In a museum basement in Berlin, a clay tablet depicting the Tree of Life has been sitting untouched for over a century.
Not because it was damaged. Not because anyone forgot about it.
Because no human being alive had the tools to fully understand what was written on it.
That changed in 2023.
When artificial intelligence was applied to the full body of Sumerian cuneiform text for the first time, what came back rewrote the first chapter of human civilization.
Sumerian clay tablets are recognized as the earliest known form of written records, with the cuneiform script developed by the Sumerians being the oldest writing system on Earth.
This wedge-shaped script was impressed into wet clay using a reed stylus, allowing for the preservation of these original writings, unlike texts on more perishable materials like paper.
Thousands of these tablets have been discovered in ancient libraries and archaeological sites, primarily in Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq).
The content of these Sumerian tablets is diverse, ranging from bureaucratic records such as inventories of grain and receipts for livestock, to school exercise tablets used by scribes learning cuneiform.
They also include literary texts, mythological narratives, and detailed accounts of the Sumerian civilization's culture and way of life.
Many tablets remain untranslated, with estimates suggesting that between half a million and two million cuneiform tablets have been excavated, and only a fraction of them have been read or published.
Sumerians are often cited as the first civilization, having developed innovations such as the wheel, the plow, and large-scale agriculture.
Their society thrived in Mesopotamia around 4500 BCE, establishing complex political and religious systems, and they possessed advanced knowledge in mathematics and astronomy.
The Sumerian language, an isolate not related to any known language, remained in official and literary use even after it was no longer spoken, influencing later Babylonian literature.
