Comic #20: // TODO

A clay tablet from around 3200 BCE turns out to be a to-do list: quantities of barley, receipts, who owes what. Someone drew up an errand run five thousand years ago and it survived because it was fired hard. I made a short comic about it. The oldest writing we have isn't poetry or prayer. It's admin.

The oldest writing humans have found isn't a poem or a prayer. It's a to-do list. Barley counts, receipts, debts, pressed into clay around 3200 BCE and baked hard enough to outlast every empire since.

Made a short comic about it: https://www.jakelawrence.xyz/comics/ancient-todo

Someone in Mesopotamia scratched a list into wet clay around 3200 BCE: barley, receipts, who owed what. It got fired hard enough to survive five thousand years. The earliest writing we have isn't scripture or verse. It's a person keeping track of their errands. Made a comic about it.

A clay tablet from around 3200 BCE, one of the oldest bits of writing anyone has found, turns out to be a to-do list. Barley quantities, receipts, who owed what to whom. Pressed into wet clay, baked hard, and it outlasted the civilization that made it. The first thing humans bothered to write down wasn't a poem or a prayer. It was admin: someone trying not to forget their errands. I made a short comic about it. https://www.jakelawrence.xyz/comics/ancient-todo

The oldest writing humans have found isn't a poem or a prayer. It's a to-do list. Barley, receipts, debts, pressed into clay around 3200 BCE and baked hard enough to outlive every empire since.

Comic: https://www.jakelawrence.xyz/comics/ancient-todo

Around 3200 BCE someone pressed an errand list into wet clay: barley, receipts, who owed what. It got fired hard and outlasted the whole civilization. The first thing we bothered to write down was admin. Made a comic about it.