The first attempt at expression or the effort of one individual to communicate an idea to another by signs may have been a mere movement to attract the attention of the other to the simple fact of its existence, and the first record of expression may have been the simple memory of this movement in the other’s mind.
However this may be, in the course of time and among human beings memory was the first record and as long as life was so simple that a man’s memory was sufficient for his own record uses and he felt no need of communicating to a distance, whether in space or time, the necessity of external records was not felt. As soon, however, as the number of a man’s cattle or cocoanut trees, or the contents of his hunting bag got beyond his count (perhaps beyond the number of his fingers and toes) or he felt the need of sending a message of defiance, peace, or ransom to a neighboring tribe, or from a hunting party back to the cave or wigwam, he began to make visible records—objects, specimens, images, and conventional signs of one sort or another. As the art progressed and became more and more complex, pictures of objects and pictures of gestures became the usual form of record until finally these pictures were recognized as standing for certain groups of sounds and phonetic writing had been invented.
Very soon after the introduction of phonetic writing documents began to abound and the chances of survival, therefore, to multiply. The Palermo stone seems to show that actual records by reign and by year of reign began in Egypt as early as the first king of the first dynasty. However that may be, within a few centuries of this time records and collections of records in Egypt had become abundant and varied, and these contained economic records, records of political and religious events, laws, censuses, etc., at least. In Babylonia too, long before 3200 B.C., there had been collections of laws, and a great variety of economic and religious documents.
In brief it may be said therefore that about 3400, or at least 3200 B.C., the vast number of documents, the firm establishment of phonetic record, the pains taken to insure permanence and the suggestions of methodical arrangement and custody point to the beginning of a strictly historic period.