Designs on ancient stone cylinders correspond to origin of writing in Mesopotamia, researchers discover

The origins of writing in Mesopotamia lie in the images imprinted by ancient cylinder seals on clay tablets and other artifacts. A research group from the University of Bologna has identified a series of correlations between the designs engraved on these cylinders, dating back around six thousand years, and some of the signs in the proto-cuneiform script that emerged in the city of Uruk, located in what is now southern Iraq, around 3000 BCE.