The Ancient Writing System That Went Its Own Way
Here is a number to keep in mind: a few dozen. Not a few hundred. A few dozen.
Proto-cuneiform and proto-Elamite are two ancient writing systems that emerged in the same general period, share almost all of their numerical signs, and were clearly in contact with each other. Then scholars counted the non-numerical signs. Out of many hundreds in each system, only a few dozen can be shown to be related. The rest diverged so completely that they barely look like cousins.
So what happened? Kate Kelley's book Proto-Elamite: Writing and Society in Early Iran is one place to start looking for answers, and the answers turn out to be as interesting as the question.
They Started from the Same Neighborhood
The spread of proto-Elamite across Iran has been described as an echo of the Uruk Phenomenon, the broader cultural expansion that also carried proto-cuneiform writing into the world. Scholars have called the Uruk Phenomenon a "social experiment" (Lamberg-Karlovsky 1989). There were real mid-fourth-millennium connections between the two cultures. The numerical signs especially seem to have traveled freely. If you needed to count livestock or tally grain, proto-cuneiform and proto-Elamite were speaking roughly the same language.
But numbers are where the overlap ends.
The Part Where They Stopped Sharing
Out of the many hundreds of non-numerical signs in each system, only a few dozen connect across the two traditions. That is a striking split. These were not two dialects of the same script. They were two systems that borrowed a common accounting toolkit and then deliberately went separate ways.
One compelling explanation comes from Daneshmand (2024), who introduced the concept of schismogenesis to this conversation. Schismogenesis is what happens when two groups in contact define themselves partly through contrast with each other. Not just "we are different" but "we are different on purpose." If Daneshmand is right, the distinctive character of proto-Elamite writing was not accidental. It was intentional cultural identity built into the signs themselves. You wrote differently because you were declaring who you were.
That might explain why Iran's writing history for the next 3,000 years went in a very different direction from its western neighbors.
Writing That Traveled With People
Proto-cuneiform stayed close to home, concentrated in lowland settings. Proto-Elamite spread across varied geographic terrain, from lowland sites into highland regions. Part of this has to do with herders.
Sumner (1986) suggested the proto-Elamite period saw a rise of pastoral nomadism and tribal organization. Recent historical mobile pastoralists of the Zagros owned properties in both upland summer pasturage areas and lowland winter areas (Alizadeh 2010). Alden (2013) proposed that highland herders maintained cultural connections between proto-Elamite Tal-e Malyan and Susa through seasonal movement, and that those same herders traded with Susians in ways that involved administrative technologies, including writing.
Writing that traveled with the people carrying it. Not filed. Carried.
Matthews and Richardson (2019), working on the proto-cuneiform side, found similar evidence: writing and sealing were occasionally used to document resources moving between cities. The logic of the record keeping was the same. The signs were not.
Susa Did Things Differently
Even before the proto-Elamite period, Susa was organized around different principles. Stein (2020) argues that leadership strategies at Susa in the late fifth and early fourth millennia differed from Mesopotamian neighbors. The emphasis was on public ritual tied to monumental constructions and a prestige goods economy. Rich finds at Susa include copper from the Anarak area of central Iran, which is not exactly next door. Long-distance trade, seasonal herder networks, ritual-based authority: this society would use writing differently than one organized around urban grain storage. The difference shows up in the signs.
Still Being Figured Out
Not everything here is settled. Whether large-scale nomadism truly defines the proto-Elamite period is still debated (Potts 2014, Petrie 2013). Petrie acknowledges the evidence calls for taking group mobility seriously, including transhumant mobile pastoralism, without claiming it defines the entire era. Yeganeh et al. (2025) is cited as recent work directly testing hypotheses about group mobility and proto-writing. New data is still shaping the picture. This is live scholarship.
What Two Writing Systems Diverging Actually Means
Writing is not neutral. It carries the shape of the society that made it.
Proto-cuneiform and proto-Elamite shared their math and diverged on almost everything else. The numerical systems traveled because counting is practical and crosses borders easily. The non-numerical signs did not travel, because those signs carried cultural weight. Who you were. How you organized power. What you traded and where you moved.
The next time you argue about whether a word should count in your game of choice, you are participating in something very old. Humans have been arguing about what belongs inside a writing system for at least five thousand years. Sometimes the argument ends in schismogenesis. Sometimes it ends in Scrabble. Both involve a lot of counting.
Source: Languagehat