The (0) DEVELOPMENT of writing a huge difference to the world and we might see it as the beginning of the Pieces of pottery with marks that are probably numbers have been in China and these surprisingly date from around 4000 BC. Hieroglyphics and other forms of pictographic writing developed in the around Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq), where the Sumerian civilization was based, from around 3300 BC onwards. However, the first alphabet was used by the Phoenicians around 1050 BC. Their alphabet had 22 letters and it is that it lasted for 1000 years. The first two signs were called 'aleph' and 'beth', which in Greek became 'alpha' and 'beta', which gave us the word 'alphabet'. From these early beginnings, written language would go on to shape civilizations and connect humanity across centuries.