The well-preserved tomb near Aleppo in Syria contained six skeletons, gold and silver jewellery, cookware, pottery and even a spearhead. But it was the finger-shaped clay cylinders lying nearby that ...

Four small, clay tablets, unearthed in 2004, are finally gaining attention as possibly the first evidence of an alphabet, but ...

The early writing appears to date to around 2400 B.C.—preceding the previous most bygone examples by roughly 500 years.