniker then refers to the

region's soil and climate, while the cradle of civilization label refers to the region's soil and climate, while the Cradle of Civilization

label refers to the region's physical recordings of information, those recordings

incentivized by this geographic placement. These tablets, and the equivalent documents recorded

on papyrus scrolls in ancient Egypt around the same time, something like 5,000 to 6,000 years ago,

are the artifacts that allow us to draw a line in the sands of time and say, this is where history begins.

Because up until this point, all we have is oral tradition to tell us what happened, where and when. But having physical

artifacts allows us to document something in one period and then to see precisely what was said,

what was recorded, without intermediary bias or forgetfulness or misinterpretation,

influencing our collective memory of what happened, even thousands of years later.

Thus, the documentary tablet and scroll are representative of a sea change in humanity's cultural

evolution, and the archives in which these documents were gathered, organized, and protected

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