Ancient writing gives us our first glimpse of history, people, and institutions, and yet its origins remain mysterious. This book offers the most up-to-date treatment and examination of the origins of ancient writing. It studies often-neglected writing systems, such as those of Mesoamerica. The leading scholars in the field collectively discuss new topics and highlight new subtleties about how these scripts came into existence and development during the first centuries of use. Egypt, Mesopotamia, Elamite, Mesoamerica, and the Maya, shang, and Runic are all represented. Stephen Houston is Dupee Family Professor of social science at Brown university. A scholar of the ancient Maya in Mexico and central America, he is the author of many books on the Maya, most recently, with colleagues, The Memory of Bones: Body, Being and Experience among the classic Maya.