“Since the days of cave painting, people have made marks to keep count of objects. We can call these marks the seeds of writing, since a mark means not Here is a mark, but something else. But the marks do not reach beyond space and time. They are voiceless unless the maker of the marks is standing there, explaining: This line is a cow; this one, an antelope; these are my children.”

–Susan Wise Bauer, The History of the Ancient World, 2007.