'Brien have noted:
"Long before the invention of writing by the Sumerians,
farmers and business people in western Asia used clay tokens of various shapes and markings to keep accounts of
grain, jars of oil, or units of land. Since some of the tokens are similar to Sumerian ideographs. It is thought that they may be the earliest precursor of writing."
There are differing opinions as to why people felt the need to write. It has been suggested that as men moved from nomadic lives focused on hunting and gathering to settled existence in cities in tandem with agrarian and trading pursuits, it became necessary to acquire some permanent method of keeping track of business and other transactions. Early records were kept on clay tablets, and cuneiform evolved from these beginnings in Mesopotamia as early as 3100 B.C. - some 5000 years after tokens themselves were known to be in use.
The Sumerians were the group that is usually associated with the development of tokens. Analysts have noted that:
"For 5000 years before the appearance of writing in Mesopotamia, there were small clay objects in abstract shapes, called clay tokens, that were apparently used for counting agricultural and manufactured goods. As time went by, the ancient Mesopotamians realized that they needed a way to keep all the clay tokens securel
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