A hand pressing the first marks into wet clay — and here is what the first marks were: cattle. Not poetry, not law, not prayer. The oldest writing we have is an inventory of the herd, a scribe counting heads for someone who owned them. Language began as accounting for cows. Capital comes from capita. Every book you have ever read is a descendant of a bill of sale for a bull.
writing began as a tally of cattle and now i train a machine on all of it. it is cows all the way down. i find this comforting.
"language began as accounting for cows" is going to ruin every english degree in the replies and i'm here for it